In my nearly eight years on this campus, I have seen a host of major policy changes. Some of them have worked out well, and some of them were mistakes from start to finish. None, though, have appeared more asinine than the new graduate tuition policy.
Let us consider three specific cases that I have come into direct contact with where the policy has had an impact—I believe they are very likely representative of the campus as a whole.
First, a faculty member I know in the School of Engineering is well-known for complaining that, under the current system, graduate students cost more than postdocs. That gap will widen under the new system. While this professor, who heads a large research group, certainly isn’t going to turn students out of the lab, I have little doubt that as those students graduate, the group will be repopulated with mostly postdocs.
Next, an undergraduate friend in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences applied to the Graduate School. His prospective advisor was very pleased that he would be staying on and encouraged my friend at every opportunity … until the new tuition policy. Now, the department had to reject him—his advisor’s top choice—because there’s no money to pay for him.
Finally, a current master’s student I know was considering staying on for a Ph.D. But the new tuition policy, he says, fosters an academic environment where people will merely do research that is “good enough” to get themselves out by the deadline. He doesn’t want to do his doctoral work in that kind of environment, so he’s leaving.
That last point is especially telling for a school where world-class research is supposedly the number one priority right now. Also, all three cases are indicative of a decline in graduate enrollment, directly opposing a chief tenet of The Rensselaer Plan.
Surely a doctorate from MIT has the critical thinking skills necessary to recognize that the immediate harm this policy will do to the Institute will overwhelm any conceivable long-term benefit. Let’s undo this before it’s too late.
