MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee Ballot - Candidate Profiles

MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee Ballot - Candidate Profiles

Steven Carhart '70 is running for one of three open seats on the MIT Alumni Association Selection Committee. I applaud his manifesto, which compares the present moment to his years as an undergraduate in the turbulent late 1960s. (Emphasis added.)

"Today I believe we are facing challenges of comparable depth. They seem to come from the hubristic premise (hardly unique to MIT) that educational institutions can solve large social problems, protect students from confronting difficult emotional or substantive challenges, and simultaneously maintain educational quality. The means to achieve these goals seems to be an ever-growing number of administrative offices. However lofty their intentions, they seem to have produced greater internal conflict over social issues, a distracted and burdened faculty, and the highest administrative cost per student of any Ivy Plus university.

"If elected to the AASC, I will seek to nominate candidates who will proactively urge the Institute to renew its focus on providing the world with rigorously trained STEM graduates, attracted from all communities of talent regardless of means, and taught by the best faculty and most innovative researchers."