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."

Comments

It makes sense

[Billly Gates]

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.

Re:It makes sense

[errandum]

There is a misconception here.

Computer scientists aren't the code-monkeys. They are either the overseers of code monkeys or the guys doing research on various platforms.

Everyone can be a code monkey, but if you want your plane to land, you need experts.

Re:It makes sense

[errandum]

*PS: That doesn't mean many won't end up as code monkeys, but they are overqualified to do so

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

This is happening at my university, which is supposed to be known for its CS program. We have a paid co-op requirement for graduation, but its becoming so difficult to find one, and there's such intense competition among students for the few that do exist, that a sizable portion of the student population have to take leave of absences while they wait for an internship to become available to them. Those who do graduate face stiff competition in the area and several years of experience required for even entry level jobs. Even if you can manage to get it, the degree just doesn't equate to a job unless you've been lucky enough to have been working in your field during your whole time at college.

Consequently, we end up working dead-end jobs and wait for everything to get better. Hang out around the overnight shift at the McDonalds I work at, and you'll find most of the people in the back talking about what happened at Google I/O and what they've been doing when their arduinos.

Re:It makes sense

[MaskedSlacker]

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.

I know, I know, you didn't RTFA, but that's the exact opposite of what's been noticed.

Re:It makes sense

[Jurily]

This is similiar to obtaining technical certifications for factory jobs. Americans simply do not do them anymore in a global economy.

The very idea of this comparison makes me sad about the state of modern software.

Re:It makes sense

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Re:It makes sense

[callmehank]

When you get a B.S. in C.S., you are a classically-trained compsci generalist. You're not a specialist, a scientist, or an expert in anything. (At the Master's level, a specialist. PhD, expert.) In WA, you'd be lucky to get a job as a code monkey with a B.S. from any accredited state university. Too much competition from abroad, and too little hiring at home. You'll end up as a barista.

Re:It makes sense

[deathguppie]

You don't live near Microsoft (obviously) where they are generally known as the "Indian mafia" because of they way they only like to hire other Indians and generally make a hell of a lot more money than you espouse. The average MS software eng. starts at around $80k. Most of them I've known make around $120K.

Yes you are right about there being a lot of Indians, but you are way off base on working conditions and wages.

Re:It makes sense

[Black Parrot]

And the IT business never cared about education all that much anyway. Lots of smart people go far on a HS degree or a little college

In my experience, at big companies there is a glass ceiling separating those with degrees from those without.

What the degree is in is irrelevant; just having a 4-year degree distinguishes the ordinary peons from the casteless peons.

Re:It makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm attending Western Washington University as a CS major.

81% of WWU CS graduates find jobs directly out of college.

Washington state currently needs to graduate 70% more CS majors in order to meet demand.

Washington is being squeezed for talent, and WWU's proposal is simply a reflection of the grim status of state funding for higher education. We're chopping off an arm so we can reach the low-hanging fruit.

Re:It makes sense

[easyTree]

...its all about working smart not working hard.

It appears to be about lying more than working. Did they get a politics degree thrown-in for free after demonstrating such creativity?

Re:It makes sense

[dingfelder]

What does IT have to do with it? The Article is about "software developers" not IT workers

Re:It makes sense

[billcopc]

... and then their prestigious degree becomes the laughingstock of the industry when word gets out that they can't even code a Hello World without googling for design petterns.

Re:It makes sense

[Ethanol-fueled]

I work for a big technology conglomerate and I agree with your glass ceiling assertion and that what the degree is in is irrelevant. In fact, the only thing that does matter is what college the person graduated from.

Now, I'm not one to slam people because of their lack of credentials. Liberal arts grads and uneducated basement dwellers alike can both make good programmers. I'm good at what I do because I was busy collecting experience and wisdom in the real world rather than studying 8 hours a day learning about triple integrals i'd never, ever use. I'm happy to say that 90% of my company's employees are American citizens, but there are a few disturbing trends I've noticed throughout the years.

1. Corporations not hiring from within - they'll post a job description that many people within the company are qualified for, then hire some outsider because he's a friend or relative of some higher-up. An example at my company was a Field Service Engineer posting that required experience with . Only people within the company had experience with that device, and had applied for the position, but an outsider friend-of-a-higher-up was hired instead. This has a profound effect on readiness and morale. In another, similar instance, we lost a valuable experienced employee and installed somebody who quit in 3 days because she didn't have a window office.
2. Unqualified hires being put in positions they shouldn't be, because they graduated from $FAVORED_UNIVERSITY - Pretty much says it all. Unproven, inexperienced idiots being placed in important positions just because they graduated from the same place a lot of the head honchos did. Damn near singlehandedly destroyed the productivity and morale of my department. Also prevented more respected, qualified, internal candidates from filling the position and saving us a lot of hassle.
3. Top-heaviness - It may seem counterintuitive, but more and more managers (read: people with degrees) are being installed, with job titles the only purpose of which is to justify hiring another manager, with less technician-level positions capable of doing the same job for less pay. This increases both management and technician churn while putting undue stress on the bread and butter that actually gets the job done.

Your mileage may vary.

Re:It makes sense

[arth1]

Everyone can be a code monkey, but if you want your plane to land, you need experts.

This is obviously not true. They all land.

That said, the experts are, in general, neither code monkeys nor CS graduates. It's the autodidacts, who more than anything has a strong interest in the field, combined with being smart. Sometimes they have too little time and money, and do code money jobs to pay the rent; sometimes they have too much time and money, and graduate from a school where they're bored out of their minds. With any kind of grades, depending on how how bored they were. More often, they're neither.
And universal is that no human resources person is ever able to spot one, and if your company gets an expert by sheer luck, just hope that the managers recognize that one person is doing 80% of the 20% of work that's important. More likely, they get dinged for not taking on the 80% of unimportant jobs that the code monkeys and grads can do, or for being uncooperative and telling the managers when they have a Really Bad Idea.

But yeah, if the plane lands in one piece, there's likely an expert who made sure that it did. And a clueless manager who pats himself on the shoulder for hiring all the code monkeys and grad students to make it happen, not realizing that all they did was point the plane downwards.

Re:It makes sense

[II Xion II]

Sorry I don't buy that entirely. It's true that outsourcing IT has become more and more popular, but it's hardly to the point where "many Fortune 500 companies only have 6 or 7 employees that even deal with I.T." That's a pretty big hyperbole.

I work at a Fortune 100 company helping maintain production code and working on transitioning development applications all the way to the production environment. We have no less than a thousand employees (with an employee total of over 30,000 people) who work directly or indirectly in I.T. in no less than a dozen different departments. I'm sure that number includes our outsourced colleagues in India (and we do have many consultants as well offshore employees, especially Indians), but we have many, many locally-based workers here in our main locations in the United States. Those include many who work in traditional Helpdesk roles, network engineering, environment moves, development silos, production support silos, business-IT liaisons, database management, host systems management & batch, incident management & escalation, etc. etc. who all help to develop and maintain a portfolio of hundreds of disparate and important applications critical to our infrastructural and business needs.

Maybe I'm not as jaded about outsourcing as the next person because of this experience. Maybe it's because I see the critical role it serves in helping companies/consumers lower costs and Indians/others get better lives. Maybe my company is the exception (though I doubt it, all companies of this size have diverse I.T. needs that make I.T. staffs of hundreds probably needed). Regardless, I think that combining outsourcing strategies while holding onto valuable I.T. employees here in the United States and the Western world is nonetheless what needs to be done in order to facilitate the proper mix of cost-savings and quality service/employee morale.

Re:It makes sense

[lexsird]

Let me inject here, you have to go get it. Just because you have an education doesn't equate to a job. It puts you on the playing field is all. Granted, there have been times when the job market was barking at the door of universities. Those times are not now though. If you have that education, you might need more, and it's a tough thing to get sometimes.

Don't stop thinking though. Make your own opportunities. But know this, tech has classically been a cutthroat field. Look at the classic examples of Tesla and Edison, Tesla was light years beyond Edison in IMHO, but Edison beat him down with his money. Thank God Tesla bested him, hence we have the modern era that we have now, just think what our world would be like without A/C? I shutter to think, but there has always been a dickheaded Edison around and there are acres of them here today.

But color me a troll, but I think this outsourcing is criminal. I think they should line up against the wall and shoot anyone who uses outsourcing. I think it's downright treasonous to our country and our culture. I swear to God, allowing multinational corporations to operate the way they do, will be the downfall of nations, including ours. "Globalization" is a buzz word used to dupe idiot intellectuals into swallowing how multinational corporations get away with exploiting both sides of the pond.

Until we the people wake the fuck up, and burn them all to the ground, we will be taking it up the tailpipe by them, and their lackey governments.

Don't look to Americans growing any balls anytime soon and solving this problem. Instead, you must adapt to the situation, choose a hat if you will, but put on one either way. In this world, tech still rules. Use it to enhance your life or someone else's and try to make a living along the way. Or just use it to survive if you have to. You should never go hungry, one way or another. If a society has you starved out, literally, then you owe that society NOTHING. Do you understand? Rule is only at gunpoint then.

When will people understand what is the heart of our problems in America. It's all about corporate greed. Greed has ran wild here infecting everyone and everything. Our own greed lets this happen, for deep down we want it all too. And it's dangled over our heads, like the fox and the grapes, yet we haven't moved on yet. We still want the grapes. It's not enough to just make a living, some want it all. There is no good ending for this kind of situation.

Think of it as a Darwin effect, but for an entire culture. As we have been hampered with and handicapped by a self loathing called "political correctness". It's a psychological affliction, where not being able to cope with success, the person(s) try to level the playing field or lower their own esteem and station. A lot of this has been a "guilt trip" laid upon the psyche of most Americans by the minorities clamoring for a piece of the pie. This is all fair game, but it's been too effective and it has disrupted the will and moral on a deep level. Good hearted people can easily be damaged by such insinuations that their culture isn't deserving of what they have, hence they don't struggle when they get their "silverware" stolen while depressed.

We have to wake up and say fuck all the foreigners, they aren't paying my bills or feeding me and my children. And we need to say FUCK YOU, to big corporations and their crafty propaganda machines, which are mostly every fucking network on TV. They need to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us. The free ride is over for them, no more tax breaks, no more subsidies, which are just big welfare checks for them that they don't even need. We need to take all of their of shore accounts and tax the fuck out of them for trying to escape taxation.

We also need to lynch every fucking politician that allowed China to dominate us economically. We need to lynch those in that one super big corporation that I am afraid to even mention, you know, the one that is in every town, and everything in it is made in China, yet they still have the balls to stick a big yellow grinning smiley face on stuff.

Anyway, from the looks of the parent article, education isn't about education anymore I think. It's about training the lemmings to be a labor force.

Re:It makes sense

[umbramei]

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.

Actually, Computer Science at WWU has the highest field-related employment rate and average salary of all the degrees the university offers. The decision by higher-ups in the administration to even consider eliminating the department has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the program or the employability of its graduates.

Re:It makes sense

[AuMatar]

You're quite frankly out of your mind. There's a hell of a lot of programming jobs open in WA right now. I average a cold call every 2-3 days from recruiters- and I haven't updated my resume in over a year. If you're anything above the awful level it's pretty easy to get a job here right now, programming is in a boom cycle.

Re:It makes sense

[JAlexoi]

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.

A) A lot of companies are starting to see that it's not cheaper using Indians in the long run. Not for all work, but for the work that requires a lot of analytical skills. Indian job market does not offer those kind of people.
B) You really don't know how easy it is for an Indian guy to switch a job. A 50% yearly employee turnover rate is not uncommon in Indian companies. So they not only can leave, but do switch jobs very often.

Re:It makes sense

[JAlexoi]

Well when the guy defines a PhD as an expert, he's literally out of his mind. PhD means so little in practical terms, that it's no longer funny.
But on the other hand, only a degree is worthless in today's job market. You have to participate in some publicly visible project, GSoC for some opensource project does a good job or just plain contribute to an opensource project.

Re:It makes sense

[The Dawn Of Time]

If you're anything above the awful level it's pretty easy to get a job

That's as much as needs to be said. There's a disturbing trend amongst Americans who want to not have to compete. I blame all that self-esteem building we went through as a society.

As soon as they started giving out trophies for participating, the end times were written.

Re:It makes sense

[Moryath]

You forgot #4:

Corporations filing fake positions - position listings that are deliberately designed so that every possible applicant can be turned away, specifically so that the company can then go out and claim they "need H1-B workers" to fill the "jobs they can't find an American for" from India.

Re:It makes sense

[Billly Gates]

Yeah and how many years of experience do you have?

If you are out of school without certifications or experience there is no work. An Indian can do it. It seems either you get call after call or none at all. The students at these universities do not have experience.

Re:It makes sense

[Billly Gates]

Not to sound cynical but most undergrad compsci grats in Florida where I live end up doing help desk for $13/hr after all that work. Programming ... thats for the master students or those with 5 years experience. Incredible!

Re:It makes sense

[Moryath]

The best liars are the CEOs and hedge fund managers.

You forgot the politicians.

Re:It makes sense

[Etyme]

Google. Apple. Facebook. Oracle. Red Hat. Microsoft. Biggest names in tech...and all do their software development in the US. That should tell you something. You don't turn over development on your mission critical software to a bunch of people you don't know in a foreign country. It's just stupid, and the only people who seriously consider it are a bunch of idiot business majors who don't know any better.

Note, this is not meant as a slam on programmers from India; the reality is that there aren't enough good programmers on the planet to meet the demand for them. Outsourcing companies make up the difference by hiring crappy programmers, who inevitably end up being a net drain on productivity.

Re:It makes sense

[Golddess]

This is obviously not true. They all land.

Yup. It's taking off that's optional. ;)

Re:It makes sense

[AuMatar]

Certs? Once again, IT!=programming. Certs are for IT, if anything having a cert loses you value for programming.

Re:It makes sense

[Rakishi]

There's truck loads of IT and CS work in the Bay Area. Frankly if you're not finding any then the problem is you and not the job market. The myth that you can throw a few resumes at a company and instantly get hired was never true.

First of all you need connections and networking. That is how you get your foot in the door. In the Bay Area you have absolutely no excuses for not getting a dozen new connections a week if not more. Not counting your school, friends and so on. There are so many technology based events and meetups happening that it's hard not to meet people from companies. People that if you leave a decent impression on will pass your resume on. Or who may give you contract work. Or know those who are looking for someone to hire.

Second of all you need experience: internships, volunteering or open source work. If you're unemployed then you have no excuse for not getting some under your belt in that time. What are you doing with all that free time?

Re:It makes sense

[Rakishi]

The students at these universities do not have experience.

That is their fault. Summer internships, open source projects, volunteer work, small contract work and so on. Not as valuable as large company experience maybe but it does in fact count.

Of course, who you know matters even more and if you're at a decent university you should have ways to meet people from companies. In general, you know, interact with people, play the social game, get them to pass on your resume.

In other words, if you are worth more than an idiot with a bottom of the barrel degree-mill "education" then you have to show it somehow.

Re:It makes sense

[claus.wilke]

Do you have any evidence to back up this statement, or are you just pulling numbers out of thin air? I highly doubt that's true, in particular if you include biology among the physical sciences. The typical NIH grant runs around $250,000 a year plus overhead. Most computer scientists I know do not have grants of this magnitude.

Re:It makes sense

[russotto]

Google. Apple. Facebook. Oracle. Red Hat. Microsoft. Biggest names in tech...and all do their software development in the US. That should tell you something.

Google does development in many countries: go here and click on the countries under "International Locations" -- you'll find Software Engineering on all of them.

Re:It makes sense

[bill_mcgonigle]

What are you doing with all that free time?

WoW, beer and porn. *

Oh, wait, that was a rhetorical question, wasn't it?

* the complainers about this problem suffer from a selection bias problem

Re:It makes sense

[dwillden]

This is obviously not true. They all land.

Yup. It's taking off that's optional. ;)

As is as surviving the landing. ;P

Re:It makes sense

[bhcompy]

At least half of the "coders" I know also double as IT. Outside of strictly defined corporate world(meaning the small and medium business world that employs most people) you end up doing a lot more than just coding simply because the business needs it. True, certs are for IT, but doesn't mean that IT and programming don't go together at times

Re:It makes sense

[Cysgod]

Certificates aren't really great in IT either, whether they're vendor specific or more generic. My own experience has been that people in both low level and advanced IT roles with certs tend to perform very unfavorably when compared to people with nearly the exact same resume, but no certificates.

Re:It makes sense

[sgt101]

Those companies will not be fortune 500 for long

Re:It makes sense

[rtb61]

Well then perhaps it is time the computer science part got broken up into the more realistic speacilaties. System administration which includes business management and computer network management function, computer security which includes law, encryption and decryption as well as psychology and network management and of course computer programming which is basically what most schools focus on because it is an easy straight forward teaching target. There is also design elements related to web site engineering and of course computers in health which should have a grounding in medical courses.

So you really have a change from a computer science degree to a computer science school with a range of more specialised degrees under that to tackle the more realistic needs of a modern digital society. Likely dual degreeing with other fields be it law, medicine, education, engineering, design, art, economics etc. to more accurately fill employment needs.

Re:It makes sense

[AuMatar]

I've worked outside of the large corporate world for more than half my career. I've never been IT. Never been asked to be IT. Why? Because I'm too fucking expensive to be IT in more than an emergency case- you can find IT guys for 3/4 to 1/2 my pay. It's a waste of time and money. The closest I've come to being IT is installing software on my own computer.

And even if for some dumb reason I had to be (which unless you're in a company of 10 or so you shouldn't), if you're hiring a programmer, you care about his programming skills. You're not going to be looking for an experienced dev with IT certs, because you won't find any. Two totally different career paths- there's no reason for anyone with any experience in programming to pick up one of those certs. The most you'd get is someone trying to change careers from one to the other, which is not the type of person you want as a dev at a very small company- too big a risk he can't do the job.

Re:It makes sense

[Carewolf]

Not even code moneys get certifications. Certifications are for system administrators. You are figuratively speaking confusing hospital janitors (sys-admins) with nurses (programmers), and doctors(computer scientists). Just because it has something do with computers doesn't make it even remotely the same profession.

Re:It makes sense

[Larry Lightbulb]

That's something for the help desk to solve.

Re:It makes sense

[base698]

The one guarantee in aviation is that a plane will ALWAYS land, however, when and where is up for debate. :)

Re:It makes sense

[improfane]

What makes me laugh is that if you subscribe to a software mailing list for software support, you'll find many poorly written help requests from Indians names and Westerners helping them.

So basically the westerners are helping outsourced workers do the job they are not qualified for. The westerners are doing it for free.

Re:It makes sense

[rocker_wannabe]

If the overseer is expected to have a degree in Computer Science it's likely that they are expected to be a technical manager that understands the process and pitfalls of creating software. This requires years of experience and to get those years of experience you need to start as a "code monkey". Asking a recent Computer Science graduate to manage a team of Indian coders is a recipe for disaster.

Re:It makes sense

[improfane]

That really sucks for you.

I hope whoever reads this thinks twice about helping people on web forums and mailing lists who have Indian names. You are helping the outsourced workers from doing the job you were supposed to be doing.

Re:It makes sense

[meglon]

I agree with what you're saying in general, however, in this case this news hit the local channels the same day as a report on the companies in the Seattle area scrambling to find people for these types of jobs.

The simple matter here is, because of revenue declines, the state is making budget cuts. Those cuts are probably going to eliminate this program, a program that is needed to keep up with the demand of just local area (Washington state) jobs in the field. It's a total failure of this and the last generations responsibility to re-invest in the future of this country for the betterment of future generations, and this country as a whole is suffering immensely from that.

Re:It makes sense

[Savantissimo]

"If you're anything above the awful level it's pretty easy to get a job"

So long as you are willing to lie and say you have 5 years experience with 18 different things, most of them obscure and irrelevant, the rest ghastly and appalling.

Re:It makes sense

[Savantissimo]

Exactly! Now if we could find a way to get this through the pointy little heads of the HR and mgt. parasites...

Re:It makes sense

[Savantissimo]

School is bullshit anyway. If they don't count setting up your own company as experience, they deserve to be conned. Certainly setting up an effective con should be rated more than equal to doing any silly intern job.

Re:It makes sense

[SomeStupidNickName12]

Well said! Any developer who lands up doubling as IT isn't do any real enterprise level development. Writing a couple of perl scripts or slapping together php site with a couple of forms is nothing compared to the n-tier solutions being developed in java/.net

Its laughable to compare the two and its rather sad when people do and don't know any better.

Having said that - the only exceptions I can think of is dev's that sysadmin their own servers - in small to medium companies this does tend to happen a lot.

Re:It makes sense

[Billly Gates]

Kind of what I was stating here.

Most smaller businesses prefer to slap scripts together as that makes up 90% of sites out there. Medium to small business is where most of the jobs are at but I agree Java is nice for large scale projects. However, for my business I will start with PHP because I can scrap together something much faster. Once I grow and need scalability I will hire a CompSci grad to rewrite my internet app in Java.

It kind of reminds me of the suites who thought they were badass coders with MS Access/Visual Basic back in the 1990s. Great for custom forms or doing something specific to help a few employees out. However, the real boys came in later for a real solution. PHP is the Access/VB of the internet - minus the gui.

Re:It makes sense

[im_thatoneguy]

For those who haven't RTFA:

âoeThe unfortunate thing is that they are reacting not to the real situation, [...] I just wish that we were dealing with the real task before us which is looking at the future of computer science and that we have a quality program that really, truly is meeting the (needs) of the state of Washington.â

The interview is mostly about how they're asking the CS department to better prepare graduates for a modern workforce.

If a CS department was still just teaching Fortran and not much theory then yeah I would consider shutting them down too. I'm not saying they are that behind the times, they might be cutting edge, but the need to ensure your degrees still deliver value is an important one.

Just because a program is a CS department doesn't necessarily mean it's actually preparing qualified CS graduates.

Re:It makes sense

[SomeStupidNickName12]

Think you playing with fire referring PHP to the Access of the web :) but I know what you mean, there is nothing wrong with PHP and as a RAD tool it's fantastic. If your internet app is only generating web facing content then the PHP is great even for larger web apps.

But as soon as you need a multi-tiered architecture, clustering, caching, intra-connectivity, blah, blah, etc, etc - unfortunately PHP doesn't cut it at that level.

Technology has no place in Modern America.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[White Flame]

[From TFA comments]

From someone who was present at a meeting discussing this:

"This decision, apparently still potential, is a permanent statement of the University about the future of Computer Science. The impression conveyed in the meeting with the Provost and Dean was that we had reached the End of History. Now that everyone has a computer and a spreadsheet and a wordprocessor, the contribution of computing to the life of the mind has been exhausted. I do not write this sarcastically. This was the sense of the meeting."

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jocks beat you up for your lunch money again?

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[Black Parrot]

In Modern America, why is anyone surprised when universities start cutting technical programs? That's just not what American culture is about today.

The university near where I live is cutting programs, but notably *skipping* the technical programs.

Most of the science and engineering programs have good enrollment numbers, and they bring in a lot of grant money. Most of the programs being eliminated are the low-enrollment specializations of the fine and liberal arts.

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[FSWKU]

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.

I find it interesting that so many people seem to think science and faith are mutually excluseive. In my church we have medical professionals (doctors, surgeons, a medical examiner, and pharmacists), network engineers, broadcast engineers, etc. All very technically minded people, and all very much connected to their faith. I won't say religious, because there IS a difference. "Religious" people killed Jesus. People who have faith try to live their lives as best they can and leave the world better than they were brought into it. Do they always succeed? Of course not. But the whole point is it's something to strive for so you better yourself and have a positive impact on those around you.

As for myself, I'm learning quite a lot about audio engineering just through my work in the church's media ministry. I've had the opportunity to dabble in both live sound and broadcast mixing during our services, discover various techniques for getting the best sound from a given space and group of musicians, and a TON of various functions found in modern audio equipment (the Yamaha PM5D is an easy thing to get into, but not so easy to completely master). On several occasions I've even gotten into a bit of applied psychoacoustics. Sure, you can adjust the gain and volume if someone isn't singing very loudly, but that introduces background noise. Sneak the volume down on their monitor, however, and they sing louder without even realizing it.

Bottom line is, faith and science/technology do NOT have to be mutually exclusive. I'm sure there will be those who disagree with that statement as well as what I'm about to say, but it holds true for me. When working on a difficult technical problem, sometimes I get frustrated and can't figure out what to do next. Does God intervene and show me what I should do next? No. But I do tend to gain enough clarity to realize why a particular approach wasn't working, along with the motivation to try a different approach. And when I read about some unexpected result or novel discovery in any given scientific field, I can't help but wonder what else has been created just waiting for us to discover it. Science and faith are NOT enemies. God gave us scientific minds so that we could learn as much as possible (and that statement will probably irritate some of the more hardcore "religious" types, hehe).

To put it another way, seeing something truly amazing in the world of science (from the depths of space to the incredible variety of life in the ocean) is, I believe, God's way of inspiring us to want to learn as much about what we've discovered as we possibly can. And if we've learned all we can with current technologies, to invent new ones to further the quest for understanding.

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[symbolset]

This is what happens when you offer 300 level classes in "Advanced data manipulation with Excel".

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[countertrolling]

Don't knock it.When you count the money, sports probably comes out way ahead. If CS outperforms the sports department, which do you think will actually be cut? After all, that's really what American culture is about today.

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[Mr. Slippery]

I find it interesting that so many people seem to think science and faith are mutually excluseive.... All very technically minded people, and all very much connected to their faith.

And what does "technically minded" have to do with "scientific"? There are a lot of physicians out there who are creationists. (Ron Paul is one, just one point in his batshit insanity.) Engineers are no more necessarily scientific in their worldview than are plumbers.

Probably few of you are old enough to remember the dust-up when Forrest M. Mims, a popular author of books for electronics hobbyists, was turned down as editor of Scientific American's "Amateur Scientist" column in part because he's an evolution denier. Mims is a perfect example of a "technically minded" person who wouldn't know science if it bit him on the ass.

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[IICV]

Bottom line is, faith and science/technology do NOT have to be mutually exclusive.

That is not an issue that anyone is debating, and yet for some reason people keep on bringing it up. Clearly, science and faith are not mutually exclusive in the human mind - just look at the current Director of the National Institutes of Health, for goodness sakes. He's an evangelical Christian, and also was one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project. There is absolutely no debate on this point; you simply cannot argue it when empirical evidence is staring you in the face.

The question is, therefore, not "is the human mind flexible enough to accommodate both religion and science"; the answer to that is yes, obviously, and millions of people can be cited as support for that position. The question is, are religion and science themselves compatible? The answer to that is far less clear, and very easily argued to be "no".

Just ask yourself: how did that nice Yamaha PM5D you use for your church services come to be? Would it have been created without science? Would it have been created without religion? If religion and science are compatible, why did it take until the Enlightenment and its general advancement of the secular worldview for the seeds of your Yamaha to be sown?

Why is it that, in the history of humanity, when religion and science conflict it is always religion that is wrong?

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[Paul Fernhout]

Albert Einstein on science and religion:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly. "

With that said, we should be careful to distinguish the mindset the uses skills (engineers, doctors) from the mindset that explores new ideas (scientists at their best, of which there seem to be not too many, since the PhD process is designed to destroy independent inquiry as discussed in this book: http://disciplinedminds.com/ ).

Of course, a really good doctor or engineer may be interested in fundamental ideas too, like Charles Darwin who started out getting a medical education, so there is no clear boundary...

Also, it is very common that engineers tend to create thing using what they know and some trial and error. Scientists then try to systematize what the engineers know and have shown actually works (even if engineers can not explain why it works). Then engineers uses the systematization created by the scientists to push the boundaries even further... And then they find new things, and the scientists get interested again.

That may be about to happen in a big way of the Rossi/Focardi eCat cold fusion device turns out to be all that it is claimed? Maybe scientists will even eventually decide there is no such thing as "hot fusion" which is just a speculation and the sun really is mostly a ball of iron, and maybe most oil comes from hydrogen produced by the Earth's nickel hydrogen core? :-) Related:

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[Paul Fernhout]

More evidence:
    http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"Summers was deservedly castigated, but not for the right reasons. He claimed to be giving a comprehensive list of reasons why there weren't more women reaching the top jobs in the sciences. Yet Summers, an economist, left one out: Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States."

Of course, science has become so corrupt in many ways, it has done itself in...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Here are some related broad quotes on social problems in science, some of which relate to competition for funding. "

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[nickersonm]

Blame the French revolution for creating a rift by coopting scientific rhetoric to fight the Catholic royalists.

Re:Technology has no place in Modern America.

[n0rm]

That's scary, ignorant! It's like saying that since we can replace a heart, we shouldn't research heart disease!

Well...

[Jurily]

we do need a source of cheap labor.

Re:Well...

[MaxBooger]

The world needs ditched diggers too, ehh Judge Smails?

It doesn't matter anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

We're running out of money in WA. Nobody wants to pay income tax. You get what you pay for.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[rhook]

That's why the state has sales tax.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[larry bagina]

There is a surprising number of people who would like someone else to pay (more) income tax. They don't volunteer to do it themselves, of course.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[arth1]

Out of curiosity, how would Americans react if a US state raised its sales tax to the same level as in Europe?

In Europe, a quarter of your purchasing power is lost to taxes.
In the US, a quarter of your purchasing power is lost to pay for lawyers.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[PPH]

I'd do my shopping in Oregon.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[AuMatar]

I don't pay enough income tax. I actually pay less as a percentage than my sister, who earns 1/3 what I do. It's ridiculous that I pay less than 20% in taxes making a 6 figure income. And since I buy almost nothing, that means I only pay pretty much that 20%. I should be paying, and would vote to pay, at least double that.

My problem is that rich people and corporations pay even less as a percentage than I do. We need to bring back the Eisenhower tax rates. If you make more than 1 million a year, 90% of that should be taken away to pay for society (actual rates back then were 94%- we're actually the least taxed generation since WWII).

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[larry bagina]

Since you don't pay enough, here is your opportunity to pay what you feel you owe.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

You are volunteering to pay it, right? Or maybe you want someone else to pay it.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[Your.Master]

He wants someone else AND himself to pay it. But you knew that. Also, we drifted from Washington state taxes to US federal taxes somehow.

If I were there, I'd vote for higher income taxes on people with six figure incomes, and I have six figure incomes (note: I am not American so that site is irrelevant to me even as some kind of "gotcha!"; the government budgets where I live have ups and downs but are more stable in the long view). That vote is me volunteering to pay higher taxes. But no, I don't volunteer to fund the entire country if everybody else steps back, bugs-bunny-like. It's almost like you are doing the same thing you accuse the GP of: pawning off the problem on said GP (somebody else) instead of the franchise-holders accepting responsibility for the franchise.

At the federal level, the US government has an unbelievably fucked-up deficit and debt. You either have to cut spending, raise taxes, or both. And at this point I would have trouble believing a budget that answers anything other than "both", but go right ahead and try.

And no, it's not just from Obama or just from Bush or just the Democrats or just the Republicans; there's plenty of blame to point in ten thousand directions, and the Silver Bullet Party won't fix it without making tough calls either. So: cut spending where it's truly ludicrous, is not ethically monstrous to cut (eg. can't cut all jail spending and release murderers to the street), and we do not believe it really pays for itself over time. These can be debated in many case, but make some choices and accept this pisses people off. Also, raise taxes where people can afford it, and accept that this too pisses people off.

I can afford a tax increase; so can almost all others with my salary. I can't solve or meaningfully dent the budget by myself. But I along with most others of my salary can! In fact, that's how tax works.

I guess the third path is to find another source of federal revenue. Doesn't seem terribly likely to happen at these scales, though.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[squidfood]

Yeah. "Entitlement" programs like, you know, decent education. That weird thing that brought us Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, etc. that actually let us, you know, hard-earn our cash?

Or should the last one here just turn out the lights again?

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[Carewolf]

Last I went there California had something like 8% sales tax, so they are already halfway there, but Americans would react with anger. Even as used as I am to paying 25% sales tax, the sales taxes in the US pisses me off. Most of all because stores are allowed to hide or omit the total cost of products and print prices without taxes, this makes every taxed purchase you make during the day a kick to the nuts surprise.

If it was just sales tax, you can with get used to calculating the price, but it is still annoying, and the stores often hide every form of tax until you have to pay, making it is impossible to know in advance what the total price will be. Personally I blame the stores for misleading the costumers, but many people just blame the taxes for the confusion.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[meglon]

Since YOU don't voluntarily go out and pave a road, or clean up contamination from the air, or water, I'd suggest people like YOU who want other people to volunteer so you don't have to pay your fair share are the true leeches of society; greedy, self-serving, anti-social, and probably a few other choice words in their. The level of greed in these anti-American, anti-tax pieces of shit is only matched by their total lack of a fucking clue when it comes to what made this country great, even though they give lip service to patriotism and such. They are worthless trash, and they are THE cause of many of the problems in our society.

And yes, that was being polite on the subject.

Re:It doesn't matter anyway

[rhook]

I state a simple fact and you call me a redneck? Damn you are one ignorant, smug, bastard.

Makes sense to me

[Iron Condor]

There may be a hiring boom in "IT folks", but what does have to do with computer science? A hiring boom in plumbing doesn't mean we should have universities teach more hydrodynamics.

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.

Re:Makes sense to me

[bill_mcgonigle]

There may be a hiring boom in "IT folks", but what does have to do with computer science?

I do some of both. When I do IT work, I clean up, or often have to throw out a non-solution developed by an IT jockey who doesn't have a CS background because fundamental assumptions were impossible, the problem was never correctly analyzed, or the performance is abysmal due to knowledge deficits.

You simply can't make intelligent decisions on how to structure, organize, and optimize IT systems if you don't know how they work all the way up and down the stack.

CS is the MD for a sophisticated-level IT residency.

Re:Makes sense to me

[ncmathsadist]

Tell that to my students who have multiple job offers from places like SAS, Microsoft and Google.

Rational Economic Behavior

[Spazntwich]

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.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[chihowa]

I also wonder if CS graduates are less likely to give back to the school as alumni. This usually doesn't represent a huge source of income (especially for public schools), but it can help a department out in trying times (like now). Graduating students is nice, but graduating students that donate to the school is better.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[deathguppie]

One thing that no one has mentioned here is that WWU is located right in the center of the UW campus area in the U district of Seattle. There are a lot of Universities here, so it stands to reason that some of them are better known for CS than others. If I were going looking for a CS degree right now, WWU wouldn't even be a consideration anyway. :p

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[Princeofcups]

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 hate to break it to you, but at my college a CS degree IS one of the easier degrees. Physics, math, biology, even history and music were much harder, more intense in depth studies. Literally anyone could get a CS degree. I don't know where I'm going with this either, but most IT professionals I know do not have CS degrees.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

Give back? You mean besides the huge piles of money that students pay for the privilege of studying?

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[hey!]

There are no easy majors; only easy departments.

In some places Economics is an easy degree. Not everywhere. I had a friend who taught one of the introductory level Economics courses for majors. He shocked his class by giving them one week to finish "Wealth of Nations" at the start of the course, and it didn't get easier from there. His position was that the world didn't need more half-assed econ grads. I had another friend who taught the anatomy class that washed out many jocks who wanted to become certified athletic trainers and sports therapists. She had no mercy, out of consideration for the people whose injuries might be treated by some student who managed to pass her class without learning any anatomy.

A CS degree really isn't all that hard, except for maybe two subjects that are really applied math: analysis of algorithms and computation theory. Find a CS department that will let you can scrape an easy C in those subjects and voila: easy degree.

This points out an angle that's worth considering in this story. How strong is the department? If the department is weak and it's not attracting students, and there isn't initiative to fix those things or money, then why not pull the plug? Sure, CS may be the most important subject area taught at the University, but all the more reason not to disservice students with an inferior program.

Not that I'm saying this department is weak; as far as I know it's a terrific department. But the decision to cut the department isn't purely a matter of whether the subject is important. It's a matter of whether the department is economically successful, or successful at serving a public need.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[AuMatar]

IT!=programming. IT doesn't need a degree, it would be like getting a degree to be an auto mechanic. Programming does take years of study to do efficiently and well. That's what the majority of the graduates go into, and the number of non-degreed people in it is low and dropping. Probably because most of the non-degreed people I've met knew the basics, but never bothered to learn the underlieing concepts of discrete math, complexity, or data structures- they just learned enough APIs to limp along.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[Missing.Matter]

I'd have to agree with you. I went to an institution with a top 10 CS program. I did dual majors in CS and Physics, and I'd have to say CS was a cake walk compared to physics.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[umbramei]

Not that I'm saying this department is weak; as far as I know it's a terrific department. But the decision to cut the department isn't purely a matter of whether the subject is important. It's a matter of whether the department is economically successful, or successful at serving a public need.

The CS department at WWU is, in fact, quite strong. (For instance, as with most ABET-accredited CS programs, graduating majors are required to take the ETS Major Field Test; their scores put the program at or above the 95th percentile among all institutions that require this test.).

As far as economic success, the cost-per-student is right about average among academic departments at the school (it pays for its own equipment through lab fees), and enrolls a sizable number of students. Moreover, the program's record for new-graduate employment and salary ranks first or second among all programs in the university. Not only does this bode well economically for the university in terms of alumni donations and loan repayment, but it's one indicator that the program is "successful at serving a public need."

Other indicators are the regional hiring boom in CS-related positions, and statements and reports from Washington businesses, industry organizations, and the government. For example, the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board recently released a report showing that the state's need for computer science majors outstrips all other higher-education needs in the state, by far.

This story isn't about a school making a tough, but necessary economic decision in the face of a budget crisis. (Since already-enrolled students are guaranteed the chance to graduate, eliminating the department would have little economic impact for several years, and the cost-per-student would go up enormously as the number of students dwindled. Besides that, tenured CS faculty would, except in a financial emergency, have to be allowed to teach in other departments in which they were qualified, such as Mathematics.) What this story is about is out-of-touch members of the administration who profoundly fail to understand the role of computer science in modern society, both academically and economically.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[shutdown -p now]

I don't know about "hard economic times". In Seattle alone, Amazon is hiring like crazy these days (and has been for half a year at least), Google still eying prospective candidates for their Kirkland campus, and Microsoft is back on a steady hiring schedule.

And, contrary to popular opinion, none of those places "prefer Indians" or some such. Bringing in H1-Bs is a fairly big expense (they're not paid lower), and the reason why it's still done is because it's hard to find the requisite number of locals with a sufficient skill level (no kidding - a guy complained that "XOR is an advanced logical operation and I cannot be expected to understand how it works" on an interview). It's not that they don't exist - it seems that they all have good jobs already.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[PwnzerDragoon]

WWU is in Bellingham, not Seattle. I know because I live about 3 miles away from it. In Bellingham.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[drinkypoo]

. Bringing in H1-Bs is a fairly big expense (they're not paid lower), and the reason why it's still done is because it's hard to find the requisite number of locals with a sufficient skill level

Riiiight, this is why there are seminars on how not to hire qualified applicants specifically so you can bring in H1-Bs. I have that one saved around here someplace if you can't still find it on youtube.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not saying that there aren't US companies which don't use H1-B as cheap labor. But none of those I've listed in my post do so, to the best of my knowledge (which is to say, I know some pay figures to compare, and they do not support the theory that H1-Bs get paid less).

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[Rich0]

There are no easy majors; only easy departments.

In some places Economics is an easy degree. Not everywhere. I had a friend who taught one of the introductory level Economics courses for majors. He shocked his class by giving them one week to finish "Wealth of Nations" at the start of the course, and it didn't get easier from there.

Forcing students to read The Wealth of Nations in a week is just an exercise in measuring dedication and the amount of spare time a person is willing to spend on an arbitrary project, or possibly somebody's ability to speed-read. I don't need to pay somebody to force me to read books - the whole point of paying educators is to receive a more efficient education than one would get hanging out in a library all day.

The success of a program should not be measured in how hard it made people work.

If he really wanted people to have read a book by the end of the first week, it should have been listed as a course pre-requisite. Or, are you suggesting that only teenagers without anything important going on in their life are the only ones who should take university courses?

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[Rich0]

It's not that they don't exist - it seems that they all have good jobs already.

Perhaps you need to simply offer them more? I'm sure if you posted on monster.com - "programmers with knowledge of XOR needed, starting salary $500k" you wouldn't have trouble finding candidates.

As wages rise, more people who are capable would enter the field. When smart people can do better in finance, medical, or legal, then that is where they will go.

In the long-term, the job market for smart people isn't segmented by industry. If you have different hiring scales for different jobs, then you're just advertising that you don't want the smart people to take the lower-paying jobs.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[chihowa]

Give back? You mean besides the huge piles of money that students pay for the privilege of studying?

Yes. Those pay for operating costs for the period that you're there taking classes. Giving more money after you leave helps ensure that your school/department remains a relevant player after you've left (and can set up new labs/whatever with bleeding edge tech and continue to attract good students). I think that your reply probably confirms my suspicions. You're looking at the school as an adversary who has cheated you by asking for tuition. Not everybody sees things this way and not everybody's department is getting cut.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[improfane]

I'm reading Wealth of Nations for fun

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[Sarius64]

I'm not saying that there aren't US companies which don't use H1-B as cheap labor. But none of those I've listed in my post do so, to the best of my knowledge (which is to say, I know some pay figures to compare, and they do not support the theory that H1-Bs get paid less).

Pay isn't the only issue with an H1-B. The employee virtually becomes tied to the company and can only work in the USA for that company. When the employees break the agreement under the H1-B conditions they lose legal status to stay in the USA. The relationship creates a near defacto state of servitude.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[roman_mir]

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.

- I'll explain.

This is the result of all the government backed loans, that allow the colleges to raise tuition fees because they know, that the demand will not decrease simply due to the easy money that the government is providing, and so the colleges do not really see a reason either to decrease tuition fees or to improve the education quality. In fact with this glut of demand due to government money, there is a direct incentive to keep the quality of education low by lowering the requirements to the students, this means lower grades still give you a pass, this allows colleges to take more and more money in, there is no reason to cut anybody off the programs.

At the same time the students are given these huge amounts of money, but it's not their money, so they are not really thinking about the most optimal use of the resource, and so they end up making irrational choices.

At the same time the increased demand ('free' money), is causing so many people to graduate with the college degrees, that the actual worth of a degree is falling (inflating away), and this creates a perception that you must have a degree before entering the job market, so more people are sucked into this vicious circle.

--

What is actually needed, is as usual, for the government to stay away from the education process. Government education departments need to shut down, government provided loans need to disappear, so that all this moral hazard goes away. The glut of demand based on government money needs to disappear.

Most people do not need to go to a college or to a university. Most people actually benefit very little from it, and instead they just make irrational decisions, major in sociology and graduate with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, when in reality they would be much better off if they simply attempted to get some sort of an apprenticeship, tried to get themselves a job early on, to train on the job.

Of-course another thing that makes this very difficult is the insanity of the minimum wage - which prevents so many jobs from even appearing on the market (and this is while millions are out of work, this is truly insane.)

Minimum wage prevents apprenticeship positions from appearing, but it is not illegal to volunteer, so it is ironic how many people end up volunteering (working for free), while they could be collecting a small salary and work to get experience instead of going to an expensive university and getting a useless degree (useless for most of people) and paying for this dubious privilege through the nose and wasting years of their lives in process.

Of-course there are other reasons why there are so few real apprenticeship programs - various government regulations make it extremely costly to hire help for a variety of reasons (again, during a depression!), this is mostly about legal liability that is created by such nonsense laws as Civil Rights Act, Title II and all other types of government 'protection', which create the unintended consequence of destroying potential employment for various individuals, because they become a litigation risk, and the small shops, that actually could benefit the most from hiring apprentices stay away as far as possible, exactly due to this and other types of government protection and intervention.

Anyway, I hope I provided some clarity on the issue.

Cheers.

Re:Rational Economic Behavior

[shutdown -p now]

Pay isn't the only issue with an H1-B. The employee virtually becomes tied to the company and can only work in the USA for that company.

It's not quite as simple.

The employee's visa is tied to a particular company, yes. It doesn't make it impossible to change jobs - it's definitely more complicated because you need to find a new employer who would sponsor a new H1-B - but it's not impossible. The bigger problem is what happens when the employee is terminated.

It's even more complicated when employer-sponsored green card applications are involved. It used to be that, whenever an H1-B changes job, he'd have to reapply, and the whole process would start again. This was changed eventually, such that at some point in green card process, the employee can change jobs (and, in fact, does not even need a new H1-B visa for that). So now sponsoring employees for green card is detrimental to the companies, since they effectively cut the chain tying the employee to themselves by doing so. Yet they still do it.

Now, don't get me wrong - the binding that H1-B creates is still an issue, and yes, it does negatively affect the labor market. This is trivially fixed by adding a grace period after termination of employment such that the person can find a new employee. For example, in Canada, a work permit is valid for staying in the country for its entire original duration even if one is terminated: you can't work, but you can stay and look for a new job, and then apply for a new permit allowing you to work at the new place.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[Hazel Bergeron]

I look forward to the law/medicine gold rush.

Well, it'll be nice to see as many doctors as in Cuba, and paid similarly.

Lawyers/"business"? It's hard to put value on nonproductive work.

Better coverage in WWU student newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

What bugs me though..

[angiasaa]

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?

Translation...

[Omnifarious]

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.".

Re:Translation...

[thoughtsatthemoment]

we can continue spending money on all kinds of ridiculous things that don't actually matter to anybody in particular at all

It has to benefit someone in some way unless the people who spend the money are total idiots. Then that looks like embezzlement to me.

Re:Translation...

[couchslug]

The purpose of most education is job training, so if companies want domestic workers they can shit a few bucks to train them.

Many community colleges do training for specific industries, which can "locally outsource" any training they wish.

Re:Translation...

[Omnifarious]

Keeping people employed who haven't actually done anything useful in the past 10 years is one thing it gets spent on. The whole system is incredibly corrupt and beyond the control of anybody. All these people who've wanted the government to do this or that for them over the years have collectively created a monstrosity that perpetuates itself and has no interest in what's good for the people being governed, only its own survival and growth.

Watching the budget fights as tax revenues have been decreasing due to the disastrous crash of 2008 has sickened me. I don't think I've heard a single argument that takes into account the welfare of everybody has a whole, only defenses of why this or that thing are absolutely critical and important. Unless, of course, the thing in question is highly visible and important to the public. Then it needs to be cut, and cut drastically in order to meet the budget shortfall, unless of course, people are willing to go for increased taxes?

It's ridiculous and disgusting. I can't believe there are people who think that even more of this kind of garbage will somehow help anybody.

I am attending Western Washington University as a

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Meh

[VonSkippy]

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

[Joe The Dragon]

some Computer Science class are a poor fit for it jobs.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/022511-it-graduates.html

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[the_humeister]

I look forward to the law/medicine gold rush.

Well, it'll be nice to see as many doctors as in Cuba, and paid similarly.

Lawyers/"business"?

I don't really think there's a medicine gold rush. The time it takes to finally get to a real job (7-11+ years after college depending on specialty) puts a damper on that. Not to mention the number of medical schools there are in this country. They're difficult to establish.

It's hard to put value on nonproductive work.

Depends on the work. For example, solicit prices for plumbing work from different plumbers and you should get a good idea of what that work should cost.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[thoughtsatthemoment]

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.

Content vs. Poducts

[Teun]

University level innovative work has little to do with a perceived threat from cheap wage places like India or Brazil.

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.

Thanks for the encouragement.

[scottbomb]

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.

Re:Thanks for the encouragement.

[modmans2ndcoming]

Dude.... You should get into a meduczl field... Become an RN, RPh, PA, or MD(if you want to do that amount of work). 18% of GDP. You can then transition into H.I.T. as a technically literate clinitian which is like gold.

Re:Thanks for the encouragement.

[dbc]

Learn to think, and all will be well. If your highest ambition is to be a code monkey, then expect off-shore programmers to eat your lunch. OTOH, there is always demand for a genuine problem solver. Bring solutions (in whatever your domain of expertise) and people will seek you out and you will be in charge of the code monkeys. And even better than being the person with the answers: be the person that asks the right questions. The corner office goes to the person with the best bullshit detector, errm... excuse me... the person with the right questions.

Re:Thanks for the encouragement.

[russotto]

OTOH, there is always demand for a genuine problem solver.

Unfortunately, there isn't. Many companies have decided that they can simply throw a lot of cheap code monkeys at a job and get it done. And most of the time, it works well enough.

On the other hand....

[scottbomb]

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??

Re:On the other hand....

[Em Adespoton]

Just remember that CS and CE are not really the same thing, and neither of them are the same as being a code jockey. CS students are trained to become architects; most of the comments on here are about QA and low-grade programming positions. I'm not quite sure where CE lines up in all that, but I'd guess somewhere in the middle.

Re:On the other hand....

[AuMatar]

CE= computer engineering? Not sure from context. Where I went to school (UIUC), CE was basically like a major in CS and a minor in EE or vice versa, depending on how you did your electives. If they took a more CS version, they're qualified to do anything a CS person is, although perhaps a bit weaker at algorithm development (since they'd have to take some pretty deep electives for that). This type also makes a very good fit for a systems programmer or embedded programmer. If they took a more EE route, they're weaker on architecture but very well set up for an embedded programmer or doing something like DSP work. And of course they can always do circuits instead.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[Rakishi]

Misconceptions are so much fun.

  * Business: 40% of college majors are already in business, calling it over-saturated is an understatement. In other words expect to make a low to middling salary unless you finish top from a top school and have the right connections.
  * Law: Contrary to your flawed perceptions most lawyers make crap money. Unless you're damn brilliant, finish top of your class at a top school and work your ass off at a top firm. Otherwise enjoy filling paperwork in Bumfuck, Iowa for barely more than what you're paying back for your loans.

Bull$@!+

[rsilvergun]

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

Re:Bull$@!+

[modmans2ndcoming]

There was a big shortage in nursing about a decade ago. My wife was able to walk into an interview about 15 minutes after filling out the application and hired on the spot with a retention bonus after 1 year.

Now? If you don't have experience you are fighting with about 100 applicants per open position. Student nurses can't even find jobs as exturns.

Re:Bull$@!+

[russotto]

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.

Yeah. Pro-labor. That means people who do "real work" -- steelworkers, truck drivers, tradespersons, etc. Not software developers; the Dems have no particular need to pander to us, if we're employed we're just another source of taxes to be used to pay for the votes they do care about.

Re:Bull$@!+

[roman_mir]

Actually the best thing is for government to get out of the education and especially from providing government loans, from setting wage laws and various labor regulations, and you will not get this under any government that exists today.

The are many reasons for what I am claiming, I explained much of it here.

In reality most people do not benefit from university education and would be much better off finding employment as early as possible and training on the jobs, but they are prevented from that by government, that sets minimum wage, creates labor laws that make hiring people a liability, etc.

Instead the government provides all this artificial demand for college education - easy to get government loans, which end up creating the artificial demand at the universities, who then can easily jack up the prices and keep quality low, simply because of the government created moral hazard, and this at the same time inflates the value of a degree, decreases quality, keeps people away from learning something useful at work, causes very young people to owe extreme amounts of money before they even start their first jobs, and they have no collateral to cover that and they end up making irrational decisions in terms of what kind of education they'll be getting - something the free market would not allow them to do.

Free market actually is the solution, but only if it's free from government regulations, which would allow most people to get some work instead of going to universities. Of-course young people are indoctrinated by the government into being consumers of credit early on, while making sure they also become slaves into the system, since the education loans cannot even be discharged under bankruptcy laws.

Also today many of the students, who otherwise would be in the work market prefer to stay at school longer for yet another worthless but very expensive degree because the jobs are hard to find. So the real unemployment numbers are even hire because of this.

The amounts of money that the students end up owing are obscene, the programs that students enter are worthless, the educators are ridiculous, the jobs that could be done go unfilled, etc.

This is the government in action and yet people want more of it - must be the worthless economics 'education' provided by Western universities, but at least those classes do their job - keep government propaganda alive in people's minds.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[dingfelder]

Why are you discussing IT? The Article is about "software developers" not IT workers

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[Hazel Bergeron]

I don't really think there's a medicine gold rush. The time it takes to finally get to a real job (7-11+ years after college depending on specialty) puts a damper on that.

5 years of medical degree before salaried employment begins in the UK - sure, you do foundation training and then specialisation, but you're already earning and comfortable. Contrast with many other professional careers where you also only really begin your specialisation after you start employment but there's less in the way of job security.

It takes a doctor to tell everyone how insanely tough and long-winded his journey to qualification was. Yes, it's a more lengthy journey in the US, partly because you don't have A-levels in the UK (or used to be - they've got way easier) comparable to first year of US university and partly because it's typical to do a separate undergraduate degree rather than a medical programme straight out of high school. Again, though, this is typical of professional qualifications. And, in terms of academic skill, someone pursuing a PhD is expected to reach far higher in a similar number of years.

solicit prices for plumbing work from different plumbers

How is a plumber nonproductive? Or am I missing the sarcasm tags?

Riordan's e-mail

[dbc]

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 :)

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[colinrichardday]

Are you saying that plumbing is nonproductive? The GP might not be discussing the price of legal services, but their value.

Re:some Computer Science class are a poor fit for

[colinrichardday]

And some math courses are a poor fit for history jobs. Computer science isn't IT.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[the_humeister]

solicit prices for plumbing work from different plumbers

How is a plumber nonproductive? Or am I missing the sarcasm tags?

The same way that a lawyer is nonproductive: they don't physically produce anything. Since the person I was replying to didn't define "nonproductive", I didn't either until now.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[the_humeister]

Are you saying that plumbing is nonproductive? The GP might not be discussing the price of legal services, but their value.

Then GP didn't define what "nonproductive work" means. Legal services can be valuable or not depending on the situation and the people involved. I'm sure they were very valuable to OJ Simpson.

I don't mind

[RobinEggs]

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?

Re:I don't mind

[natet]

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.

That sounds great, until you realize that UW is cutting the numbers of in state students that they're admitting because out of state students bring in more money in tuition. WWU cutting it's CS department reduces the options that in-state students have for getting a technical education.

Re:I don't mind

[westlake]

There's no need for every basic discipline to have a degree granting department at every school

Western has about 15,000 students - 100 in CS. It is not unfair to ask if this is where the school's strength or focus really lies.

Re:I don't mind

[JAlexoi]

Those 45% deliver so much positive results, that it overshadows the 55% of morons out there.

Re:I don't mind

[Nethead]

Bellingham is considered a suburb of either Seattle or Vancouver. 90 miles is not that bad of a commute around here. This is the U.S. of A., and we drive places.

Re:I don't mind

[zachdms]

I went to WWU. Everybody in my peer CS group either had an excellent job either during or shortly after college. Many of my extended non-CS peer group also ended up buoyed by the CS department's influence and ended up in tech jobs.

My college girlfriend, who went through Woodring (the ed. department at WWU) and was expecting to teach high school Spanish, ended up as director for a major PNW tech company, making about quintuple what she was expecting to make.

WWU, a liberal arts college, does not have its core strength nor focus in CS, but perhaps the ROI there is high enough to merit some serious discussion.

Re:I don't mind

[ironjaw33]

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.

Nothing positive will come of this -- eliminating a program will only decrease awareness and interest in computer science. Every individual in computer science, regardless of ability, makes some measurable contribution to the field. One less degree program means the talent pool will shrink and the impact of CS will shrink right along with it. Does all the talent and productivity come from the big name schools? I think not. Imagine what would happen if all but a few prestigious universities decided to give their CS programs the ax.

What sort of university is this?

[Capt.Albatross]

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."

State spending up 80%: Inflation and pop up 40%

[mschuyler]

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!

Re:State spending up 80%: Inflation and pop up 40%

[meglon]

The biggest problem we have in Washington is some jackass named Eyman who's an anti-government dick who has been making his living on the donations of other anti-government asshats for a decade. Every time around he "organizes" anti-government initiatives so he can leech donation money from supporters.

Re:State spending up 80%: Inflation and pop up 40%

[mschuyler]

Where do you get this 1.4 * 1.4 = 1.96? What kind of math is that? Why are you using that equation? So? That's not the issue. Spending is up 80% in ten years. Population growth and inflation are just under 40%. If state spending had followed population growth and inflation, state spending would have gone up 40% in ten years, not 80%. State spending has gone up twice as fast as inflation and population growth. End of story. No wonder the state is broke.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[Sangui5]

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.

umm

[Weezul]

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.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[thoughtsatthemoment]

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.

My alma mater did this

[Nimey]

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.

Re:My alma mater did this

[bradley13]

"most of the CS grads didn't go on to be computer scientists, but rather programmers"

Two posters have said this, and I don't get it. Teaching you to be a programmer is what most computer science programs are all about. I know people who "program" without having CS-degrees - they do quick-n-dirty Access applications and other crappy stuff. The programmers doing the challenging programming all have computer science degrees.

I went to WWU, and have a CS degree...

[Toasterboy]

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.

Should *every* school teach CS?

[plopez]

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?

CS is not IT

[brillow]

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.

Re:CS is not IT

[Cysgod]

It has been pretty obvious from the communication coming from the Provost at WWU that she hasn't the foggiest idea what Computer Science is or how students apply what they learn when they leave.

Top tier employers and startups don't really want vocational school IT folks. Some of the best system administrators I know have Computer Science degrees and use the knowledge that came with those degrees to kick ass, take names, and automate the crap out of systems they manage. They're over an order of magnitude more productive than the kind of system administrator that thinks that "big O" is Oprah's magazine. I've also seen SAs with no degree pick up these skills over time because they see that it makes them more productive.

A bachelor's in computer science, when it's done right, is something that teaches you the theory that allows you pick up most any tool in the field and find your way through to using it and realize it's strengths and shortcomings. IT on specific products or software engineering with specific tools is to Computer Science as the pipes and fittings are to Fluid Dynamics.

Re:CS is not IT

[brillow]

I agree completely.

You're a hypocrite!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[AuMatar]

I actually did vote for every new tax on Washington's last ballot (and against raising the requirements to institute new taxes). I lost on all of them, unfortunately. And all but one of them would have impacted me.

I'm not going to prop up a broken system by paying more when those richer than me don't. I'm happy to pay my fair share, but not so someone better off than me can live higher on he hog. I gave to charity instead.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[shutdown -p now]

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.

A single person paying even twice as much tax as they normally do would be a drop in the bucket - or far less than that, even.

The only point is when the tax is raised universally, or at least among a sufficiently big group of people (e.g. some tax bracket).

I have a six figure salary in Washington. I wouldn't mind paying more of that as income tax alongside others in the same bracket. Though only if that is state income tax and not federal (I don't want to fund further growth of federal power at the expense of states).

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[bill_mcgonigle]

I have a six figure salary in Washington. I wouldn't mind paying more of that as income tax alongside others in the same bracket.

Be the change you want to see in the world. Lead by example, etc.

Though only if that is state income tax and not federal (I don't want to fund further growth of federal power at the expense of states)

Wise move (though donating the money to more efficient charities would be even wiser).

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[shutdown -p now]

The whole point of taxes is that people decide what is fair as a collective, and then everyone paying that. That's the only way anyone would pay anything at all

People paying what they individually think is a "fair tax" is a recipe of disaster - as most can't trust others to pay, and services funded by taxation are distributed to everyone regardless of how much they paid, the only way to avoid freeloading is to not pay at all.

And I don't believe in libertarianism (as a society better than what we have, anyway).

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[larry bagina]

47% of households paid no income tax for 2009 or 2010. 43% think their taxes are "just right".

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[meglon]

This is the same stupider than shit conservative talking point that idiots on other sites use.

You ignore all the other taxes that are paid by people who are not on the higher end of earning scale, many of those taxes placing a larger burden on the poor. You cherry pick a single fact and thinks it makes the case: it doesn't. In the first year of income tax, less than 1/2 of 1 percent of people had to pay it.

Here's another good one.. the top quintal owns 87% of ALL resources, perhaps they should pay 87% of all taxes?

The simple fact is, greedy little whores have been leeching this country dry, borrowing on our children's and our grand children's futures for the last 30 years. They have failed to reinvest as EVERY generation before them did, so not only have they leeched 13 trillion from future generations, they've allowed the infrastructure to fall into disrepair. Worthless little maggots like that dickless wonder down in Texarse talk about Texas being better at helping Texas than the federal government.. yet when his state is burning, and after 25 federal grants to help, he enough of a fucking hypocrite to whine like a little bitch that the feds aren't doing enough.

It's time to castrate all the anti-Americans out their that want to destroy the country, and repair the damage they've done since Ronnie the Imbecile was top dumbass. Raise tax rates back to the level they were in 1960, and make it so they automatically rise if their is any deficit in a year; lowering if we run a surplus. Then remove the power of congress to change that automation, after all, all they do is pander to worthless pieces of shit.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[Sarius64]

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.

A single person paying even twice as much tax as they normally do would be a drop in the bucket - or far less than that, even.

The only point is when the tax is raised universally, or at least among a sufficiently big group of people (e.g. some tax bracket).

I have a six figure salary in Washington. I wouldn't mind paying more of that as income tax alongside others in the same bracket. Though only if that is state income tax and not federal (I don't want to fund further growth of federal power at the expense of states).

...and so what people who make sarcastic statements about themselves paying more taxes really mean is that they approve of the government using violence against other people to take more of their money.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[shutdown -p now]

...and so what people who make sarcastic statements about themselves paying more taxes really mean is that they approve of the government using violence against other people to take more of their money.

Government is, by definition, an institution which monopolizes violence. Said violence is used for many handy things, such as enforcing laws, without which the modern society would not exist. Taxes are one such things. So, yes, I approve of the government using violence against other people to force them to pay their fair share, just as I am paying it.

If you don't want the government "stealing your money", feel free to move to Somalia.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[bill_mcgonigle]

47% of households paid no income tax for 2009 or 2010. 43% think their taxes are "just right".

This is often recited, but economically incorrect.

About 22% of prices are upstream income taxes. You can see how income taxes are part of the cost of goods, I'm sure.

Also, everybody pays FICA taxes, which are based on income, only segregated as separate line-items.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[bill_mcgonigle]

People paying what they individually think is a "fair tax" is a recipe of disaster

That's not the meaning of the "Fair Tax". You can find info on it online.

And I don't believe in libertarianism (as a society better than what we have, anyway).

How do you define 'better'? As MK Gandhi said, "the means are everything."

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[shutdown -p now]

That's not the meaning of the "Fair Tax". You can find info on it online.

Don't give me this "free" vs "Free" bullshit, please. Fair is subjective.

How do you define 'better'?

Less human suffering.

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[bill_mcgonigle]

That's not the meaning of the "Fair Tax". You can find info on it online.

Don't give me this "free" vs "Free" bullshit, please. Fair is subjective.

You'll think this comment is silly when you decide to read fairtax.org instead of guessing about what it means from the name.

How do you define 'better'?

Less human suffering

Do you believe people suffer when their liberty is denied?

Re:You're a hypocrite!

[shutdown -p now]

You'll think this comment is silly when you decide to read fairtax.org instead of guessing about what it means from the name.

You still misunderstand me. I know full well what "Fair Tax" (as promoted by fairtax.org) means. This is not what I referred to when I wrote "fair tax" in my original post at all; "fair tax" (note no capital letters) just means "tax which is considered fair by the person". It's basic English.

Do you believe people suffer when their liberty is denied?

They do. Some liberties, however result in other people suffering significantly more. For example, the liberty to murder or rape people. Or the liberty to use economic power to coerce people.

In any case, I'm not interested in debating the merits of libertarianism with a libertarian. This has been done all over the Net countless times and is there for everyone to see, read, and decide for themselves (I was a staunch libertarian myself several years ago). I don't see the point of rehashing that stuff - sapienti sat.

Provost to CS: Bring in the $$$ or else

[MikeTheGreat]

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!

Re:Provost to CS: Bring in the $$$ or else

[Cysgod]

However when the school repeatedly engages in shenanigans like this, it makes the tech community and well place alumni a *lot* less likely to give money to the school. Instead donations from alumni are being targeted at the department itself and related student activities since it appears the school doesn't have the best interests of the CS department at heart.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[Nethead]

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.

freelancer.com baby

[decora]

thats what i call an 'efficient market'.

should apply at goldman sachs

[decora]

they love that kind of stuff there.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[Nethead]

And UW is right down the road.

Very insightful comments. I wish I hadn't used up my daily allocation of mod points.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[1729]

You'd have to be out of your mind to consider paying to do a technical degree these days.

In the last few months, I've been inundated with calls and emails from recruiters. I'm not looking for a new job, and I don't want to move, but some of the salaries being mentioned are obscene. Maybe it's a temporary boom, but it's not a bad time to be a computer scientist.

Not Unique

[MimeticLie]

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.

BFD it's just Western

[tyrione]

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.

Re:BFD it's just Western

[Krater76]

I graduated in 2000 with a BS in CS from WSU. I have been very happy with my career so far and I feel the education was top notch. WSU has an excellent EECS department and it's only going to get better with some capital improvements that are going to start on campus in the near future. Maybe WWU's loss with be WSU's gain.

This does go back to an overall problem with the state of Washington and their lack of funding for higher education. When I started school in the Fall of 1995 my in-state semester tuition was about $1300. I think by the time I'd graduate it was about $2400. A little rise over 5 years, but not terrible, and everyone was talking about it being about as high as it could go. Now it's about $4500 a semester and it's going to go up a ton again next year. This isn't exclusive to Washington and is a big problem across the US. If states continue to price students out of educational opportunities then our engineers and scientists will come from overseas. All that said, Go Cougs!

Marshall did the same thing

[kriston]

Marshall did the same thing years ago.

Surprising Misconceptions on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[hrvatska]

I don't know about business or medicine, but graduating from law school is not the ticket to the good life that it once was. The number of law school graduates that are not able to land a position as a lawyer is legion. There's no shortage of tales of people graduating from law school with $100, 000 in debt and not being able to find employment that will enable them to pay off that debt. The statistics that law schools provide on the number of their graduates that are employed after nine months and the salaries they are making are widely considered to be inflated. Law schools are generating more graduates that the legal profession can absorb, while new law schools continue to open.

support of WWU CSci quality and need

[JTMoon]

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).

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Gotta call you out on this...

[mevets]

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.

Re:Gotta call you out on this...

[Savantissimo]

That may be the biggest load of bullshit I have read in over a decade on Slashdot.

Re:Gotta call you out on this...

[PCM2]

That may be the biggest load of bullshit I have read in over a decade on Slashdot.

That is baseless hyperbole, sir! Jon Katz was still working for Slashdot ten years ago.

Re:Gotta call you out on this...

[JAlexoi]

Defining a PhD as an expert is incorrect. Even PhDs amongst themselves have people of authority in certain areas. So extrapolating expertise of a person based on his degree is plain wrong.
I don't even have a BSc, yet am able to argue with PhDs and win those arguments(Granted, 10 years of CS studies outside of normal academic institutions is my background). I'm not even talking about MSc.

Cutting CS makes sense ...

[perpenso]

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.

Re:Cutting CS makes sense ...

[benhattman]

It makes me sad to see this cited as insightful. At least in the US, a typical local budget (city/state) is broken down something like the following.

70% - Education
15% - Law Enforcement/Fire Services
10% - Infrastructure (almost entirely roads and bridges)
5% - Everything else, including those annoying bureaucrats.

The reason city's threaten to cut education or police is because that's what they spend most of their money on.

Re:Cutting CS makes sense ...

[perpenso]

... Its equivalent to a city threatening to cut police, fire or K-12 teachers ...

It makes me sad to see this cited as insightful. At least in the US, a typical local budget (city/state) is broken down something like the following. 70% - Education 15% - Law Enforcement/Fire Services 10% - Infrastructure (almost entirely roads and bridges) 5% - Everything else, including those annoying bureaucrats. The reason city's threaten to cut education or police is because that's what they spend most of their money on.

What your hypothetical numbers fail to account for is that there are plenty of bureaucrats in that segment you identify as education. Note that I specifically wrote "teachers". You also fail to realize that large dramatically sized cuts are not required. For example, if a large urban school district is told to cut $300K from the education budget they are not going to cancel the office remodeling budgets of high ranking school district administrators, they are going to hold a press conference saying that the jobs of 5 teachers are threatened.

Why Poswt Something So Wrong?

[raftpeople]

If you don't even know what city WWU is in, why would you post on slashdot? Please respond and explain yourself, thank you.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[rekenner]

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. . .

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 ... 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.

Budget cutting is a necessity

[lsatenstein]

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.

Programmers are the managers of the future

[mangu]

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?

Maybe there is another reason

[MadeInUSA]

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.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[TheRaven64]

The interesting thing about lawyers is that an increase in supply also causes an increase in demand. Every lawyer that you employ forces someone else to employ two...

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[w_dragon]

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.

Please EDIT THIS POST

[ShadowFoxx]

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.

Too many factors

[mctee155]

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.

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[Rakishi]

You think the school pays for that? That's what grants are for.

They got the memo...

[Baldrson]

US students are ineducable wanna-be gangsta-rappahs, yo'. Tech employment should be outsource to the developing world where people are intelligent and diligent!

The University of Western Washington is just facing reality. Really, all of US higher education should just give up.

Re:CS Degree? Are you insane?

[MakinBacon]

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.

That depends on where you live. Over here in DC, there is metric shit-ton of engineering jobs working for the military industrial complex.

Fallacy of on the job training

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[roman_mir]

well, you are wrong on every point, and by the way - your way of thinking is what is driving investment capital out of Western nations and for a good reason.

I am not going to speak about large corporations, most of which have too many government connections to count as real market participants - they are mostly oligopolies/monopolies, that benefit from buying government officials, who then protect these monopolies by destroying competition. However small businesses always have hired apprentices when they could do so (when government didn't make the practice impossible due to all the labor regulations, that create too much risk of litigation and force labor prices too high for somebody, who is completely new to the work force).

You are wrong, because people used to be trained by small businesses in the West and they now get trained in Asia by those same small businesses (and also they do get trained by large firms there as well).

As to 90% tax, you are entitled to your opinion, but nobody ever paid that even when tax rates were that high in USA on personal taxes. People just find ways to go around that, as actual effective tax rate never exceeded 20% in USA (and it also rarely went below 18%).

You can dream all you want about the rich paying those ridiculous taxes, but that's just not going to happen ( and I am morally opposed to that as well, but that does not matter, I am opposed to even 1% income tax, it should be 0% for all businesses and people, Lucerne has this right, we'll eventually have 0%).

The rich actually provide much more benefit to society than any particular poor, because they do invest the money that they do not spend on themselves, and that money either in form of a business they run or in form of some credit that is made up of their investment ends up in a business, and as long as it does not end up in any government hands, I am happy, because only private enterprise actually creates wealth - products and services that market needs, as opposed to all the nonsense that governments waste the tax money on.

I am against government intervention into economy completely, as it has been shown time and again, that government should stay away from economy. As any organization that does not have to balance the books, it grows until it eats all resources that it can allocate, but because it is the government, it finds then that it can also destroy the very economy that it feeds from by destroying the currency of that economy and the society in process.

Should anybody pay 90% income taxes? :) no, of-course not. There is only one correct income tax: 0%.

But that was not even my original point, it was that government money create moral hazard in everything, and this includes higher education. I was giving an answer to your question, that's all.

As to you and your pals - you'll have to go through the private security and through the local police and funnily enough you'll then be met with our legally owned and mandated machine guns. Yes, machine guns and grenade launchers and even heavier stuff.

As to cancers - health care is as much a normal good as anything else, it has nothing to do with government.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[rsilvergun]

"The rich actually provide much more benefit to society than any particular poor, because they do invest the money that they do not spend on themselves"

The rich have that money (wealth) because it is produced by society. Period. Donald Trump doesn't produce anything I want or need. He's not even terribly effective as a business leader. He's a member of the ruling class, part of a privileged elite. Everything he has he owes to a society that allows and encourages him to have it.

Oh, and as for only private enterprise creating wealth, read up on the history of the rail roads. Or look into how drugs are researched before the 'test it and make money off it' phase. The gov't does all the heavy lifting. Always has. Then you're precious rich folk move in, buy off a few congress critters, and pocket all the wealth. It's been like that for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Pick up a copy of 'A People's History of the United States'. That's a good start. As for small businesses training: well, isn't that nice? But they are also too small to train people to do anything more complex than run a lathe or edit spreadsheets. If you're talking about the kind of training that replaces Universities, they can't do that. Large corps can, but why should they when people will do it themselves, go hopelessly in debt to doing it, and when they fall by the wayside they're easily replace.

Don't forget, life is nasty, brutish and short. Viva la Adam Smith!

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[roman_mir]

The rich have that money (wealth) because it is produced by society. Period.

- you don't know what wealth is, and it's not money. Period.

If money were wealth, Zimbabwe, Argentina, USSR, Weimar Republic of Germany and the other 60-80 cases of high and/or hyper-inflation that happened within the last 150 years would have made those countries the richest in the world.

The reason why a country goes broke, when it prints and borrows more and more money is exactly due to the expansion of monetary supply, which coincides with government setting interest rates to 0% (or near 0%) for short term borrowing from the government banks - so money really becomes free (to large corporations at least) and this means that savings become wiped out. Anybody who saves in that currency loses everything, and this destroys the investment capital.

So people have figured this out and they quickly move their investment capital out of countries that take on this policy of destroying their currency. Of-course in USA this started with Nixon moving US off the gold standard. All this nonsense, that USA cannot default on its obligations is just political hot air, USA has already defaulted on many of its obligations, one of which was to redeem the US dollars for gold.

So, to reiterate: wealth of the society is not its money, it is its production base. If there is no production then there is no wealth. The reason why production moved out of USA and most of the rest of the Western nations is exactly because they are printing, borrowing and making all these unsustainable financial choices to maintain the welfare state.

As to rail roads, etc. In 19 century US government was involved in this and it helped the tycoons and the robber barons (as you call them), so again, my point that government must stay out of economic and fiscal decisions applies.

As to drugs: in USA FDA actually is the cause of most of the cost that drug development incurs. FDA prevents drugs from hitting the shelves and causes untold amount of pain and suffering, by forcing prices up due to all this nonsense that they force companies to go through. In USA many drugs cannot be sold that are sold around the world due to the rules that force companies to prove not only that drugs are safe for consumption, but also that they are effective, and this is definitely not the place for government, as it pushes the prices up, while keeping drugs out of people's reach.

When you say: "government does heavy lifting, always has" - you are absolutely wrong. The real heavy lifting comes from the private people, investing and risking, coming up with new ideas. Government can only stifle innovation, and any innovation that comes out of gov't funded research is either too expensive and mis-allocates resources, that could be spent better or it simply fails and it does so too late, because government does not get the market signals that it is mis-allocating resources on something, that market does not need.

As to people being trained by business and not by Universities - most people get nothing from Universities, they go there due to the pressure, created artificially by the government money, which subsidizes University degrees for too many people, inflating the value of those degrees away, while forcing the young to think they need those degrees to enter the work force.

Again, they would have been much better off simply working and learning through working. The government prevents all meaningful apprenticeship programs that used to take place prior to government money and intervention and regulations of labor.

When you say: 'precious rich folk move in, by congress critters, and pocket all the wealth' - again, that is why government must be expressly prohibited being involved in economy in any way shape or form. The businesses compete among each other for customers absent government, which provides incentives instead to compete not for customers in the market place, but for market share in government halls.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[superwiz]

- you don't know what wealth is, and it's not money. Period.

Actually, I would go from another side of the equation. I don't think he knows what money is. Money is a token for enumerating exchange. This is why in different contexts different concepts can stand in for money: as contexts change so can the tokens used for the enumeration. And as contexts go out of existence (countries fall) the tokens used in those contexts lose their meaning. As more wealth becomes enumerable through a specific type of tokens, these tokens increase in value. If more of these tokens are issued, they decrease in value.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[superwiz]

Many large corporations are now forced to essentially run boot camps for out-of-college students. They spend months in college-level courses developed specifically for new graduates to teach them enough to make them useful in the real world work. This is because universities don't prepare people for professional work force. They, for the most part, only prepare people for graduate school.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[roman_mir]

Money is a store of value, unit of account and tokens of exchange. However many people confuse that with actual wealth, which is goods and services that are produced by the economy.

When economy stops producing, it loses wealth but it can still have plenty of money in it, it's just as the economy gets unproductive, it removes the backing from the money and then destroys the fiat currency by printing and destroys the economy completely by printing and borrowing.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[superwiz]

No, my definition is more precise. It is exclusively a token for enumerating exchange. It is NOT, in itself, a store of value. It only preserves value as long as it remains the accepted token for enumerating exchanges. So the value is not preserved in money, but in the context in which it exists as the token. If the context disappears, the value is gone even if the token remains. It is not a unit of account, but a token for enumerating exchange. A unit of account would mean that every transaction would be translatable into that unit. It isn't. There is a large number of classes of transactions which are not enumerated with money. This is because they don't involve an exchange or involve an exchange of that which cannot be enumerated.

Re:Fallacy of on the job training

[roman_mir]

For your definition to be precise, you should then specify that you are talking about fiat.

Fiat is all about context.

Gold and other commodities have value with much wider range of context. When fiat disappears (and it always does), gold and other things stay and their value remains (measured in each other), but in the disappeared fiat, their value becomes infinite.

But real money does have 3 properties that I mentioned, if it doesn't possess those properties, then we are talking about flawed money.

Re:You want a different degree.

[HazMathew]

Truthfully software engineering is much more than just programming. Software Engineering deals with the whole software life cycle from pre-development activities (requirements gathering, prototyping, architecture, planning, estimation, budgeting, choosing appropriate methodologies) through development, testing, QA, and post-implementation of software systems.

To be an engineer one must posses a solid fundamental understanding of science (physics, chemistry and most importantly mathematics). These are not subjects that are mastered through attending a vocational school. Why would these subjects be needed by a software engineer? Because they're required to understand the systems that form the natural world, and this knowledge is priceless when designing new systems. Going through the rigor of studying engineering teaches one how to analyze and learn, it formalizes one's intuition, and fosters an appreciation for pragmatic yet elegant design.

When I hire engineerings I expect no less than a degree from an Engineering College at an accredited University. When I hire developers, vocational school is fine, given they can demonstrate they're proficiency in the required technology.

Nice try, thanks for playing.

Not so much different ...

[garry_g]

... 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 ...

Re:I am attending Western Washington University as

[w_dragon]

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.