Ok, so the older MIT buildings were $7 million in 1916 dollars, or around $115 million today. Fine. But how much was invested over the decades to upgrade these buildings to modern standards? How large was the investment in electrical, network, and telecommunications infrastructure over the years? Are these buildings as fancy as the Stata Center supposedly is, and if not, how much would it cost to upgrade them?

It seems like things aren’t necessarily as out of step today as your original post suggests.

I just returned from Poland and was really surprised at the level of craftsmanship there. What we (my business partner and I) finally decided was that because the labor costs are so much lower there than in the US the “extra” touches that we can’t afford won’t be passed up there. For example, I stayed in a house in Zakopane that would have probably cost $400K in the Chicago area. Tons of solid building materials, log construction and hand touches everywhere. The chinking was braided straw which was forced into the cracks in a very labor intensive manner. The main beam supporting the second story was hand carved with patterns from the area. In Zakopane he was able to build it, in 1984, for the wages he made as a forester.

I bet something similar is at play here. In the early 20th century wages for labor weren’t what they are today and that’s going to be a large part of the cost in projects like that which you describe.

Philip, it’s interesting that you mention Erika Ebbel as the only bit of encouraging news here. Besides being a quite accomplished musician, she plans to combine her chemistry education with a medical degree to concentrate on research where these two can be integrated. So if they do open a med school @MIT, they’ll have some folks from the chemistry department as well – not just biology. So not only MIT can boast for being able to attract some pretty (smart) girls, but they seem to be naturally receptive to your med school integration idea, and the more general concept you explained above.

A similar approach is used by the Technion in Israel, which is (one of) the top school(s) there. The medical school is an integral part of the research activities there, working together with most of the other research departments, and is responsible for the lion share of Israel’s numerous innovations and successes in the field.

David: Science is different from engineering and engineering is different from computer programming. Society at large remains very interested in scientific progress, particularly if they think it will give them improved medical care. So doing world-class science and producing world-class scientists still makes sense for a First World universities. Engineering is a somewhat tougher case to make but in fields where it is important that the engineer think about the customer and where technology advances rapidly you still need First Worlders. What has really been outsourced are jobs from an industry that had made no technological progress since around 1960 (C and Java aren’t much different from Algol and Lisp, both of which were available in 1960) and where the workers were mostly just sitting in cubicles doing what they were told rather than thinking about the overall customer problem. Villagers in Third World countries are doing just as good a job as American C and Java monkeys but it will be a long long time before they can do state-of-the-art biology.

Phillip, isn’t this latest president just another logical step in MIT’s ongoing effort to stop being #1 in science and instead focus on becoming yet-another well-rounded school that produces “elite” world leaders – like our current President?

And isn’t it hard to argue with that? Given the outsourcing of most engineering jobs? America is set to become a country of three tiers: MBA/Lawyer/CEOs who rule; liberal arts folks who work in the service industry taking care of the MBA/Lawyer/CEOs and their families; and everyone else in the service industry, flipping burgers and picking strawberries for the MBA/Lawyer/CEO parties/outings, etc. Wouldn’t it be sort of crazy for MIT to not change to fit this model?

Liz: I think it is a combination of the factors that you mention and the fact that other goods that go into the consumer price index are produced by industries that have made better use of automation. Cars, TVs, and food are produced much more efficiently than in the 1950s while buildings are produced in much the same manner.

To paraphrase Steve Jobs, the new Stata center is an “insanely bad” space to work in.

Phillip, the American construction industry: is it really a slide in efficiency, or much higher demands on the construction details and elements? Just for a simple example, here in California in 1916 very little was asked of a building in 1916 in terms of earthquake standards, energy efficiency, electrical sufficiency (I’ve seen early 1920s buildings with ONE outlet per room plus ONE overhead light) heating, air conditioning, air exchange, storage, etc etc etc etc.

Without really conning over the as-built drawings for a building in the early 1900s vs. a similar square-footage building today, I would posit you can’t really compare the two.