College of Education to Force Students to buy Macbooks

Well well well, it finally happened. We've heard various rumblings of Universities mandating that students purchase certain types of cell phones and laptops, but this one really hits home.

According to the Daily Collegian, The College of Education at Penn State will be "forcing" its students (starting with the current Sophomore class) to purchase Macbooks (to the sweet tune of $1,534) in order to get into the elementary or kindergarten programs. They claim that the laptops will be used for podcasting and iMovie projects and that students will not be allowed to continue their education without having the device in their possession.

Shame on you College of Education. We all know that I will be the first person to steer someone towards a Macintosh and I support the College of Education doing something like this, but this is the absolute WRONG way to go about implementing the program. I have no clue as to why the college is doing this when there are labs full of perfectly good iMacs available to these poor (literally and figuratively) college students.

Think of it this way. You come into a College/School like Education, or Music, or Architecture which takes all 4-5 years of being in that institution from day 1. You know your field uses a Mac, but you get a high level PC because thats why you enjoy and you figure that you can use the school's Macs for your projects. Now picture being told "Your Laptop doesn't have iMovie '08 (a difficult piece of software as it is, thank goodness for the '06 Download) so you have to purchase a new one". Most college students purchase their laptops (the desktop is all but dead to us) thinking that they can use them for 4 years and get another one once they leave.

If you want to make it a requirement for students to have Apple Laptops TELL THEM WHEN THEY JOIN your College! Don't give me the excuse that you absolutely have to implement this program right away. Don't tell me that students need these mobile computers to do in the field podcasting and videography (trust me, i've tried it, you don't). If you want to do this program, do it right and tell your incoming Freshman that it is a requirement so that they don't "waste" their money on something that works for them, even if it is Windows.