Hey, there! Log in / Register
Boston libraries open, trash pickup still on
By adamg on Wed, 02/02/2011 - 9:00am
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
universities
And of course universities like MIT and Harvard stay open, so they can receive overhead payments from government funding agencies (at whatever cost to the safety of their employees).
Yeah, that,
or, uh, serve their students, who are mostly campus-resident and are, at least some of them, paying tuition?
serving students has little to do with it
The students will be best served by a university staff that is kept safe during weather emergencies. Missed classes are usually made up at a later date.
The motivation for keeping research institutions open during weather emergencies has little to do with serving students. The motivation *is* financial.
Of course the reason they
Of course the reason they stay open is in large part financial - the same is true of any other business. But the idea that it's government money that's at stake is a load of baloney. I doubt any government funding MIT recieves is on a "per diem" basis and I bet almost none of it is mandated for "overhead" (whatever you meant by that). But as most students and a good chunk of staff and faculty live on or very near campus, and since it's a working university (labs don't maintain themselves) and about 95% of it is functionally under one roof, it usually makes sense just to keep it open. And I say this as someone who did not live on campus and definitely did not enjoy the slog over the Mass Ave bridge on days like this - when the weather came at you horizontally and seemingly direct from the North Pole.
There are so many truly crummy things MIT is doing to its students, staff and neighbors that it seems ridiculous to give them grief for this.
(As far as Harvard goes, I'd be suprised if they got more than a fraction of a percent of their budget from govt grants).
Agree, and this is true of any university
especially those that do not have a large percentage of commuter students.
People who can work from home still have the option to do so (many non-lab researchers will do this).
And it's not always easy to reschedule classes, which also plasy a part.
I don't know about per diem
But in bioscience grants that are given by funding agencies (the NSA, the American Cancer Society, etc) include a substantial amount of what is called "overhead"
i.e. if Frank Frankenstein gets a grant for $50,000 from the ACS, they will actually provide the institution about the same amount to cover support staff, lights, mortgage etc- "overhead" They add this on top of Dr Frankenstein's grant, instead of cutting the grant in half.
I know that grad students tend to come in anyway because they have experiments that are time sensitive. And it sounds like if you live a long way away they excuse you coming in late if you're delayed because you have to take the train or other alternate transportation.
I'm not sure why the original commentator is so whiny! I know that MIT has been closed a lot more than my office has! Our office policy is that if the T is running, you come into work. Annoying, but financially necessary if you want to keep in business.
As Jeff F says, labs don't run themselves.
whiny? me?
Who's whiny? Most of this website is devoted to cheerful cynical complaining. That's it's charm. I just felt like joining the crowd today.
But my facts are correct. Universities have to reimburse indirect costs to the government for unscheduled closures of more than half a work day. That's why the universities, for example, will often stay officially open on the morning of a raging blizzard and then send people home at 1:00pm. You don't have to reimburse that day.
Cycler, the fact that your workplace might be even more badly behaved than the research universities around Boston doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. It just means that no matter how bad you think your employer might be, there's always one worse. If you approve of your company's policoes, I find that weird, but there's no accounting for taste. Hope you enjoyed the ride home today.
Dammit!
I could have taken the trash out!! Who knew this winter would see the temporary loss of my trash cans "due to snow" until late spring...
This is supposed to make me a hearty New Englander, right?