BU Development Thread

Re: New BU Tower

Lrfox said:
^I think I agree 100%. I wasn't trying to challenge you. In fact, the reason I went to UMF and USM is because I could use a vacation property we had to get in state tuition (funny that it actually would have cost me less with OUT of stat tuition in Maine than it would have cost for IN state tuition at a MA state college) and cost me about 75% less than what I would pay for a similar education at BU or another similar private. I tried to plead with my sister to go to UMass and get a summer internship in the city or practice there when she's done with school. Instead she chose NEU and will likely have a hundred or so thousand in debt while I'm in the black after 5 years of undergrad.

Not only do I see your point, I agree with it. There are times, though, that I wish I got the experience of going to school in the city. I'm making up for it now, but I thoroughly enjoyed visiting my friends at BU, NEU, Harvard, Suffolk, etc while I was in college. I'm not too outdoorsy, so I felt like I was going to go crazy at Farmington by about March every year.
Click to expand...

That's funny. As someone who lived in Boston for six years and then lived in Farmington, I can definitely relate. How many times can one go to hang out at the Granary or the Front Street tavern before going batshit insane?

As far as city life, I also agree with that. Hey, there's always UMass Boston!

My brother got his grad degree at Hunter College in NYC, part of CUNY. Not cheap by public standards but certainly a heck of a lot cheaper than NYU. It's unfortunate that urban public universities are so rare.
 
Re: New BU Tower

Boston Needs A ShakeShack said:
Re: BU vs Ivies...no, of course the educational quality hardly merits the absurd prices at Columbia or Yale either: but you do at least get one thing at an Ivy that you don't get at BU. You get the cache of that brand name on your diploma, and you get access to the good old boy network. Putting the word Princeton on a resume stil means a hell of a lot, much more than ia warranted by the actual quality of the education. I'm not sure the brand name Boston University carries any more weight than the UConns and Rutgerses of the world, really. We are still only a couple decades out from BU being a second tier institution.
Click to expand...

BU is no Harvard, but it is well connected. It has help me, and most of my undergraduate friends who have attended, get well paying jobs. I work in research and stand behind the quality of students that come out of the MPH program. I hire them regularly. In fact, the weight of the program positions these applicants well above any other applicant from schools in the Boston metro area, including Harvard. Our human resources department seems to agree. I am not an MPH but think very highly of this program.
 
Re: New BU Tower

I think ShakeShack is solely comparing these schools' undergraduate quality. BU definitely has some very reputable grad schools. The law school is not half bad, and the creative writing MFA is one of the best in New England.
 
Re: New BU Tower

I'm not too sure if even Ivy league namebrand is enough to justify that much debt. Though I just did a quick look up, it might, to be honest. Though I recall one study I read in high school, the initial boost is washed out after a couple of years. I need to put more time to figure that.

Speaking of Urban public schools, I wonder a little bit of Umass Boston. I think it have alot of potential. I don't understand at all why the flagship school is all the way out to the western end of the state surrounded by wood and farmland. I hope one day UMass Boston can catch up with Amherst and overtake it.
 
Re: New BU Tower

In my experience people with ivy league degrees think the expense is justified, people without think it isn't. It seems that would make everyone happy, but for whatever reason non-ivy grads really like to discuss it much more than the others.......
 
Normally I'd cut this whole discussion out and make it's own thread but since this tower is complete I figure we just leave it here and make the thread scope broader (hence the new name).
 
In good news: The Frenetti's crappy sandwich place has been replaced by a chain-style Taqueria and Mexican takeout place. They specializes in tortas. I had one and it was pretty darn good.
 
Re: New BU Tower

ant8904 said:
I'm not too sure if even Ivy league namebrand is enough to justify that much debt. Though I just did a quick look up, it might, to be honest. Though I recall one study I read in high school, the initial boost is washed out after a couple of years. I need to put more time to figure that.

Speaking of Urban public schools, I wonder a little bit of Umass Boston. I think it have alot of potential. I don't understand at all why the flagship school is all the way out to the western end of the state surrounded by wood and farmland. I hope one day UMass Boston can catch up with Amherst and overtake it.
Click to expand...

Another thing working against UMass Boston is that, unlike Northeastern, BU, and Suffolk, it's in a part of Boston that most people decidedly do NOT want to be in.
 
Many states' flagship public universities are away from major cities. In New York, the best SUNY campuses are in Binghampton and Buffalo, not NYC. Penn State is in State College rather than Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. UMichigan is in Ann Arbor, not Detroit. UWisconsin-Madison is not in Milwaukee.

I think this resulted, in part, from the fact that some of these schools were established as land-grant colleges before the major cities in their states became established. Some may have been deliberately detached from major urban centers in the English tradition of Oxford and Cambridge, because the city can prove a distraction from study and diffuses community (and these schools may have wanted to mimic private universities' privileging of community, rather than being perceived as mere diploma mills). Finally, when schools like SUNY and UMass were established, there may have been the perception that cities were on the outs - becoming dangerous, hollowed-out places. That might explain both the flagship's location in Amherst and the isolated, fortress-like state of UMass-Boston.
 
Back to BU development: I've recently spoken with a campaign official at the BU Law School. The trustees are set to announce (within the year) a billion dollar fundraising effort to renovation/expand the Law School (large, private donations have already occurred).

It looks like they have abandoned previous plans to move the Law School to the current site of the BU Academy in favor of renovating Sert's Law tower, as well as expanding with an "L-shaped building" in the area between the tower and Mugar Library.
 
Hmm..I hope they somehow stick with a brutalist theme for that space. Shoehorning a precast and glass box between the Library and Law School would look really, really awkward.
 
bdurden said:
Back to BU development: I've recently spoken with a campaign official at the BU Law School. The trustees are set to announce (within the year) a billion dollar fundraising effort to renovation/expand the Law School (large, private donations have already occurred).

It looks like they have abandoned previous plans to move the Law School to the current site of the BU Academy in favor of renovating Sert's Law tower, as well as expanding with an "L-shaped building" in the area between the tower and Mugar Library.
Click to expand...

BU has no idea what theyre doing.

I spoke with one of the general deans last semester (a few months after the daily free rpess briefly mentioned a law school expansion) and he told me any expansion had probably been canceled.

The plan seems to involve turning some of the little green space on campus into another building, so Im not surprised the administration doesnt want to tell anybody about it.
 
bleh, I hate that law tower. Awful looking tower that ruins the skyline. Hate how you can look at Marsh Chapel and the two adjacent building looking so nice with its ornaments and symmetry and then look a little to the left (or on the other side of the river, to the right), the view is ruined.

I hope renovation means changing the architecture style of the tower that fits better with the CAS building and Marsh Chapel. Ideally, add a second tower to make it make symmetrical too. Probably replacing the School of Social Work building as taking the BU beach does not sound enticing. I'm not too sure the space follow that brutalist theme that much. The library/GSU take alot more time to notice that it follows the same architecture as the tower.

Anyone knows about the proposals for a new Computer Science Building. I know people were talking about it, but where's that on the queue?
 
ant8904 said:
bleh, I hate that law tower. Awful looking tower that ruins the skyline. Hate how you can look at Marsh Chapel and the two adjacent building looking so nice with its ornaments and symmetry and then look a little to the left (or on the other side of the river, to the right), the view is ruined.

I hope renovation means changing the architecture style of the tower that fits better with the CAS building and Marsh Chapel. Ideally, add a second tower to make it make symmetrical too. Probably replacing the School of Social Work building as taking the BU beach does not sound enticing. I'm not too sure the space follow that brutalist theme that much. The library/GSU take alot more time to notice that it follows the same architecture as the tower.

Anyone knows about the proposals for a new Computer Science Building. I know people were talking about it, but where's that on the queue?
Click to expand...

I don't think they'd be paving over greenspace for an expansion -- the area between the library and law tower needs to be redeveloped regardless. A smaller, enclosed space with tables/chairs/benches would work much better than the cement area that is currently there.

To lose the Law tower design would be a travesty. Leave it just how it is and renovate the interior. Actually, the brutalist buildings on campus, the library, law tower, and student union are a highpoint of the BU campus. The interiors all need renovating (aside from the student union) but the exteriors are just fine.
 
I've come around on City Hall, the State Services Center and even, to a lesser extent, the JFK building, but the BU Law Tower is still a challenge. :(
 
The Law Tower is awesome, it's the kind of tower in a truly forward-looking city and also is interesting to look at. Brutalism is most effective in its vertical form, it doesn't hide at all what it is and is pure functional and "confident" of itself. Plus, it's has more to the eye than a modern tower, the window designs are especially interesting.
 
Another thing working against UMass Boston is that, unlike Northeastern, BU, and Suffolk, it's in a part of Boston that most people decidedly do NOT want to be in
Click to expand...

UMass-Boston's setting is beautiful, surrounded by water on three sides. But it's non-residential, so even if you like the area, you won't be spending much time there. It's a bit remote from Boston's most urban areas, but then again so are Tufts and BC and Brandeis.
 
Back off topic. When I was there, NEU was hiring non-permanent professors as a way to keep costs down. I had friends at Middlesex Community College that had the same professors as I did, teaching the same classes. For most undergrad degrees, I?d say that state school is perfectly fine.
As far as student body, I believe NEU had something like 30-40% international students in the late 90?s/ early 2000s. Thought BU was the same? I actually heard that this year BU accepted nearly 80% international students (just hearsay) b/c they couldn?t (or didn?t want to) offer the same level of financial aid. If this is true, at some point the justification for universities not paying taxes becomes less justifiable.
If we're talking bang for your buck, before I attended NEU I told my father "Look, this school is gonna cost as much as a Dunkin? Donuts.? $100k at the time. ?By the time my 5 years is up I'll have paid you back the $ and I'll be buying my 2nd and 3rd place." Now you can't even buy a D&D's in MA unless you already own one, and everyone is telling me that I should get my MBA. Good $ after bad?
 
I don't see how the Law tower is awesome. Perhaps if it standing by itself and cleaned up a bit, maybe. Currently, it RUINS the majestic architecture of Mash Chapel and the two adjacent buildings. It always looks so pretty, but look to the left, and it just kills it. And somehow, despite the GSU-library is the same architecture, it is not that noticeable.


BTW, the library got a recent first/second floor renovation. However, to the dismay of the students and faculty for what it cost us.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top