Big Company on Campus

Daniel Dvorkin writes "MSNBC (oh, the irony) is running a scary article entitled Microsoft's big role on campus, detailing how Microsoft is working its way into academic computer science through a combination of bribery and propaganda. The aricle may be overstating the case, but it does make it sound as though MS products are displacing others at a disturbing rate in computer science departments. Given that academic computing has traditionally been both the source of and the stronghold for innovative software, this is a disturbing long-term trend."

Comments

At UW

[scotiab]

In Canada at my university (University of Waterloo, Canada's MIT for those ignorant), Microsoft generously offered to buy the University 4 new computer labs for SE and CS students. Only for a small price, the curriculem must teach C# and the new .NET framework. Thankfully the university did not sell their soul to the devil.

Re:Business should not be allowed...

[DarenN]

this is the potential future of computer science in the United States

My aren't WE large headed!! This does not just happen across the pond there, it happens in Europe too. In fact, MS has offered academic institution(s) here in Ireland _really_ cheap setups in the past, and there were 2 reasons.

o To lock them in (obviously)
o To test out NT in a large network enviornment

And boy was NT tested (some of the curses thrown at it were impressive. It caused an awful lot of hassle, never mind that the default setup allowed students to format the harddrive)

Now, the Computer Systems degree I'm doing in the University of Limerick, Ireland use a mix of Red Hat and Windows, and I believe that the Computer and Electrical Engineers use the same mix, but aside from that, the rest of the college use Win2k workstations with Active Directory and Exchange Server, which was a direct upgrade from the previous infrastructure... so I guess the lock-in worked

Very Disappointing

[kmsigel]

I was an MIT CS student from 1988-1993 (BS and MS). Part of what made MIT great was that Microsoft's crap wasn't used. MIT has always had a strong "home grown" culture. The software we used was largely developed at MIT, much of it written (at least partly) by other students. You saw, by example, that you could create the tools you need and you don't need to rely on some company's bug filled code to get the job done.

It is sad to think that MIT CS has become (or could become) a showcase for Microsoft tools.

Re:Huh?

[Lyran]

At University of Maryland University College (Europe), first non-Windows disappeared - Linux was removed from all campus lab machines - claimed it was a "security risk". Next most non-Microsoft software was removed from the lab. The IT director knows M$ and nothing else.

I teach computer science. No longer can I teach with Borland (or gcc) and Linux. Everything is pretty much Microsoft-only. Everything must be VS 6 (and .not). I have been reprimanded because I point out to my students flaws in M$ Windows. Want to take on-line courses - forget about it - Mozilla is barely supported and others are not.

I guess University of Maryland is really University of Microsoft.