Student Mac ownership at Cornell more than tripled over 5 years
It may have slipped past last month, but Daring Fireball reminded us of September's TidBITS article about the student computing profile at Cornell University. Since 1999, Cornell has required students to report their OS when signing up for Ethernet connectivity in campus housing; prior to '99 the reporting was voluntary. Back in the early 1990s, Mac-using students made up more than a third of the self-announced connected population, but by 2000, after the start of mandatory registration, that number had dropped to only five percent of the base.
Times, as they say, have changed. 2007 stats show that 21 percent of the attached student computers are running Mac OS X, a dramatic increase over the past few years. This isn't necessarily a surprise, but it's still nice to see. It also aligns with reports noted by MacRumors yesterday which show dramatic share gains for the platform at other schools, including Princeton (60 percent of on-campus sales this year are Macs), UVA (home of the "BigMac" massively parallel XServe installation oops, that's Virginia Tech, not UVA!) and manymore. I guess the old adage is true: when you've got them by the iPods, their hearts and minds will follow.
