IANAL, but one could assume that a similar policy to the copyright of a thesis or dissertation would apply here, which is to say that the students retained copyright (if they did not create the work "for hire" under a grant), but the University keeps a non-exclusive license to republish for pedagogical, scholarly, or administrative reasons. Arguably a open source dump like this definitely fits scholarly if not pedagogical uses.
But it's an interesting gray area certainly, as Zork was probably not "properly" prepared as a thesis/dissertation including MIT's recommended explicit statement granting the above non-exclusive license: "The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part." [1]
But it's an interesting gray area certainly, as Zork was probably not "properly" prepared as a thesis/dissertation including MIT's recommended explicit statement granting the above non-exclusive license: "The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part." [1]
[1] https://oge.mit.edu/gpp/degrees/thesis/copyright/