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?"

Comments

huh?

[GigsVT]

Why would you want to stay an extra year without a degree? If you want to take non-required classes, just take them after you get the degree.

Re:huh?

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Well, every you should get your boss a new bottle of ketchup every 2500 miles just to be on the safe side.

How about . . .

[Seumas]

You talk to your student advisors? That's what you pay your tuition for. How the hell would a bunch of random people on Slashdot know what you should do in some strange particular circumstances that we couldn't possibly know the details of since we aren't on the staff for your school?

Re:How about . . .

[tjr]

Don't be silly. Random people on Slashdot know everything.

Re:How about . . .

[Seumas]

Well, they're at his school and they're going to have a much better clue about what the school is offering and how he can use those services than a bunch of random slashdotters who don't know a thing about his school (and many who have either never been or haven't been to college in eons).

If this was a more general question that didn't hinge on cuts at his school, that'd be different.

Re:How about . . .

[NOLAChief]

because some of us who post to slashdot actually are alumni. And because it should be news for nerds when some of their fellow nerds are getting screwed. I graduated from Tulane in 2004 with a degree in mechanical engineering, one of the programs that is due to be cut.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I heard about this today and I am furious. How does eliminating a quality engineering school strengthen the university? How does it strengthen the community? New Orleans is trying to rebuild. I know, my house in Metairie (jefferson parish, next door) got flooded. Life sucks, but ultimately we will rebuild. And guess what? engineers will be needed to rebuild the city and make it a better place in the long term. who better than engineers with a personal investment in the area? seriously, i have to wonder, with cowen making foolhardy decisions like this for the university he's paid to run, what business does he have running the mayor's rebuilding commission?

Switching gears, as an alumnus, what does this say about my degree? does this mean it's worthless? if so, i want a refund, mr. cowen. every single penny i've given to the university. every single bit of blood, sweat, and tears i gave to earn my degree and try to make the university and the community a better place for it. every year you complain that alumni donation rates are down. it adversely affects your precious us news and world report rankings. want to know why we alumni aren't giving the university a dime? because of shit like this. i'm tired of being alienated at every turn.

As for the submitter, being eligible to graduate in 2007 makes you, what? A sophomore? You still have time. Run. the good faculty will be jumping ship and if you think the tightwad financial twits will give any money for design projects to a doomed program, think again. Half the time it was like pulling teeth even before the storm. and do what I'm going to do. tell everyone you know thinking about attending tulane not to bother, regardless of major. You can't be world class without students, and you can't be world class without the support of the alumni.

sorry about the rant. had to vent

Re:How about . . .

[Fausthero]

I totally agree with Chief here. The New Orleans community will be needing all the help they can get when it comes to tackling the great engineering problem that is New Orleans. It makes no sense that they should cut the engineering department when a majority of the other departments, lets say the French, or mythology department doesnt get cut. This is bullshit. So of course Tulane takes the easy way out and axes the program while emphasizing its liberal arts (read drop out alcoholics here) program. And in classic new orleans fashion, Tulane is rebuilding itself not as a new bastion of intellectual research but as the party school it has been trying to shake image of for 15 years... I will be returning to Tulane to get my Biomedical eng. bachelors and masters degree , hopefully by next december. However, I just heard word, that Tulane is laying off 250 faculty members to deal with their project $200 million dollar recovery expenses. That must be why I haven't seen spring course offerings from some of my known professors. I also wonder, how they can get rid of engineering, especially because we bring in a lot of research and get funded through other means such as the NIH, etc. So frustrated

Re:How about . . .

[drgonzo59]

Real CS nerds would come up with an O(nlogn) algorithm to decide what to do given all the circumstances (input - n, is the number of circumstances, output is 1 or 0 - to change major or not to change major).

Re:How about . . .

[adrianmonk]

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.

Switch majors?

[castoridae]

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.

How did this get posted?

[mainsail]

Now Slashdot is an academic advising website?

Re:How did this get posted?

[TubeSteak]

Now Slashdot is an academic advising website?

Since the only thing most advisors do is apply their experience to your situation, yes.

Maybe a roomful of academic advisors can match the cross section of experiences you'll get from a front page slashdot post.

He's not just asking "what should I do with the next few years of classes," he's also asking "how is this going to affect my life"

greatly reduced?

[fireduck]

according to this chart, the only engineering remaining is chemical and biomedical. everything else (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Engineering) gets cut. That's an extremely dramatic cut.

My suggestion is to leave ship. Sure you could stick it out, but with the program being eliminated, there's little incentive for faculty to stay (they'll all be looking for jobs elsewhere), and less incentive for the school to spend money on student support (computers, etc.). End result is that you'll likely have a lot of classes taught by part-time folks who are being recruited at the last minute when every untenured junior faculty doesn't show up for spring semester (because they've also abandoning ship).

Site Summary

[XanC]

There's a lot of useless information to wade through to get the good data, so I'll summarize what happened. (As an alum in one of the cut programs, I've read through it all.)

~100 faculty laid off from the Medical School downtown. ~50 faculty laid off from the main uptown campus, nearly all from Engineering. Cut programs: Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, and Computer Science. Remaining: Biomedical (which was, in fact, our strongest), and Chemical.

Also, previously there were the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering. Now it's going to the the School of Liberal Arts, and the School of Science and Engineering.

Leaves me wondering where exactly I stand, having a recent degree in a program that no longer exists. I'm more worried about the kids who were planning to go back next semester in one of these programs, and only find out today that it doesn't exist!

Faking it.

[syntax]

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.

Re:Faking it.

[NOLAChief]

you know, I hope they are. can never quite tell what's a moneymaking scheme and what's not with cowen. he's known for floating crap likely to be unpopular around the holidays and after finals when no one's looking. if he is faking it, it's a lot of ill will to kindle, though, and could backfire. i as an alum (ME '04) am furious and feeling alienated. like hell am i going to contribute any money to the tulane general fund. At least not until cowen is run out of town on a rail. were i a faculty member, i'd be polishing my resume anyway, not wanting to put up with this shit forever. and what does this say to the students? that you're not valued? apparently so.

Leave

[alienw]

Get the hell out of there as soon as you can. If they are cutting the program, the professors will be more worried about finding a new position than actually teaching. There aren't enough openings out there for a whole engineering department that is about to get cut.

Uhh....

[Karl Cocknozzle]

Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School

...Reduce it to what, rubble? Smithereens? A small puddle of goo?

Re:Uhh....

[Guppy06]

I think Hurricane Katrina already did that.

Re:Too many engineers

[Necromancyr]

Actually, Tulane is cutting a ton of programs because of the hurricane and the fact that they spent nearly all of their reserves repairing to be able to open next year.

Admission Letter in Hand...

[wev162]

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...

Irony: Tulane Eliminating Civil Engineering

[Nova Express]

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?