The recent report on computer-controlled video discs for teaching physics ("Entrepreneur-Educators Offer Physics Students High-Tech Text," The Scientist, June 11, 1990, page 10) describes a combination of innovation and marketing skills that should make us all optimistic about revitalization of education in science and engineering. We at Polytechnic University are proud that one of our former colleagues, Ephraim Rubin, is leading the charge.
However, your readers should not be misled by his comment that the Polytechnic Institute of New York "was going bankrupt" in 1970. Those were hard times for private engineering and science universities, but Brooklyn Poly weathered the storm and has good reasons for its own optimism. Construction has begun on a building at the Brooklyn campus to house the Dibner Library and the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications, and on a new dormitory at the Farmingdale, Long Island, campus. The university's programs...