Although several universities, including MSU, declined to participate or failed to make the deadline in Yahoo! Internet Life’s annual ranking of the nation’s 100 Most Wired Colleges, four of them ranked in the top 10.
MSU was independently ranked at No. 84 in the survey, although the university declined to submit materials required to participate.
The survey was open to all public and private universities, 1,300 of which responded to the magazine’s request for information.
To determine how “wired” a college was, six criteria were used by the magazine - infrastructure, student resources, Web portals, e-learning, technical support and wireless access.
Paul Hunt, vice provost for libraries, computing and technology, said none of the schools in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the academic consortium of Big Ten schools and the University of Chicago, chose to participate.
“The representatives of the various CIC institutions were dissatisfied with the methodology that was being used, so they elected not to return the survey data,” he said.
Lewis Greenberg, director of the Computer Laboratory, said MSU was one of 87 universities in the country who declined to participate this year. MSU stopped participating in 1999.
And despite its low ranking, MSU’s technology resources are up to par, Greenberg said.
“We have a very well-wired campus,” he said. “Our student resources, in terms of what’s available online, are good.
“In my opinion, I think we are doing a great job.”
And many students say they think the university offers several technology resources.
“I use the library’s MAGIC system,” no-preference freshman Lindsey Schlund said. “I also use the computer lab. And for the most part, when you call people in technical support, they are able to answer your questions.”
Jeremy Caplan, senior associate editor of Yahoo! Internet Life, said some colleges don’t participate because they score well on other kinds of surveys.
“In some cases, some schools have objections to surveys in general,” he said. “Or, they don’t want to spend time to give information that might be useful for prospective students.”
And Caplan said the main reason is a fear of not scoring well.
“A lot of them are working hard to develop their technical resources,” he said. “They want to wait until everything is done until they go public with it.”
But Caplan said he thinks the magazine’s survey is a vital information source for students who are deciding which college to attend.
“We don’t consider it the only criteria students can use,” he said. “We hope they use it as part of their research when looking for schools. They want to know they can get the kind of resources at their school that whey want.”
