Students taking a course at the University of Missouri will be told they must buy an iPod Touch or iPhone. But it turns out management isn’t trying to indoctrinate students in the Apple way: instead they are helping them take advantage of the college funding system.

New students on the university’s journalism course have, since 2005, been required to have a laptop with wireless internet. The ‘minimum requirement’ is Microsoft Windows, though students are strongly encouraged to use Macs and can get them through a financing deal with the university’s computer store.

The university has now signed up to iTunes University, a system by which educational establishments can deliver audio and video content through iTunes. Starting from this September, students are “required” to have either an iPod touch or an iPhone and will be able to use it to preview upcoming lectures and see accompanying clips.

For those who don’t currently have such devices, “The best solution if the student does not already have an iPod Touch or iPhone is to work with TigerTech, the MU computer store, to acquire one.” The store offers a free iPod Touch to students who buy a computer there.

On the face of it, this might seem a pretty dubious policy: however much the university likes Apple products, it’s stretching things to force students to buy a particular brand. However, the truth is even stranger.

Brian Brooks, associate dean of the journalism school, tells the Missourian newspaper that students will not have to buy an iPod or iPhone. He says students can get the content through a laptop and that items are listed as a requirement purely so that students can add it on to their course fees total when applying for financial assistance.

In other words, with four months before their courses start, the journalists of tomorrow have already learned how to completely ignore the meaning of a word (“required”) and how to exploit every loophole in an expenses claim system. Now that’s what I call vocational training.

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Entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 10:06 am under Apple.

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