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Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the in-the-wake-of-disaster dept.

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?"

5 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Switch majors? by castoridae · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Faking it. by syntax · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Admission Letter in Hand... by wev162 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

  4. Irony: Tulane Eliminating Civil Engineering by Nova+Express · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I understand the need of a university to cut programs to balance their budget, but am I the only one that sees rather bitter irony in eliminating the Civil Engineering department in the wake of the Katrina levee collapse? Don't you think you'd maybe want to expand it, and maybe focus on levee construction, hyrodlogy, and related topics so that such a disaster doesn't happen again? I know there are other schools who cover it, but don't you think there will be a fair number of young, native New Orleaneans (?) who lived through the flood, and want to major in civil engineering to ensure something like that never happens again?


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    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

  5. Re:How about . . . by adrianmonk · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You talk to your student advisors? That's what you pay your tuition for.

    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.