Slashdot Mirror
Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School
baldbobbo writes "According to University President Scott Cowen of Tulane University, the School of Engineering will be greatly reduced. I have to wonder, as a student who can graduate in May 2007 (the deadline for those students to still receive a degree in any of the cut majors) with a Computer Science degree, but wants to stay an extra year, should I transfer to another university, graduate on time, or switch majors?"
Why say in a program that's going to be cut? The reputation (past and future) of your degree reflect on you. It would be advantageous to matriculate into a program that's going to remain strong for the foreseeable future.
It would seem that you're not committed to Computer Science, since you're willing to switch majors. That said, if Tulane is cutting that program, it seems they don't consider it to be an area "where it has attained, or has the potential to achieve, world-class excellence." Assuming you don't have a strong preference as to your major, why not pick something that Tulane does consider world-class?
If you have an engineering bent, I would think that civil engineers are going to be in hot demand there for quite some time. Seriously.
When's the last time you talked to a student advisor? I just graduated, and the advisors were my worst source of advice.
As a Tulane CS grad -- I think they're faking it. Tulane's CS program at least has always suckled at the teet of Netscape and Yahoo due to former students, like David Filo, being at the helm. This seems like yet another scheme to just pull money -- which honestly, they could use at this point -- out of their corporate sponsors.
Why is this inevitable? We have the best post-secondary eduction. The most resources to throw at engineering projects. The biggest market for those projects. IMHO, also the most creative and solidly reliable engineers.
Sure other countries (China, India) have *more* engineers. But I firmly believe that quality beats quantity. And as those engineers get better, well, they're going to come to the U.S. for a competitive salary. And then, guess what - they are on "our team."
Back when I was doing failure analysis of power station parts my job was made very easy by a list of easily avoidable mishaps that had happened in US power stations. I could look at almost any problem that came up and then find a well documented US example where it was ignored until it caused a complete shutdown of a plant - even problems that are trivial to fix in the early stages and easily identified YEARS before the become a serious problem. Homer Simpson may not be able to spot problems, but he's cheaper in the short term.
Wow, this must be a fairly recent decision. I received an admission letter for the undergrad EE program less than a month ago. Guess this solves my dilemma over whether to attend Tulane or not post Katrina...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
... to turn out "thinkers", philosphers, artists... broader education for an unspecific, service-oriented job futures.
Apparently some see that there will be markets for them, since the hard sciences are doing better elsewhere...
One of the Ph.D.s that wrote a well-read recommended book on software engineering is teaching intro philosophy classes; partly because it is his ball of wax, but partly he has to since the drastic drop in SE classes.
That doesn't mean they're anything other than completely worthless.
I went to school at the University of Texas, and I dropped out and then came back 7 years later after working in the computer industry for the whole time. During the intervening time, they had changed the number of the intro computer science class (CS was my major) from CS304P to CS307, and they changed the language from Pascal to Scheme or Haskell (depending on the section). Even though I had originally tested out of the original intro class and the class after that and had gone on to take several other CS classes and do well in them before dropping out, the advisor that I talked to in the CS department still insisted that I needed to take the new intro class.
I explained that I was quite confident I could handle picking up where I left off in the program instead of starting at the beginning. She countered that if I didn't take the intro class, I would "miss out on important concepts like recursion". I assured her that I was well-acquainted with recursion already, etc., etc., but she wouldn't budge.
Luckily, rather than giving in to the urge to set her straight using a very loud and unfriendly tone of voice, I retained my composure, and we worked out a plan where I would register for the intro class, then on the first day consult the professor and let him make a determination whether the class was necessary for me or not. If the professor decided I didn't need the intro class, then I would take an additional upper-division CS elective as a substitute. (And, this isn't the point of the story, but on the first day, they agreed, and I switched to the appropriate class. Then I took the Compilers class as one of my upper-division electives, which was tough but an excellent experience.)
Anyway, the point is this: had I been younger and more naive or for other reasons believed that the advisor knew what they are talking about, I probably would have wasted a semester taking that class and put myself a semester behind. That would've cost me a great deal of money since I was paying for my own school and living mostly off my savings, and it would've served no purpose at all.
So, my advice to most any college student is that you should never assume that a department advisor knows what they're talking about or has even made an effort to understand what your situation is or determine what is best for you. They do often have insight or knowledge into what the rules are and how the department works, and you should take advantage of that information. Sometimes they also have good advice based on experience. (Like "never take class X and class Y in the same semester" or something of that nature.) But don't ever assume that what they say is automatically the best course of action for you.
i am a current tulane student and while it would be great to be able to talk to an advisor, in my experience our advisors just plain suck. in fact, my advisor decided to up and quit and never tell anyone, so when i emailed him a question regarding the classes that are equivalent to the ones i took at smu i got a response that was more or less: "sorry, i dont work for tulane anymore, i'm sure someone else will help you". did someone else help me? no. so really his best bet is an outside-ish source for help.
well... you probably gotta go there at least for next semmester. My sister graduated from Tulane and my Brother goes (sort of) there now. He's transfered to Claremont McKenna College for the semmester but they won't let him stay another semmester since it's such a small school. No other colleges are taking any transfer requests from Tulane students until next year so his options are take a semmester off and figure out something to do later OR go back to New Orleans and LIVE ON A CRUISE SHIP for the semmester. That's not as fun as it sounds. His room would be about 5 X 5 and he'd have to take a shuttle to school everyday. How bogus is it that his choice is to live in on a cruise ship for a semmester in a town thats virtually deserted or live at home (WITH ME! (i'm only 15 - 16 in 5 days)) for half a year while all his friends are back at college. Most of the kids that went to Tulane and transferred to new schools are allowed to stay there for next semmester because they're big schools and they don't care any better. I know this doesnt have anything to do with anything, but if my brother lives at home for a semmester he'll do stuff like take our car everywhere (I was supposed to get it when he went back to college) and eat all my hot-pockets. I'M ANGRY - I WANT MY HOT POCKETS FOR ME! NOT FOR HIM.