Bloomberg’s Big Push for an Applied Sciences School in NYC | Hacker News Reader

Bloomberg’s Big Push for an Applied Sciences School in NYC

nytimes.com

15 pointshelwr6 comments

This is a waste of resources on the part of the city. Both NYU and Columbia are top notch institutions and it would make far greater sense to expand their programs.

Beyond that, the formula of what makes for a thriving tech community isn't entirely clear anyhow. The Valley has Stanford and VC's (and great weather), but there is also little else in the area competing for talent beyond great tech companies. So throwing in a new college/university into Manhattan isn't going to be enough to change things.

Rockefeller University is in the city, and it has fantastic researchers and great educational programs in the biomedical sciences - but you don't see biomedical companies popping up all over Manhattan because of it.

I'm an NYU grad student and I think putting city money into my school would be a greater waste. NYU is a distracted and sprawling bureaucracy. Getting two weeks of summer funding required a long series of confusing email exchanges which finally resulted in having to sign 5 identical forms (each given to a different administrator). The elevators in my building break on a regular basis, and attracting the attention of maintenance workers requires forms and requests from "higher up". They've started closing the math building at night (a night guard is too costly) but find enough money/resources to expand into Abu Dhabi and Poly. It's a mess!

Unfortunately, NYC and Columbia haven't been aggressive in this regard. As an NYC'er, the competition will likely cause everyone, including the incumbents, to raise their game which is good for students, the city, etc.

Another issue that needs to be considered for this initiative to meet its goal (which I assume is to install a professional engineering/applied sciences base in NYC) is where these people will work once they receive their educations. Tech is on the rise in NYC, no doubt, but it's too soon to call it a long-term trend. Fin Services will continue to consume the majority of the talent for the distant, yet foreseeable future. Academia alone won't make this goal a reality.

When I read the headline, I thought it was for a public high school but was disappointed to find out it was for a university. Seriously, who cares about that when the public school system is in need of such major reform?

There are plenty of options for those looking for a good college. What NYC and the rest of this country needs is a better K-8 and high school system.

> When I read the headline, I thought it was for a public high school but was disappointed to find out it was for a university. Seriously, who cares about that when the public school system is in need of such major reform?

It may be that Bloomberg thinks that he can make a difference with "yet another university" and can't make a difference in the K-12 system.

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