#MIT
Harvard and MIT to offer free online classes
Ahh the glorious internet, provider of free music, free movies, and now free Ivy league classes? Harvard University and Massachussetts Institute of Technology announced a partnership last week to offer free online courses. This new team effort, edX, is led by a non-profit organization that each school has donated $30-million to. Now instead of surfing whatshouldwecallme in bed on a Saturday afternoon, you can take an online Harvard course and call yourself an Ivy League student (well you know, in the virtual sense of the word). Students won’t receive University credit, but do have the possibility to earn certificates. To all the aspiring Ivy League lawyers who fall short of achieving Elle Wood’s magnificent feat: don’t lose hope, there’s always edX.
Nerdwestern doesn’t live up to its name
We don’t know about you guys, but we have gotten pretty used to Northwestern being high up in rankings…pretty much any rankings. So you could imagine our surprise when NU was nowhere to be found in Inside College‘s “15 Nerdiest Colleges.” MIT, Rice, and our dear southside friends over at U of Chicago were all ranked, but the editors over at Inside College seemed to forget all about little old Nerdwestern. So here is our challenge to you loyal reader, spend more time in the library, go out into the sunlight less, limit the amount of meaningful friendships in your life, fill your iCal with meaningless academic meetings and study sessions. We can’t let those bastards at U of Chicago beat us again.
High schoolers spend Saturday in Tech when most students sleep in
Four hundred high school students flooded the halls of Tech on Saturday to participate in NU’s Splash, a program where college students teach “classes” to local high schoolers. College students prepared courses on topics ranging from hip-hop in film to robotics. The high school students paid $10 for entrance and were able to attend any of the 80 classes offered. Splash days are becoming popular and other universities including MIT and University of Chicago offer them as well. Apparently there is quite a market for high school kids who are not only willing to pay money to watch college students play professor, but also have no problem spending their Saturday in class.
[NBN]
NU passive-aggressively insults Columbia, MIT, via study
A recent study released by an assistant professor at Northwestern says recent grads basically have no chance at a job unless they went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, or Wharton (UPenn). While we know brand name is important, even we find it somewhat incredible that applications from graduates outside the five aforementioned bastions of higher education “pretty much goes into a black hole.” At least that’s what one manager at a top investment banks says. Ouch.
Rubbing salt in the wounds, the report goes on to say that potential employers aren’t interested in those who are “boring,” a “tool,” or a ”bookworm.” Getting a job at an respectable investment bank seems eerily similar to sorority recruitment.
