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Western Washington Univ. Considers Cutting Computer Science
An anonymous reader writes "Due to Washington State budget concerns, Western Washington University is considering cutting their Computer Science Department. The news comes even as local stations report a hiring boom in the tech sector. The WWU administration seems completely out of touch with the current state of the department. This story has gotten a lot of attention and support from local industry and the University of Washington professors."
I am honestly not a troll here, but most of the big companies prefer Indian workers who can work for much cheaper and can't leave for better working conditions as easily. Many fortune 500 companies only have 6 or 7 employees that even deal with I.T. as they switch to salesforce.com and outsourcers and leave it very lean and barebones to satisfy Wall Street investors.
This is similiar to obtaining technical certifications for factory jobs. Americans simply do not do them anymore in a global economy.
If the university notices that students who graduate with these degrees do not find work compared to other majors then it makes sense to encourage these students to major in more profitable areas.
http://saveie6.com/
In Modern America, there just isn't any place for science, mathematics, engineering, and anything else that's remotely technical.
In Modern America, it's important to know about sports and Christianity. That is all that one needs to know.
In Modern America, why is anyone surprised when universities start cutting technical programs? That's just not what American culture is about today.
we do need a source of cheap labor.
We're running out of money in WA. Nobody wants to pay income tax. You get what you pay for.
Let's face it: 97% of "computer science" graduates end up as code monkeys or cable stringers in jobs that a six-week trade certificate would be entirely sufficient to qualify for.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
WWU isn't in business to educate kids; they're in it to stay in business, and liberal arts majors vastly outnumber technical majors. In trying economic times, the money sinks are going to be the first to go.
As for the utterly irrational economic policies that have resulted in scores of directionless kids heading to college and picking the easier majors, distorting the market for technical degrees and leaving us with bottomless piles of college-educated baristas, well... I don't know where I'm going with any of this.
America: We're getting what we deserve.
You'd have to be out of your mind to consider paying to do a technical degree these days.
Law, medicine, business - but I unfortunately do not see much of a future for engineers in North America.
Sure there is work, but you will cap out well below any other professional degree. CS is just batshit crazy.
I'm writing my MCATs in the fall..
-- BSc. EE, 2000.
A longer story with more info can be found in the WWU student newspaper:
http://westernfrontonline.net/top-stories/13487-westerns-budget-balancing-act-rumors-of-elimination-shake-up-a-trio-of-academic-departments
They say nothing's been decided yet, but at a minimum Computer Science has been singled out as a candidate for elimination or at least "restructuring" (and not in a good way).
is that a lot of people seem to think a university chopping off a specific course means the end of the world. The fact of life is that people in general don't take a course because it's offered, but because that's the course they want to do. If WWU does not offer a course, they'll go elsewhere. It's obvious from my understanding of the situation, that there just are'nt enough takers for WWU's IT course to make it profitable. If that's the case, then WWU is left with only two choices. Either stop offering the course, or make it more desirable for students. Either way, the decision seems to have been made, whatever the details behind the said decision may be. What's the big deal either way? If someone really wants an IT certificate from WWU and only WWU, I see their problem. But if they just want a certificate in IT, they'll go elsewhere. Right?
Geekism is your _only_ God!
The tech industry should be giving us money if they want the program to continue. Lots of money. We purposely started talking about cutting the computer science program because we know the demand for that major is so high, we figure that the easiest extortion opportunities lie there.
We all know that when publicly funded institutions face budget cuts that the first thing they cut is the thing everybody actually wants them to do because then they pony up like good little tax payers and we can continue spending money on all kinds of ridiculous things that don't actually matter to anybody in particular at all. Why are you all so surprised about this?
Seriously, that's exactly what I get out of reading this. "Forging ties with local industry." sounds an awful like to me like "Shake them down for some money.".
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The number of students entering Computer Science majors has fallen by half over 10 years. Some programs will have to be cut for underenrollment... that's just common sense. Maybe not every little backwater university, like Western Washington, should have a CS program???
I am attending Western Washington University as a Computer Science major. Thankfully, this report may be jumping the gun, as there hasn't yet been any confirmation to the future of the department, but it is certainly on the chopping block.
The students and the faculty have no idea what actually is going on. In an attempt to ensure that the students in the department can graduate, professors in our classes have told any premajors (including myself) to declare immediately. We've pushed 70 new applicants this week. The department involved in making the budget cut decisions have not been forthcoming in their intentions, and there is fear that they may be attempting to push this beneath the door, so to speak, so any publicity, especially here on slashdot, is very welcome.
We're speculating that this may be a public relations tactic to try and get some external funding, which the university desperately needs. Unfortunately, our fate is still undecided at this point, and I'm awaiting news just as earnestly as my professors are.
oh but that i could tell the secrets of my prison-house, i could a tale unfold... in other words it isn't just with the computer science department that they're out of touch. tight budgets have bizarre effects given university management that is only thinking in terms of its year end balance sheet.
Washington needs to employ up to 70% more computer science graduates to meet demand. At least in the short term, IT jobs are growing in Washington.
Publicly consented auto-euthanasia. How quaint.
Just a regrettably little extrapolation is necessary to infer that they`re just working their way up to public gas chambers. At the "citizens" expense, of course.
Let me know if MIT or some other big Tech Uni cuts CS, then I'll care.
Hearing about some cost cutting measure in a state college offshoot - not so much. //go bears//
some Computer Science class are a poor fit for it jobs.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/022511-it-graduates.html
We're speculating that this may be a public relations tactic to try and get some external funding
This could be a semi bluff. If graudates from this university would often end up as QA (testers), then it would be very difficult to compete with cheap Indian workers (In the company I work even Indians are being replaced by indians in india). I think in the long term in the US only high quality engineers will survivie and correspondingly only high quality departments will survive.
A far greater problem is the thread from a lack of entrepreneurs and risk-capital for novel high-tech projects.
And Universities, like politicians, see more reward in training IP-lawyers, because the accountants have decided 'content' is the US industry of the future.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I know this article cites only one school's example, but it's the posts from this thread and many others I read on /. that make me wonder if I'm wasting my time and money on getting my degree in Software Engineering. I started school 2 years ago, I'm almost 40, and I have about 6 years to go (I attend part-time as I must also work for a living). I'm learning to write code and I love it. But from what I read here (paired with all the ads demanding 3+ years experience in what seems to be 3-4 different languages for every company) it's a wonder if I'll ever get to use the new knowledge I'm gaining.
My little brother just started at Microsoft fresh out of college (albeit with experience) and the CIO at my company says the doomsayers online (like here) are full of it. So who knows??
the media has been doing this for years: declaring a hiring boom anywhere our rulers want to depress wages. They did it with engineers, they did it with tech, and they're starting in on it with nursing. As has already been pointed out most of the jobs are meant for H1-B visas, and the only reason they're listed is to meet the legal requirement. There's tons of ways around hiring Americans.
Said it before, will not doubt say it again: stop voting Republican, put a majority of Dems in office. At least the Dems have to pretend to be pro-labor. It puts a limit on the crap they can do. The Republican's core philosophy boils down to: screw labor, the free market
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Computer scientists aren't the code-monkeys.
With just an undergraduate degree you are.
You want to do computer sciency stuff? Get a graduate degree in Math or CompSci.
Why are you discussing IT? The Article is about "software developers" not IT workers
Provost@wwu.edu :)
address of the Provost's office. Of course, your thoughtful comments will be handled by one of her staff. Or... maybe more than one
And some math courses are a poor fit for history jobs. Computer science isn't IT.
Western is only 90 miles away from the University of Washington, which has one of the best public Computer Science departments in the country, so any Washington resident smart enough to deserve a subsidized education in CS has a *way* better option just down the road.
I see so many comments here on slashdot to the effect that recent computer science grads are perhaps 10% excellent, 35% trainable, and 55% total morons, yet when someone suggests closing a computer science department you all rush to criticize. I think it's the right thing to close this department, especially if it means making the department at UW a little bigger. Less duplication of resources, fewer incompetents admitted to CS programs in Washington state, and those who go to UW rather than Western will get a much better education.
There's no need for every basic discipline to have a degree granting department at every school, either. What's wrong with downgrading the department at Western to a non-degree granting teaching department, offering a minor and specializing in synergy classes for other sciences?
The university's statement (referenced by the article) is remarkably poorly written, especially given its source. Consider, for example, the first paragraph under the heading 'Academic Programs', which begins thus: "Rebasing does not mean, exclusively, looking at the programs we will have. And, those we will no longer have."
Actually, state spending in Washington has gone up 80% in ten years at the same time population growth and inflation have been less than 40%. We don't have a revenue problem in Washington, we have a spending problem. If the State were spending at the same rate it did ten years ago, allowing for inflation and population gowth, there would be no budget issues. But instead, the legislature and governor went on a spending spree and added state workers by the thousands, added spending programs "for the children" and generally created an unsustainable spending environment. They do the heart-strings schtick and claim they don't want to cut "aid to the increasing number of poor people" when, in fact, aid to poor people is so good here that they move here to take advantage of it.
Now, rather than cut the spending programs, the state is going after things like this and claiming that it is because people "don't want to pay an income tax." Thanks for drinking the Kool Aid there above. It's the Party Line that counts. In fact, Washington ranks 13th in the nation for tax burden per capita, mostly because of a very high sales tax rate and reliance upon. So people stop spending and buying cars and the state revenue goes down. Duh!
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
If anything, we need any existing CS programs to teach TRUE computer science, and not teach programming. Programming can be handled by the community colleges.
Now Western Washington should go further and eliminate the athletics program as well. I seriously doubt there is any need for more football "research", or need to study slam dunks. Anyone who feels a need to play game, that's what intramurals are for. If you weren't good enough to get into a University, your local community college will take you. We need more plumbers and mechanics anyway, and truthfully you probably weren't good enough for the 100 or so new openings in the NFL.
Speaking as somebody who has seen what sort of things can happen in campus politics, I see three reasons for what is going on.
1) The department of CS has become... clogged... with under-performing faculty..
2) The administration is playing a brinkmanship game with those above them.
3) The administration is incompetent.
Now, I've listed these in order of most likely to least likely. The administration could be incompetent, but do you really believe anyone could be that stupid? There may be a lot of liberal arts majors, but those are the money sinks; the smart money on alumni donations is still engineers, doctors, and lawyers. Rather than the administration being stupid, there are other explanations, which are far more likely.
They could be playing a political brinkmanship game. I wouldn't be surprised if the plan to close the CS department is just a threat, and nothing more. It would make sense; in a time of mild to moderate budget crisis, it is not uncommon to threaten to cut something popular in order to garner more money for other things. If the threat was to cancel the history department, would there be a big stink? Absolutely not (unless there are a bunch of history buffs in the state senate... who knows? Maybe sports psychology, or sociology, or some other useles.... I meant, less practical... major).
It is very unfortunate, but I think that the most likely reason for this is that the faculty in the CS department are not up to snuff. It could well be that they are, collectively, getting older and tireder, and just not putting the effort into teaching that they could be. It could also be that they just weren't that good to begin with. But, what I think may be the case, is that the CS department is populated by... faculty from an older time. Faculty who, when they were hired, it was a rock solid CV if they had a single top-tier publication. When they got tenure, a solid case had 1 top tier publication plus a smattering of lesser accomplishments. WWU's faculty could think a wonderful accomplishment is a single pub a year.
That is to say, WWU could possibly be staffed by professors who would be laughed out of the room if they tried to defend a thesis today. It isn't that they weren't worthy when they were hired; it is just that standards have gone way up. I personally have a better publication record now than Randy Pausch (famous for "The Last Lecture") had when he was made a full prof; I don't even rate an interview at top schools today. WWU may simply be looking at what they have, and then looking at what the supply of desperate fresh grads are, and deciding that the logical thing to do is to wipe the slate clean, keep maybe one or two of the old faculty, but to otherwise start fresh with, talented, sharp, bright-eyed, and coincidentally desperately eager, newly minted faculty. I've seen it happen at much more prestigious institutions.
All this depends upon what level people you're talking about, but ..
An undergrad degree isn't "overqualified" for any vaguely related job. It might be that all MIT C.S. grads who want leadership roles in tech companies get them, but that's not true for the other high level engineering schools, like CalTech, Berkley, and Georgia Tech.
There is even an "abstract thinking gradient" for above average but not necessarily stellar people where you want people trained for some higher level of abstraction than their job actually requires, i.e. mathematicians, physicists, and electrical engineers routinely make solid developers, but computer science majors aren't easily convertible into those disciplines.
There was even a joke at Georgia Tech that CSs ended up in IT while the CompEs and EEs ended up as developers.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I attended WWU and dropped out of the CS department because I was learning more on my own (which is probably true for most insomniacs at most universities). I now work at the most obvious local company, and indeed have heard that we'd like to hire WWU CS grads as QA/test devs to start with before having them transition over to dev.
I don't think 'QA' is really a horrible entry point to the field. There are a number of high-ish profile WWU grads at MSFT. They weren't directly hired as God Emperor.
When your state runs up horrible deficits, higher ed has to make some crazy and horrible choices. Exile Tim Eyman and paid signature gathering and Washington would be a better place.
Sounds to me like the typical institional or departmental response to budget cuts. Rather than look at the budget and make sensible cuts, or restructure overall operations for efficiency, pick something that will create a media firestorm in the hopes that it will cause the powers that be to cancel the budget cuts. I see this all the time in municiple budget discussions. When deparments are asked about the impact of a 5% budget cut, it's never about reducing the usage of expensive consultants, sending less people to the big conference in Cabo, or reforming gold plated pension plans, it's always, "well sure we could cut 5% of the budget, but then we'd have to stop picking up garbage, close the libraries and kick all the war widows out onto the street.
I'll bet the reasoning behind cancelling the CS program has nothing to do with the utilty of the program, or demand for graduates or corporate greed, and everything to do with using the predictale public reaction to such a stupid decision in order to over turn the budget cuts
QA should genenally more tech savvy than their users and in case of microsoft, especially their developer tools division (or sth like that), the users are programmers. So QA at such places sometimes have to be even more than programmers. But in most cases, QA do not look at source code and that makes them much more vulnerable to competition from cheap labor. Do you really need a computer science degree to just use software? Yes there are good testers who can reproduce a random bug even when the programmers are clueless, but QA mostly just run a lot of routine work like setting up machines and verifying the same thing on different platforms. I don't mean to bash QA here. Just poting out that the qualifications generally are much lower AND different.
I graduated in '03 and they just cut the CS program this year. I'm not privy to the reasons for it, but I suspect:
1) the dept was too small to be really good, and it's at a smaller university anyway
2) most of the CS grads didn't go on to be computer scientists, but rather programmers and IT monkeys.
The program's been split into the College of Business for an Information Systems-type degree, and the College of Technology for an Electronics Engineering-type degree.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Western's CS program is one of the ones that grew out of a math base. It's pretty hardcore on the theory, but you're sort of on your own for learning the stuff that business wants. Which is fine.... even if the program focused on exacty whatever buzzwords corps want these days, corps don't generally hire CS grads straight out of school. The stuff you learn in the 400 level classes is great for senior developers to know....but you're not going to start out as one. It wasn't till my 3rd job out of college (which I'm still at) that I actually got to touch source code at work. For long term personal growth, I'm really glad that I had my ass kicked with the theory; I find that the rigorous methods that were drilled into me really help me tackle the hard problems I work on every day. (debugging nasty kernel mode race conditions in code written by others for example). Besides, if you can handle the proofs and algorithm stuff, you can handle anything else, though you'll sure as hell not enjoy writing silly business apps over and over.
You know what the job finding foks at Western tell you about finding a job once you graduate? They tell you to forget about finding anything remotely in your field. The real difficulty in getting hired after college has less to do with your skills and what you're taught and more to do with risk aversion for employers...they don't like hiring green kids who don't understand corporate politics yet. You have to persevere in order to get to do what you love.
Computer science is supposed to be hardcore...unfortunately there is a huge variation in what different universities consider to be computer science, let alone what the business world thinks. For some, any old programming is CS, for others, they focus on software engineering methods, and some hardly touch on theory and math at all; others still consider web page design to be CS. CS is about understanding the extreme limits of what computers and software are capable of and pushing the limits of what's possible....it's not supposed to train you for "IT" (which most businesses consider to be the guys that fix their computers).
You really should not be doing a computer science degree unless you are going to be some kind of developer and you get off on things that require in depth knowledge of how to design and compare the performance of different algorithms, want to fix bugs no one else can, want to write really hardcore software (such as doing speech recognition, computer vision, or 3d rendering) at the bleeding edge, and need to be able to prove why your design is better than someone else's design. The industry is already full of very experienced, very compentent people who don't have CS degrees. In fact, many of them started before such degree programs even existed. They know how to code, but they generally don't have any exposure to the more advanced theory stuff and are therefore not inspired by it, nor do they generally value it. The degree is MUCH more a long term investment for your career than a credential to get your foot in the door, as you'll eventually get to apply the theory and start doing things that wow. After you've taken your lumps that is.
I'm serious. Should a Uni, and yes I am aware of what the root meaning of "university" is, be all things to all people? Or should they be a bit more specialized, e.g. some be more focused on the Liberal Arts, others Science and Research, other on Engineering, and others on Athletics (I was just joking about that last one ;)
Specialization may make a school better at what it does. That does not man a couple of technology courses will not be taught at a Liberal Arts school, or Liberal Arts at a SMET school. I think diversity is important. But I think a more focused mission may make a school better at their mission.
Who agrees or disagrees?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
A degree in CS is not prepping you to be a sys admin. CS is an academic discipline, not a vocation. Also, going to a University is not a vocational move. Universities do not teach you job skills. They disseminate and create knowledge.
If you think students should have the opportunity to learn IT skills, it should not be done in a CS dept at a University. It should be done in a vocational school.
Minnesota State University (the one in Mankato, MN, not the one on the TV show "Coach") is also shutting down their computer science department but keeping a separate department, "Information System/Information Technology" which teaches a lot of the same curriculum but from a practical, hands-on, approach similar in ways to the way many technical colleges teach computer programming, networking design and administration, and so on.
It could be that there isn't that much of a job market for theoretical computer scientists and that there are more than enough four year land grant universities to fill industry needs.
You do realize that you can pay more taxes if you want to,
If you look on the form 1040, the calculation is only the minimum tax you must pay. You can send more money to the IRS if you'd like.
I don't mean to be sarcastic, but every time I hear people say "I don't pay enough in taxes", I wonder what's holding them back.
Clearly, Provost Catherine Riordan is trying to extort the CompSci department to bring in some dough, or else she's going to cut the department.
Seriously - go back & read the "completely out of touch" article (http://www.geekwire.com/2011/western-washington-provost-were-respect-computer-science-department), and it's all there.
The ONLY concrete criticism she's offering of the computer science department is that they're not "engaging the business community and other people to a sufficient degree". She repeatedly mouths some bland chastisements about not really preparing for / "thinking about the future" (whatever that means), she dismisses the department's effort to "updat[e] their curriculum in a major way to better meet the needs of students" (claiming that she's "not an expert" - if that's true then she should be fired & her 6-figure salary given to someone who is willing to take the time to understand the college she's running), and then keeps coming back to whole thing about reaching out to the region's tech community.
What she wants is for the CompSci department to cough up enough money to help her solve her budget problems. What this is is extortion!
Exile Tim Eyman and paid signature gathering and Washington would be a better place.
But then what would talk radio in Seattle talk about?
Oh, yeah, Mayor McBike.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
thats what i call an 'efficient market'.
they love that kind of stuff there.
And UW is right down the road.
Very insightful comments. I wish I hadn't used up my daily allocation of mod points.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Same AC here: As regards "QA" jobs: they've largely replaced STEs at MSFT with SDETs, which means that the QA (SDET) people are now expected to code. Qualifications are probably still much lower and different, but that's not always a bad thing.
As far as I'm aware, finding a "pure" STE job (no coding) at MSFT is difficult these days.
The University of Cincinnati has recently dumped it's Computer Science undergrad program (to balance its budget since Governor John Kasich slashed education funding). The administration says the current students will still be able to graduate, but the program is being reevaluated for accreditation next year. That probably won't go so well if they're in the process of shuttering it.
In the economic budget crunch across the US, every University is being hit. Be it Departments being flat out cut, or requiring prof's to teach 3-4 times as many classes (there goes any research time...) to make up for the hiring freeze despite enrollment increases across the board, higher ed. is on the chopping block. Makes it interesting times if you're about to graduate High School, or trying to finish your undergrad.
But hey! Corporate profits and Executive bonuses are at an all time high. That's what really matters here, doesn't it?
At WSU the university is set to expand an additional 1,000 students in Pullman, WA and and additional 2-4k statewide in the branch campuses. Become a traditional Engineer and pick up a Minor in CS. You'll be better off. Of course, if you want to do heavy research WSU is the state's lead land grant university. Besides, Bellingham is f'n boring, even with beautiful Mt. Baker nearby. It's not nearly as interesting as a place like Port Townsend, or any of the small harbor cities on the Sound, while being just a gateway to Vancouver B.C. when one heads to Burien, WA.
Go Cougs!
Learn Plasma Physics, Mech.Eng, EE, ChemE all very useful in the emerging economies.
Marshall did the same thing years ago.
Kriston
I am a CS major at WWU right now, about to graduate. This cut doesn't directly affect me as I will graduate either way. With that said, none of my CS friends from WWU who have already graduated were unable to find a job paying 60k or more per year within a few months of graduating. The Seattle area has a lot of tech jobs - Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and a lot of start ups. There is a huge demand in the area for programmers, and programmers make a lot of money.
Given that the hire rate for WWU CS graduates and the average salary, these budget cuts make absolutely no sense whatsoever, CS students pay off their education in taxes very quickly - especially compared to other majors.
It's pretty surprising to see all the people on /. who don't seem to care about this, but fortunately for us, there are quite a few companies in WA who are pretty irritated about this and the administration already seems to be backtracking on their plans.
ps: For all of you guys who go on about how companies are just hiring code monkeys out of India - you have no clue.. Maybe some companies do this, companies who are simply supporting their infrastructure. But world class software development companies realize that there is a difference between some random code monkey in India and a computer scientist who is able to come up with interesting products/features and makes an impact on the company other than the code he types. The reason companies like Google/MS/Facebook pay so much for programmers is because they all realize that if you skimp on quality programmers you end up with subpar products.
First of all, most US Citizens do not vote and if they vote they carry the lable "GOP" in their head without realising, "GOP is by the rich for the rich and off the poor". So, companies pay to GOP to allow H1B Visas. Secondly, a large number of students ( I have taught them) do not want to learn, rather want easy grade and declare they are qualified to get jobs. They don't get any job at all because they are functionally illiterates. Code Monkeys from India are not better than any good qualified real CS graduate, but no good one wants to start from the bottom, thus allowed the code monkeys to control the US companies.
Apathy and lack of motivation is most cases have done harm to US.
Most of the things CS teaches have little to no practical use. From what my friends say even the programming classes are too low level to be of much good. Thats one of the reasons I went to Computer Engineering, because a CS diplome is just a piece of paper with no knowledge included.
Here are some statements with supporting compiled statistics.
The purpose of these statements is to demonstrate that the WWU CSci department is a very good department with needs within WA state. It's existence is still well within the stated purpose goals of WWU (something like "high qualtiy education","serve the needs of WA residents").
The WWU CSci department has a quality curriculum and excellent graduates.
+ accredited CSci Bachelors program from Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) . http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx (do a search by State)
+ Among 177 graduates from scores of the ETS® Major Field Test for Computer Science between Winter 2007 and Winter 2011 (inclusive), results were:
++ Mean (average): 166.2
++ Median (middle score): 167
++ Mode (most common score): 170
++ According to http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/MFT/pdf/MFT%20PDFs%202007/ComputerScience4CMF.pdf
+++ The 90th percentile for individuals starts at 173.
56 of 177 students scored 173 or better.
+++ The 95th percentile for individuals starts at 179.
31 of 177 students scored 179 or better.
+++ The 95th percentile for institutions (based on mean score) starts at 164.
+ WWU Collegiate Cyber Defense team took second (a very close second) to UW (who went on to win nationals) at the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
https://www.piersystem.com/go/doc/1538/1053947/WWU-Team-Places-Second-at-4th-Annual-Pacific-Rim-Collegiate-Cyber-Defense-Competition
The WWU CSci department cost is slightly below average for an engineering department at WWU.
+ Among departments within the WWU College of Sciences and Technology, the Computer Science department uses
++ the average amount of State funds (roughly)
++ has the 2nd highest student contributions to it's cost (10%).
From page 93 of WWU OPERATING BUDGET FISCAL YEAR 2011
There is a demonstrable need for Computer Science.
+ Computer science has the highest field related employment and average salary of any degree WWU offers (after lumping education departments together).
From http://www.careers.wwu.edu/surveyapplicationX/statusdefaultXX.asp (concluded by J Anderson)
Thanks to C Reedy, J Bucher, N Fitzgerald, B Costa, JT Moon, J Anderson for statistics,
-J_Tom_Moon_79 '00-'-05
off-topic political point: I am partial to the view that the state should not be involved in education. However, state planning is the reality and I'm not debating that with this post. The fact remains, the WWU CSci department provides a very high quality education for a needed discipline (albeit, paid by WA state residents and businesses that may or may not have any interest in such a program).
What you are interested in is called Software Engineering (which truthfully is just a fancy name for programming). Computer Science is NOT about applied programming, it is about research into new areas. If anything, I commend your university for actually teaching true Computer Science. Don't fault your school because YOU have a poor understanding in the difference between Computer Science and Software Engineering. If you were so keen on becoming a code monkey, you should have gone to a vocational school. It is cheaper & quicker, and you aren't wasting yours and the University's time.
Well, QA at Microsoft are also developers - they write and maintain test automation systems, and specific tests for those systems; it's not clicking through dialogs according to the script or other suchlike routine stuff. And those automated tests and frameworks can get pretty complicated at times, especially when it comes to accurately measuring various perf metrics (and figuring out what to measure in the first place). Personally, I wouldn't look down on that work, having seen some of what they do.
Oh yes, and they get paid accordingly, as well. So it is by no means something to frown upon.
Well, the fact of the matter is that Comp Sci grads do not even end up as code monkeys, they end up flipping burgers right next to the Comp Es and EEs.
The University finally clued in that all they really need to teach them is: Yah want fries wizzat???
Without PHDs, where would all the wonderful advancements like computers with emotions come from? Non-PHDs, or advanced degrees, are limited to working on 'behind the trend' technologies; like making sure nuclear reactors actually work, and that your car doesn't misinterpret a left turn signal as a reason to slam on the brakes and deploy the airbags.
Beyond emotional computers, we have recently seen a raft of high level capabilities attributed to computers that haven't the slightest clue about what they are doing. To paraphrase Parnas, did anyone ask Big Blue if it enjoyed the game?
Like Karaoke, PHDs help by corralling the clueless. Once isolated they avoid harming actual advancement in the industry.
Speaking as somebody who has seen what sort of things can happen in campus politics, I see three reasons for what is going on.
1) The department of CS has become... clogged... with under-performing faculty..
2) The administration is playing a brinkmanship game with those above them.
3) The administration is incompetent.
Now, I've listed these in order of most likely to least likely. The administration could be incompetent, but do you really believe anyone could be that stupid? There may be a lot of liberal arts majors, but those are the money sinks; the smart money on alumni donations is still engineers, doctors, and lawyers. Rather than the administration being stupid, there are other explanations, which are far more likely.
They could be playing a political brinkmanship game. I wouldn't be surprised if the plan to close the CS department is just a threat, and nothing more. It would make sense; in a time of mild to moderate budget crisis, it is not uncommon to threaten to cut something popular in order to garner more money for other things. If the threat was to cancel the history department, would there be a big stink? Absolutely not (unless there are a bunch of history buffs in the state senate... who knows? Maybe sports psychology, or sociology, or some other useles.... I meant, less practical... major).
It is very unfortunate, but I think that the most likely reason for this is that the faculty in the CS department are not up to snuff. It could well be that they are, collectively, getting older and tireder, and just not putting the effort into teaching that they could be. It could also be that they just weren't that good to begin with. But, what I think may be the case, is that the CS department is populated by... faculty from an older time. Faculty who, when they were hired, it was a rock solid CV if they had a single top-tier publication. When they got tenure, a solid case had 1 top tier publication plus a smattering of lesser accomplishments. WWU's faculty could think a wonderful accomplishment is a single pub a year.
That is to say, WWU could possibly be staffed by professors who would be laughed out of the room if they tried to defend a thesis today. It isn't that they weren't worthy when they were hired; it is just that standards have gone way up. I personally have a better publication record now than Randy Pausch (famous for "The Last Lecture") had when he was made a full prof; I don't even rate an interview at top schools today. WWU may simply be looking at what they have, and then looking at what the supply of desperate fresh grads are, and deciding that the logical thing to do is to wipe the slate clean, keep maybe one or two of the old faculty, but to otherwise start fresh with, talented, sharp, bright-eyed, and coincidentally desperately eager, newly minted faculty. I've seen it happen at much more prestigious institutions.
I'm a senior at WWU and I just had to defend our faculty. I don't know anything about publications or resumes but in the classroom our professors are amazing. Passionate, sharp, dedicated and possessing a certain contagious energy that can make even the driest subjects interesting. All that without sacrificing the high standards that push students over the the top to seek personal excellence. One professor in particular is, bar none, the greatest teacher I've ever had in anything. He single-handedly made me care about CS and instilled me with confidence that I could do well at it. I honestly couldn't tell you anything about his professional qualifications but all that stuff seems like a pissing match to me.
The only thing that really matters to students is the quality of the classroom education. And aren't the students kind of the whole point of higher education? Shouldn't we be judging faculty by how well they serve their students, rather than lines on a resume? I count myself lucky to have the opportunity to learn under the tutelage of these exceptional educators.
Your points seem more or less valid, but somewhat irrelevant to the situation: CS is not IT, and university is not vocational training. Even putting that aside, it strikes me as an odd choice of department to cut - I can't imagine running a CS department costs much, in comparison to engineering or physical sciences.
Cutting CS makes sense from a political point of view. Its equivalent to a city threatening to cut police, fire or K-12 teachers. The goal of the politicians, government or university, is to maximize outcry to get a budget restored. If a city announced cuts to administration, or a university announced dropping its Canadian Studies program, no one would care rather they would approve. This is all about restoring a budget or "punishing" those who called for budget cuts to prevent a second round.
If you don't even know what city WWU is in, why would you post on slashdot? Please respond and explain yourself, thank you.
It is, unfortunately, a pissing match that is all the higherups care about. What brings a school money? Students? Naaah. GRANTS bring the school money, for engineering -- And maybe that's only so true because at UF (where I attend for CS), tuition is dirt cheap. It's gone up like... 40% since I started, I think? and is still like $150/cr. And what brings grants? Research and papers and publications and. . .
... lecturer. Said outstanding lecturer is being let go because he doesn't have a PhD (from the campus newspaper). Compare him to the professors I've had that phone it in. The ones that show up 10 minutes late every lecture and read off ppt slides. The data structures prof I had who used the book and slides that our department chair wrote 10 years ago that I've even heard professors say are godawful, let alone everyone that takes the class. Grumblegrumble.
I've had more mediocre professors at UF than great ones, by far. In the CS department, there's been one good prof, one great prof (He even posts on here, actually...), and one OUTSTANDING
With so many schools offering CS degrees, what's the big deal if there is one less. Is there not another school in a 25 mile radius that has a CS department, and can't the schools arrange a cross training deal. (I'll teach x for your students if you teach y for my students). Saves money for both schools.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
You've got me thinking....
I had a telephone interview with Amazon recently. I lucked out and did even better than I would have expected on the first interview ( virtual whiteboard coding, trick question and all).. The second interview was very odd... the guy ( yes, with an indian accent) suggested I go get a job in Silicon Valley. The interview started strangely ( I couldn't hear him, he couldn't hear me, he was in a not-so-quiet co-worker environment). From other oddities I figured that the position must've just been filled and they were just keeping their appointment ( with a last second, inexperienced interviewer ).
You've got me wondering... now I'm putting more weight into other possibilities.
Maybe their tablet will have a Shiva theme?
When you look at corporations these days, the emphasis is all in management. People who rise in the hierarchy are "people people", they are managers, good at getting other people to do what needs to be done.
That's all great and worked well while all the jobs had to be done by people. Now advance to a time when work is done by computers. Who gets computers to do what needs to be done?
Managers today are just middlemen, they are there to get programmers to get computers to do what's needed. I wonder how long it will take for investors to start noticing that. They are used to cutting labor costs by trimming the lower layers, how long till they notice that they can get much better results by cutting the upper layers, where the big salaries are?
I read lots of comments here saying how software companies only want outsource everything and how CS is doomed based on the decision of one minor university in Washington State. You are wrong. I work as a manager in a major software company and frequently participate in interviewing and hiring decisions for jobs with 6-figure salaries. There is still a HUGE demand for good software people - HUGE. Even in the depths of the recession, we had a hard time finding good, qualified people. Then you might say - I know 100s of unemployed IT/Software professionals, what are you talking about? The problem is that high technology doesn't require some average guy from some average washington state university. Computers are complicated beasts. Writing good software is HARD. Most of the people who come in for an interview tank it very badly - they simply don't get it. So without going much ahead in why most people in this profession aren't qualified and won't ever be qualified for a high end software job, it's possible that simply this university doesn't have a good CS department and didn't have a future as a competitive college in a field with such high requirements - we did have some very good interviewing runs at major american universities, where americans and people from other countries were hired. It really doesn't make a difference if the university is american, indian, chinese or brazilian. When good people are rare, you need to look for people everywhere. But relatively speaking, we still find the majority of good people in the United States. Or it's just that the dean is an idiot and it says nothing about the future of the CS field - he could be making a bad business decision and that's all there is to say about TFA.
Liberal arts aren't money sinks nearly as much as CS is in the very near term, and engineering is worse. It has to do with the equipment required to run the program and the amount that the profs expect to be paid.
including developers, test engineers, documentation specialists along with a group of inspectors. Developing avionics code is a big job.
I was not aware that any university in the US was actually teaching CS these days anyway ... 'cause what I have seen should most certainly not be considered "Computer Science."
So yeah, they should drop the programs and departments - it's a waste of money for the schools and the students.
Western Washington University and University of Washington are TWO different Universities! This post speaks as if they are 1 and can lead to some serious confusion and mismanagement of the information.
I work in higher ed and years ago I got an AAS in systems administration. When I graduated from the program I was the only person to graduate from that department in 5 years. I don't know how it survived that long but the degree was cut about a year ago when we merged with a larger university.
One thing I have learned about becoming a part of a large research university is that if you don't generate money or grants you get put on the chopping block. Especially when you depend on legislative funds that have been cut each year since the recession started. Its the nature of higher ed in lean times. Programs that could coast by on low enrollment numbers and graduation rates when times were good are now in serious trouble especially those who have a large amount of faculty and low program enrollment. The numbers from the article explain a lot too: 12 professors, 100 enrolled majors, and only 40 graduates a year? That is some serious fat to be trimmed and if some of those professors are tenured then its much harder to get rid of them. I can see the administration keeping the program if they generate revenue by other means such as grants or research projects but if they don't then if I were an administrator I would get rid of it too.
Actually, this kerfuffle is not about an IT program. It's also not about cutting a program with low enrollment and job placement. It's about a CS program which has one of the best job placement rates in the university and also has rapidly growing enrollment.
As a WWU Chemistry student, set to graduate next month and begin the Chem Master's program, I've been here a while.
We're shocked too that they would cut the department, and we would like to know more about the justification for this.
Living in the Seattle area, we NEED tech jobs here. I'm sure we have plenty of techies out of work right now, but this is still an important skill set. Reading the interview with the provost, I wonder how up-to-date the major is right now. I don't know enough about it to understand, so maybe you guys can tell me. Here is the link to their current requirements: http://www.wwu.edu/advising/MajorGuides/computerscience-bs.pdf
Tell you what I spot. Why does a computer science student only have to take 1 course in linear algebra? I had to take one course and certainly see the applications to physical chemistry. But the math taught in that program applies very strongly to computer programming. They really should be taking the second quarter as well, Math 304. I also think they should be taking math 224, which really teaches you how to think in 3-D. Brutal course, depending on the teacher, but very, very necessary.
I'm also not sure what the bio 200's series would do for them. I can kinda see the option of the geology series, given the types of programs some are likely to work with, say predicting future earthquakes, but why bio? And why the option of the chem 120's sequence? Being extremely familiar with that, I can't see what uses they would have for it. Physics with calculus, on the other hand, I can speak from personal experience that they REALLY MUST have that, so why is it optional?
Beyond that, I'm not familiar with the courses they have to take. Are the programming courses up-to-date? Since tech is constantly changing, this is one of those majors that must change with it. Are they being taught how to make data centers more energy efficient? My husband is a systems admin who recently changed how the systems were set up at the school district where he works. When the investigators came to check it out, they said it was the best they had seen in the whole region. Many don't know how to do that sort of thing.
I'll tell you one thing. I started out wanting to major in math. I would have needed CSCI 207, I think it was, which taught Mathematica. Since I had no experience with any programming, I called the CSCI department to ask if they suggested a simpler course for me to start with to get my feet wet. They told me to take CSCI, which I did, which was a course in GameMaker! OMG. It was ssssssoooooo stupid. What a waste of my time and money. It taught me literally nothing. I was chatting with my brother-in-law about it and he told me he took the exact same course when he was in grade 6! Even though it isn't part of the major, WHY is a grade 6 level course being offered there? Western doesn't even offer basic math courses that way! If you come in not ready for precalculus or practical math, you take 1 quarter of algebra all crammed together to get you going (community colleges here tend to teach it in 3 quarters).
So no, I don't support getting rid of the major by any means. However, I would like to know if it is up-to-date, changing as needed, and if it can be more focused by eliminating courses that students really don't need, like GenChem.
CS is dead - has been for quite some time in this country. It followed it's predecessors - mathematics, physics, engineering, etc... The government in the US no longer counts a degree as anything more than "years" and in general it's not as useful as working in that area. People, especially males, are noticing and seeing that it's not useful to attend college. You're better off getting a job, and a couple certifications - at least from the perspective of years vs. dollars. This started a few years ago, in the attempt to "keep costs down" - which actually means force jobs overseas. Both sides have been actively killing America's middle-class and doing a hell of a good job at it.
And the sheeple in this country keep putting them in office - Obama is just the latest shill in the game - all of them have the same agenda, to destroy this nation and they are doing it via wars, deficit spending, and every other way they can think of. RIP - USA...
You think the school pays for that? That's what grants are for.
The University of Western Washington is just facing reality. Really, all of US higher education should just give up.
Seastead this.
companies have long since figured out they don't need to train on the job. Now, they send you to a diploma mill where you spend your own time and not only don't get paid but actually PAY THEM to be trained. Public universities subsidized by the taxes on the profits these companies make from a trained workforce they benefit from seems reasonable to me. It's all just infrastructure they're using. People ask me why the rich should pay 90% of their net worth in taxes? Easy, they're the ones that get the most benefit out of society, so they should pay the most. Either that, or don't complain when me and a thousand of my pals bash your head in and take your stuff while you die of cancers you can't get treated.
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... from the way the upper levels of management often see IT ... after all, how complicated can clicking in a window be? Anybody can do that, after all, kids already do that all day long after school ... so all you need is someone who has used a PC to set up your servers, network, routers, and take care of the dozens or hundreds of employees' computer problems ...
Grants don't cover the student equipment, or the people to maintain it. In a small school the students may leach off of the faculty, but if you have a couple thousand students that need equipment good luck getting by on grants alone.
Have control over both the House and the Executive these past 4 years?