It is helpful when you are hungry and filled with snacks or healthy organic food all over the 35 floors of the new IE Tower. Today’s gossip is about the vending machines at IE, which eat students’ money. Isn´t that funny, paying 20k a year and being robbed at the same time? Thanks to my survey, we have credible data to present how IE’s new place of innovation is stealing money from their own students. I have been asking students from different years and courses as well as teachers, my findings are shocking.
Vending machines date back to the 18th century and give consumers the ability to quickly purchase food or other products. In our case, the consumers are everyone at IE University. As we experienced it our whole life, feeding vending machines with money means getting something back for your money. At IE, it is mostly food that tends to be attractive to hard-working students who want to change the world. But unfortunately, the dream of studying and getting snacks has not come true. In return for the money you give to the machines, you get nothing. No food, no snacks, no happiness, and no improvement in our concentration. How is this place of innovation working again?
In a nutshell, my survey will be an anonymous intake of 40 students and teachers going to IE university. Looking at my first question about this disaster, was: “While using the vending machines at IE Tower, have you ever lost money?” The calculations show that over 65% said yes. I can imagine how many students that would be if I would ask all 6000 of them. Next question was, “How much have you lost already?” Around 38% lost between 0-5 euros and nearly 30% lost between 5-10 euros or even more than 10 euros. Metro cards could have been paid which would have covered 4 weeks of going to university by public transport. Michael T.e, a first-year Business student, once lost nearly 20 euros. Projecting my survey on all 6000 students means around 3900 of them would have lost money. To put it in another perspective, and taking into account the average money loss (7 euros), this could mean that nearly 28000 euros have been stolen, or better put, eaten by the vending machines. We could pay for 2 years of education at IE University with this amount, or as well just buy a car. Coming to my last question in my survey, which was, “Do you think it is worth complaining about the vending machines ?” the answer of 80% was “Yes.” This is a very clear demonstration of the importance of this subject and the nightmare we are all going through at our tower of high standard education.
Now, this article is begging for a bit of support on something less complicated than technology. The bright side of the problem is that vending machines that eat our money are not something impossible to be solved. Time and effort should be invested to repair and check up on the vending machines. IT support is on each floor of the tower to help out teachers and students. Vending machines have existed for over 200 years, which is a perfect reason that it should not cause that big of a problem to a top international university. To sum up, we can say that we are starting a new chapter of education this year, as students of IE university have been given a massive opportunity to study at the first vertical campus in Europe. I think I can speak for everyone in saying that the chance we have been provided by our family and anyone who supported us in going here deserves all our gratefulness. Being given such an extraordinary chance of education and being guided into a bright future has to be thanked every day. But knowing the value of money, the investigation about today’s topic remains in my head, as well as the minds of 80% of the people who joined my survey. Thursday the 21st of October 2021, the King of Spain visited our campus. We were given the honor to open our doors officially to the world and a royal representative of our country. It was followed on TV and by many spectators. Important political figures and people of honor visited the campus, such as classrooms and sports courts. To finish, we are all lucky our dear royal visit, the King of Spain, was not in the mood for a snack.
By: Estella Gröner
