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MIT Media Lab Tightens Its Belt
Posted by
chrisd
on Wed Jan 23, 2002 01:30 PM
from the hope-they-don't-boot-minsky dept.
from the hope-they-don't-boot-minsky dept.
Forbes Magazine has this story about the MIT Media Laboratory's current "burn rate" problem. It seems that the Media Lab is feeling the same big draft at its posterior that dot-com companies felt last year after years of go-go growth and seemingly unlimited funding. The Media Lab is particularly sensitive to this downturn due to its heavy reliance on corporate sponsorship, as well as its fondness for unconventional, even eccentric, research. Items that will no longer receive funding according to a January 5th internal E-mail from the Lab's Executive Director Walter Bender: cellular telephones, first-class air travel, food at internal Lab meetings, and furniture. Other more serious cutbacks for the Lab include layoffs for 29 staff members and reduced funding for students, including salaries for "Undergraduate Research Opportunities" (UROP) positions. The Media Lab had previously paid such positions $8.75 and up in order to remain competitive with industry offers that even not-yet-graduated students were receiving.
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Must Be A Typo... (Score:2, Funny)
$8.75 per? Hour? Day? Year?
Perhaps this submission should have been polished a bit before being unleashed on the unsuspecting (and fact-hungry) public.
Wow. (Score:4, Funny)
Limo to and from the airport - $400.
Building designed by I.M. Pei - $4,000,000.
Inventing the "smart" potholder - priceless
OH NO! (Score:4, Funny)
$8.75 (Score:2, Informative)
Assuming that is per hour - it is still a paltry sum.
I believe even Taco Bell pays it slaves $9/hr.
$8.75? (Score:2, Funny)
Cut everything else back, but save the salaries (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine if something like this had happened to the folks at Bell Labs? Even with all the layoffs Lucent had, business there went on pretty much as usual. Throughout history, the true innovators were rewarded for their knowledge, not penalized for something they didn't really have anything to do with. Poor spending is poor spending, but save the salaries...
I expect to hear from people on my innovators of history part, but bear in mind I said most....
thanks
Re:Cut everything else back, but save the salaries (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're "kids". The cutting edge innovators are the professors and research fellows.
Such Difficult Cuts (Score:2, Troll)
Its legions of techies have eagerly spent money donated by corporate sponsors since the lab opened its doors in 1985. The money--an annual budget of about $40 million--went not only to sometimes wild ideas like "smart" potholders, dice, chairs and animal building blocks, but also apparently to fund some dot-com-style largesse. . . . won't be paid for out of the laboratory till: cell phones, limos, first-class flights and furniture. (It's not clear whether this applies to new chairs and couches that "think.")
Oh such brutal cuts. And less than two years after the private sector had to cut such frivolities as . . . everything. I know my company sympathizes with them.
The Gardener
Lego chairs... (Score:4, Funny)
Among the things Bender says won't be paid for out of the laboratory till: cell phones, limos, first-class flights and furniture.
and...
But why is the Lab unhealthy in the first place? Unlike other academic institutions at MIT and elsewhere, the Media Lab gets the bulk of its money from corporate donors. Among them: IBM, Intel, Gillette, ChevronTexaco and LEGO .
Damn, so now all those MIT researchers will be forced to build their own Lego chairs and tables? Sounds like the kind of perfect ergonomic environment we all need. Don't like the height of the table? Just snap off the legs and away you go.
Reaction from a UROPer (Score:4, Interesting)
Sad and yet not (Score:2, Informative)
The scariest part is the layoff of the staff. I hope that these weren't specifically research assistants (instead of admin staff). RA's (often unrecognized for their efforts) usually complete the necessary but inglorious tasks that really help get research done.
This should keep them focused... (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe we'll start seeing some more great things from MIT (and other schools) as the economy forces them to focus on their core goals again.
Re:This should keep them focused... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's tragic that a significant portion of the private sector takes this kind of a stance. The Media Lab, in it's day, was a unique place where sometimes extremely disparate companies were able to work together, share ideas, and advance not only their businesses, but technology in a much more significant way than they would have separately.
What happens when Intel sits down with Lego and some creative, bright students? Lego gets Mindstorms [lego.com]... Intel gets an entirely new product line [intelplay.com]. This was the place where corporate R&D hit the academic cutting edge. It brought you HDTV, Mindstorms, Electronic Ink (which is turning very quickly into printable transistors). It's working on building automation with cooperation from both appliance companies and building companies. MEMS, Education, Agents, News Delivery... Hell, students there even had a part in remeasuring Mt. Everest [nationalgeographic.com]. Worthless indeed.
As for "frivolous perks," the professors at the lab get paid academic salaries. Many of them, who consult with their sponsors as a condition of their sponsorship contracts, travel 150-200k miles /year. Have you tried logging that much travel in coach, without a cell phone?
Yes, there are significant parts of the Media Lab designed to make it "plush" for both sponsors and researchers, but you don't attract some of the brightest and most creative people on the planet by giving them a cinder block office $5.25 an hour.
Your perspective is limited, and so is mine... (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, that is valuable. Having a role in remeasuring Mt. Everst, Legos products, and other commercial innovations is interesting to be sure. However, if we don't afford our students a bit of hardship, then how are they to have enough character to make real contributions to the world and not just invent the next profit margin gimmick? MIT may have done some important things in the past (and are probably doing so right now in some ways), but it didn't do those because they had every convenience and plush toy available to them. Why should that be the case now? If I provide all those extras, who am I going to attract? Will I attract those with an interest in being among the elite? Or will I attract those with an interest in being merely comfortable? If I simply provide an education with a reputation for producing lean and mean technologists, who will I attract? I will attract those who are motivated to become better.
As for professors, I do not begrudge any professor their salary. They put up with way too much for the likes of me to badmouth them. But there's a limit there too.
Excessive comfort does not promote real innovation.
Not to mention bad bookkeeping. (Score:5, Interesting)
The recent layoffs and cutbacks were spurred by the discovery that the Media Lab didn't have $6 or $7 million in the coffers, but were rather that much in the red.
Let me say that again: instead of a surplus of several million US dollars, they had a similar deficit. I can't fathom how anyone keeping the books -- even the most incompetent of accountants -- could make such a mistake. But it was made, and it's what sparked this whole trimming-of-the-fat. Worst bit is that some regular employees (not grad students, not UROPs) are having their hours cut, while the UROPs -- many of whom do nothing but sit on their asses all day long -- can work full weeks.
Let's hope some generous sponsor(s) will cough up the cash to get them back on track and not disrupt their research too much.
Re:Not to mention bad bookkeeping. (Score:4, Funny)
Yep, this is exactly what I heard (Score:4, Informative)
I'm surprised it took this long... (Score:1)
It amazes me that companies cut jobs, but still give huge amounts of money to "media labs" and such, but I'm glad they do (although I wouldn't be glad if I was one of those that had my job cut).
There has to be some responsibility somewhere for how the money is spent, and if it means the employees/students can't take advantage of it with free meals and first-class flights, so be it.
$8.75 though, if that's per hour, is a pretty damn low rate for just about any job.
Hubris (Score:3, Flamebait)
Of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong.
Students working for free? (Score:3, Interesting)
Memories of early Nintendo Powerglove hacking... Mmmmm.
The problem with the media lab (Score:3, Interesting)
On another note, does anyone think they'll need to tighten their lego budget [ericharshbarger.org]?
Literacy on /. (Score:1)
Mod this however you want; I'm tired of the post-from-the-hip / can't-be-bothered-to-read-the-links / explain-to-me-the-nouns / can't-use-a-search-engine droolers.
Reality (Score:1, Redundant)
There is a budget. And its not infinite. A lesson that someone should have explained before we launched into the dot-com idiocy in the first place. I view the situation at the Media Lab as another opportunity to learn.
competitive? (Score:5, Interesting)
give me a break. these students who work at the media lab could make quite a bit more than $8.75 an hour in pretty much any field in existance. MIT pays a minimum wage on campus of $8 for undergrads. i suspect that this is the 'industry' that they are trying to remain competitive with.
but, then again, there is little chance that these students are there to cash in on the huge salary. i am currently an undergraduate assistant for a january class at mit (2.670) where students make a working stirling engine, and learn enough solidworks to make a working assembly of the engine. i could easily spend this time during january and work a real job solid modelling and make at least 5 times the amount.
but i like teaching. its not about the money.
MIT researchers experimenting with drugs! (Score:5, Funny)
The Media Lab still has a place, but it may, during the economic downturn, see itself overshadowed by more concrete research--by tangible products like drugs.
Pass the bowl, I need to do some "tangible research"...
Hey big spender! (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably a typo (on Slashdot? Nooo....), but $8.75 an hour is pretty close to the minimum wage here in Massachusetts. Is that actually what was meant here? If so, no wonder they were having staff problems :)
Media Blab (Score:3, Insightful)
A Symbol of Elegance and Waste (Score:3, Funny)
From the beginning, the Media Lab was a monument to technical optimism--or maybe hubris. Its very building, designed by MIT alum and world-famous architect I.M. Pei, was a symbol of elegance and waste. On the outside, its tiled surface resembles nothing so much as a bathroom.
But inside, it is almost entirely empty, with a giant courtyard stretching up through its center--just because it looked cool. Maybe if that space had been filled with offices, the Lab wouldn't be spending money constructing a new building next door. And perhaps without the expense of the new building, the Lab wouldn't need to lay off staff now. At one point, Bender says he actually suggested filling some of the atrium -- which is four stories high -- with office space instead of moving staff out of the building. MIT nixed the idea.
(quoted directly from the article)
Just like the Internet bubble - spiffy on the outside, empty and nearly useless within.
When I was your age... (Score:3, Funny)
"Son, when I was your age, I had to walk 8 miles to school... in the snow... with no shoes... uphill... in both directions. We didn't even have classroom chairs in those days!"
Oh NO! (Score:1)
Even though money is gone (Score:1)
great "hacks" from them, albeit affordable ones
-- no more dough to lift a cop car.
Expect something like
IHey, Why not apply to.... (Score:1)
problem [slashdot.org] and maybe get a solution for that. Surely it would get them a lot of funds if they get them a solution.
Seriously:
The Media Lab should probably change their focus for more "grant awarded" concerns. They had gone with the hip and money of dotcoms and know should refocus.
Too much funding. (Score:2, Redundant)
Not that the rest of the dot-com wave didn't suffer from the same problems. And yes, when any college student who once turned on a computer could land a lucrative job in this industry, with all the lavish perks that go with it, I can see where MIT might have to compete on those grounds to attract that same talented individuals. But there would always be others. There would always be people to whom the research was more important then the perks. Yeah, you'd have to search a little harder, but I'm sure there were a few real starving college students at MIT that would have been happy for a $9 an hour starting salary job.
And when the wave collapsed, MIT labs wouldn't be struggling, and wouldn't HAVE to cut back or cut jobs, and the people in those jobs would be VERY happy.
But hey. What can ya do?
-Restil
so they foolishly followed dotcom trends then? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problems I saw was excessive spending for un-important things thus taking funds away from many important projects.... gluttony at it's finest.
lessee (Score:1, Offtopic)
* fake police car
* knowing that will be your last penny
Questionable value of research (Score:5, Interesting)
Meejalab [tripod.com]
Value of Research (Score:4, Interesting)
MIT is more well known because of a few famous people who taught, graduate or worked there. People shouldn't put too much stock in prestiege. All degrees are only as valuable as the effort you put into it. Likewise, an university is only as good as it's students' ability to be resourceful. I don't know that having the world at your finger tips with first class flights really fosters a scrap dog mentality. If necessity is the mother of invention, having everything at your fingers tips (as MIT is accustomed to) might inhibit creative thinking.
Um. Right. Yeah. (Score:2)
They're going to cut back on FOOD and FURNITURE? Yes, of course, makes sense, have everyone sit on the floor and eat lint. Saves on cleaning costs too.
But they got free first class airfares and cell phones? Wish I coulda been there.
So they get more creative... (Score:1)
:)
This article came as a surprise... (Score:5, Funny)
$5M in sponsorship for the "smart potholder"? Screw that. Throw some funding at the the "silent jackhammer."
The 8.75 is not a typo... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, as a former Media Lab UROP, I can strongly state that the UROPs in the Media Lab were the BACKBONE of work in the Media Lab. Another misconception from the article is that they UROPs had "projects" that they circulate looking for funding that the Media Lab would fund. Couldn't be more wrong. The UROPs are/were more like contract programming labor hired to support/flesh out the theories of the grad. students/professors. Cutting such is going to be the hardest cut to make...
To quote an AI Lab posting (Score:5, Funny)
UROP Payments (Score:1)
I'm not exactly certain whether it's 8.50 or 7.50 (but I'm about 80% sure it's $8.50 per hour.) But, I do know that they cannot pay students any less than that baseline.
Limos and First Class Flights (Score:3, Interesting)
Every company wants to donate money to a "successful" department and, like it or not, a lot of people controlling the money determine success by the outward signs. Likewise, good research that doesn't have some flash/publicity potential isn't worth a whole lot when it comes to getting donations. It's why some of the wierder projects are very important from a fund-raising point of view. They get you noticed.
Of course, you can go too far, start looking ostentatious and have your projects look like time wasters. It's a careful balance and not an obvious one at that.
Endowment (Score:1, Funny)
MIT has the cash if they want to keep the funding around , but apparently they have better places to spend their money. What papers have came out of the Media lab? I haven't noticed any particualy good ones. Not quite my field of expertise, but compared to other areas of research I would venture to say the department is lacking in the results it produces.
most sought-after work site on campus (Score:2)
satellite media labs in UK, India, Japan (Score:2)
Well, I was considering MIT for college... (Score:1)
Oh yeah, the excellent school/ excellent atmosphere bit. Right.
They never did pay for furniture (Score:2)
We never did get any new furniture. If we'd wanted high-end workstations to sit on, we could have had those, but furniture was just impossible.
Probably now groups will take up a collection and buy themselves new furniture, since the lab isn't going to say they'dd buy it but not actually do so.
Matthew Herper (the author) isn't a researcher (Score:1)
intellectual level so inferior to researchers
at the MIT lab, that he would like to state that
"Media Lab's heyday may be over".
He also makes the claim that the lab may "see
itself overshadowed by more concrete research
--by tangible products like drugs." What the hell
is Media Lab's relation to drug research? How
does this imbecile think that he may compare
things like AI, VR or robotics research to medicine?
And why does he think that a lab at the university
should aim tangible products at all? Who are you
to decide what is "concrete" and what is not "concrete"
research.
I don't value the subjective content of that
article at all. To me, he is just a "financial"
moron who would be better off dumped into a
nuclear wasteyard.
On the other hand, I think when the resources
are scarce a research lab should try to focus
the money on research rather than other activities.
Thanks,
Setting the record straight - by a recent graduate (Score:1, Informative)
M. Herper, the Forbes author, neglects to mention that he is, himself an MIT graduate (2 years ago) and apparently somewhat jaded. The article was full of inappropriately perjorative commentary. I graduated from the Media Lab within the past year. The Media Lab isn't perfect, but some corrections to Herper's hatchet job are in order:
Students have never flown first or business class as standard policy for trips. That mention referred to faculty. It is an MIT-wide policy that faculty taking flights longer than some limit (like 8 hours) may fly in first or business class, I forget which. I believe the lab's new policy is more conservative than MIT's, and previously was simply in line with the Institute-wide policy. They do travel a lot, and flying internationally in any class generally sucks. I can't begrudge them a little comfort. They aren't getting rich on their salaries.
The "top of the pay scale" that is mentioned with regard to UROPs tracks the MIT pay scale for UROPS - institute-wide. As far as I know the Lab paid no more than any other labs at MIT could pay their undergrads. And in Boston/Cambridge, $8.75/hr ain't much money no matter how you look at it. My undergrads were great, a bargain at most any price... you can't do complicated projects without a team.
Historically, Media Lab students have excellent track records of publication acceptance by journals and conferences. If you can't go to the conference to present a paper, then you can't submit the paper in the first place. It is very bad form not to attend. Students at other institutions, who don't get assistance and don't have personal wealth, don't go to conferences. And graduate students in many other programs outside MIT don't even deal with this problem because they never publish anything - at those programs, "publishing" is a privilege reserved for the faculty and senior Ph.D. students. I believe the lab's policy of helping people get to conferences was/is perfectly responsible. The faculty's emphasis on writing and publishing, even for new graduate students, is commendable. It's too bad that many students go through graduate programs without writing even one conference- or even workshop-quality paper. I hope that Media Lab students will be able to continue to submit papers and participate in the greater academic communities brought together at conferences. This is perhaps an area where analysis and planning could cut expenses, without harming academics. A personal track record of publications matters. Any organization that can help its researchers publish more, creates an advantage both for itself and for its people. Better questions to ask of all academic communities in general are "why are conferences so expensive for everyone?" and "are conferences the best venue for academic sharing?" (Answer: I'm told the ACM forbids its conferences from happening in any but the most expensive hotels - Hiltons and Marriotts)
"Limo" is a very loaded word. Generally if students travel by other than taxi or subway (sometimes hauling several road cases of gear plus clothes and laptop(s))... they don't take stretch Lincolns with televisions and bars, though that would be hilarious. This is talking about a car service with a driver... a high-end private taxi. This is not something that people used often. I did it a couple of times, both paid for separately by sponsors who asked me to come see them. It's actually cheaper and faster than a taxi if you do it right,. Personally, I usually took the subway to the airport ($0.85 and now $1.00) if I had time and wasn't hauling too much stuff. But if you're hauling gear, the three changes (red line, green line, blue line) and then the bus to the terminal are really too much to deal with. If the Lab's had a problem with travel, it's due to a failure to optimize and preplan, not largesse, at least as far as student travel is (generally) concerned. I can't address specific cases or faculty/research staff. I just know that I didn't see people going on junkets.
Food: I used to own companies. One thing I learned was that I could get people to work right through lunch AND dinner if necessary, if I fed them. The guy I worked for before that took care of my lunch from time to time, and I worked right through. From that perspective, I find it hard to argue that the lunches were a bad deal. When I last had a staff (pre-Lab), it was common for a half-hour or hour-long lunch to consume 50% more than the "official" time, given the pre-planning time ("where should we eat?") and the post-lunch restart delay of people washing up, and getting into gear to work again. All I'm suggesting is that if the funds are available, feeding your staff may actually be more economical than not feeding them. I'd argue the same for any dot-com that fed its people or paid for sodas during rush times, and all times are rush times at the lab. I was buying free soda for my staff back in 1991... it was much cheaper than selling it to them, and it made them happy. The cost was next to nothing - cans of soda in quantity are dirt cheap.
It's easy to pounce and have a strong reaction, but in the end what I saw at the lab was a lot of really smart people working very hard. Don't believe everything you read in Forbes, and don't believe everything published about the lab. The projects that are highlighted and played up by the press are sometimes the ones that make the prettiest pictures. Serious research, hard math, physics, thinking, sociological studies, all the serious and fun bits of science, technology and humanity don't necessarily photograph well, so you don't hear as much about them, even though the place is full of people doing great things.
Oh, and not every project is great. Some of them suck. Some of mine really sucked. But the good ones... are so damned good. The place was built for people to take chances, not to play it safe and hit one guaranteed home run after another... so a little slack there wouldn't hurt.
cheers
-"John Smith"
Wisdom from the Lab's founder (Score:1)
...
"The notion of an instruction manual is obsolete. The fact that computer hardware and software manufacturers ship them with product is nothing short of perverse."
The above are from Nicholas Negroponte in his book, "Being Digital" (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), pp. 213, 215.
My two cents:
Apparently no one at the Media Lab has ever been forced to use Windows. The Media Lab has been operating in the stratosphere for nearly 17 years now, completely oblivious to the socio-economic-political infrastructure, and to the everyday lives of billions of people. They should just sell all their assets and donate them to the poor.
Re:And this is news exactly how? (Score:1)
Why should I care? (Score:1)
I have heard of these projects before and I really don't see how they help me in the least in any way. *I* don't go to MIT and I really don't think I should want to (I like to get a balanced education and not just all technical). What about AI and all that being promised to do all manner of things. I havn't really even seen a decent say simple chat bot that even used a simplistic neural network.
Re:And this is a troll exactly how? (Score:1)
Re:And this is news exactly how? (Score:1)
So that would be what, hcxEegna 0200?