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

Business should not be allowed...

[mao che minh]

..to intrude heavily into an academic environment. I understand that it would silly not to allow some influencing, and let companies spread around a little bit of free "hits", but academic officials should take it upon themselves to prevent any given company the ability to guide the education and goals of their students. This isn't a free iMac in a classroom or two, this is the potential future of computer science in the United States being misdirected by a party that is guilty of monopoly practices, and practices the closed source model (obvioulsy not as healthy to development and learning as is Open SOurce).

It is unethical on so many levels.

Re:wow

[hazem]

In many schools, profs are expected to get donations and research grants - I think the normal rate is 3x their salary. Oh, and they're supposed to publish frequently (publish or perish). And, I suppose if they have time after all that, they might get around to teaching.

A nice $150,000 donation pretty much takes care of a year's grant/donation hunting. I'll bet MS would even though in a new t-shirt for the ride home.

Re:Huh?

[phurley]

I don't disagree - but I have some followups:

1. Many of the people doing open source work started (and continue) because of their exposure to open source, GNU, etc. Which will be limited if the initial exposure is completely proprietary.
   
   
2. None CS students will be exposed only to MS solutions and when they enter the business world (as our wonderful managers) they will request/require solutions based upon what they already know.
   
   
3. Many venues of higher education are not much more than glorified business schools and their graduates are not getting a good foundation in concepts, but rather are becoming trades(wo)men. And they will be pounding with the only hammer they know.
   

Microsoft is well aware that controlling education (especially higher eduation) will give the a huge leg up in the future. I'm not sure that if I were in charge of a CS dept. and was offered a large grant even knowing all this I would turn it down, but there is a downside.

In a perfect world

[mao che minh]

your post would be sensible and correct. However, we live in a capatilist world. If Microsoft is allowed to influence budding young minds to use their products, develop for their products, and learn their proprietary languages, then they will succeed at the expense of their competitors (and education in general).

Dictators do similar things to the minds of the youth.

Re:Huh?

[jared_hanson]

You make a good point, and there are days that I agree with you. However, I often think that perhaps the reason Linux code tends to be more reliable that Windows code is that you weed out all the coders dependent on the graphical IDE.

I've done countless things in Visual Studio where I had no idea all the compiler switches that were being used. In some cases, this created some problems.

In Linux however, I am forced to read all about the switches to get things done. When I need to do something, I read the man page to find the switch I need. I also tend to read about at least 5 other switches in the process. I know what's going on when I compile with gcc, but I'm not real sure about Visual Studio.

Ethics are ethics

[IthnkImParanoid]

Accepting a "donation" in exchange for using Windows is a conflict of interest. The job of the faculty and administration is to choose the best educational tools. You are right that good progamming principles are platform/OS independent, but that does not preclude the possibility that one platform/OS facilitates education better than others. I am not making the case that Windows is an inferior tool here, as it would likely be a long and controversial argument; however, I will say that accepting money in this way prevents the school from deciding which is the best choice.

Re:Huh?

[Qzukk]

Computer Science isnt "how to use your computer". The concepts and techniques you learn are beyond any operating system.

Right. So Mr. Windows-Schooled sits down at his brand new job at Unixwerks, and goes to open up Visual C++, and... err... well... opens up pico and flounders around looking for the button to press to bring up the dialog editor.

Or more likely, he'll have skipped Unixwerks in the phone book and fired his resume straight off to WindowsRUs.

Personally, I don't care. If microsoft wants to flood the already saturated job market with even more Windows-Only people, it makes it easier for me to sell my Unix programming skills, at least until the Windows-Only people are so numerous that there are no more Unix jobs, everyone's switched to windows shops to take advantage of the dime-a-dozen nature of the programmers.

Scary Statistics

[brandido]

I think the scariest statistic from the article is:

Microsoft's total research and development budget -- $4.7 billion in 2003, $4.3 billion in 2002 and $4.4 billion in 2001 -- is estimated to be more than all the rest of the software industry spends together. Each year, Microsoft gives away about $100 million of that to universities.

In comparison, according to the National Science Foundation, computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was less than $1 billion.

Basically, 10 percent of all computer science department expenditures at all universities and colleges from all sources for 2001 was funded by Microsoft. This is corporate sponsorship, and, presumably, influence on a major scale that is shocking. I don't see how this could be over-stated enough.