Amar Bose To Donate Company To M.I.T. 275
MBC1977 writes with this eyebrow-raising news from CNN: "'The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Friday that [Amar] Bose, the 81-year-old founder of the sound system company that bears his name, has donated the majority of Bose Corp.'s stock to the school.'
Very cool indeed!"
Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
The headline makes this story sound more sensational than the reality. MIT doesn't get any control over the company, just a pile of dividend-bearing stock.
And the link? (Score:5, Informative)
Is it just me, or did Timothy manage to strip out TFA between the firehose and the front page?
http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/29/technology/bose_mit_donation/index.htm [cnn.com]
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-voting_stock [wikipedia.org]
Unlikely (Score:2, Informative)
These are non-voting, unsellable shares.
MIT only gets the dividends.
Re:Caltech (Score:3, Informative)
No one at Caltech has to use Bose, they can build their own that are better. It's really just MIT that gets an improvement from upgrading to Bose.
Non-cumulative Preferred Stock (Score:4, Informative)
Just to put a finer point on it, it sounds like non-cumulative Preferred Stock [a type of non voting stock with very few rights].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock [wikipedia.org]
Re:Monster expensive? (Score:5, Informative)
Monster 1 meter hdmi cable = $99 [amazon.com]
Monoprice 6Ft hdmi cable = $2.78 [monoprice.com]
So, yes, monster cables are EXTREMELY expensive.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:M.I.T. already has an $8 billion endowment. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Here's to hoping .... (Score:4, Informative)
I think you'll find that most American universities do primarily fund American students. I did my PhD in a UK university, but I spent three months in a US university on a collaboration, and from what people said it seems like the funding situation is pretty similar, although not quite the same:
In the UK, the university charges tuition fees for PhD students. These have two rates, one for EU citizens (government subsidised) and one for everyone else (full price). This covers lab space, lecturer time, and so on - the university skims about 50% off before it gets to the department, to cover general university overheads. Most PhD student places for EU citizens come with a grant, either from a government grant, an industrial partnership, a charitable trust, or the university itself. This covers all of the tuition fees, travel expenses, and provides a stipend (tax free income). I don't even know exactly what my tuition fees were - they were paid from the grant and I never saw the bill - while my colleagues from Malaysia (for example) were having to pay a huge amount every year. I was paid a stipend which worked out to about the same as an entry level graduate salary after tax, and claimed around £10K or so in travel expenses, while they had to pay for everything.
One of the reasons why the tuition fees were so high for foreign students was that this money was used to subsidise other PhD places. For every 2-3 non-EU students we got, the university could afford to fund another PhD. This is why you see so many foreign students - the UK and USA are both regarded as prestigious places to do a PhD in much of Asia, so our universities encourage them to apply. Once they're here, the universities charge them a lot and use this to subsidise everyone else. Send them all back home, and you'll see a lot fewer PhD places available for locals.