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University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department
DustyShadow writes "The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million. The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments. Students at UF have already organized protests, and have created a website dedicated to saving the CS department. Several distinguished computer scientists have written to the president of UF to express their concerns, in very blunt terms. Prof. Zvi Galil, Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech, is 'amazed, shocked, and angered.' Prof. S.N. Maheshwari, former Dean of Engineering at IIT Delhi, calls this move 'outrageously wrong.' Computer scientist Carl de Boor, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and winner of the 2003 National Medal of Science, asked the UF president 'What were you thinking?'"
n/m
Can we study the same things in other departments without having a dedicated Computer Science niche to go with Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, etc.?
Gator CHOMP!!
their program sucked anyway.
"What were you thinking?"
Well, probably something along the lines of "That department did not publish well enough and the students did not bring in enough money".
...that Florida shares with yogurt.
Because the average CS student sucks at football.
NERDS!!!!!
FTFA:
The majority of students would be transferred to the hardware-oriented ECE department
The CISE department would be converted to a teaching-only department
50% of faculty would be transferred to other engineering departments (ECE, ISE, and BME)
so, if it will be a teaching only department, that doesn't seem the same as eliminated. They'll move the engineering in with the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, and it seems leave CISE to teach programming.
They'll still have football, right? Good to see they've got their priorities straight.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Additional resources have been freed up to staff the Physical Education, Sports Management and Communications departments.
Yup, everyone knows that a pure CS major is a joke. Move the classes into the Engineering and Math departments where they belong. If you want a joke degree, there are plenty of online universities.
UF - the party school!
Having degrees that actually require "study" is against school policy?
OTOH, how many people go to UF for CS degrees? It isn't like a top 10 school or anything. #39 isn't really that bad. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science-schools/university-of-florida-134130 Their math department is ranked in the 50s, so perhaps that should be eliminated too?
BTW, I live in a nearby state and we have lots and lots of UF grads here. Some are really smart, unfortunately, none of these folks are in the school's administration.
When I think of UF, I think
* sports
* marketing
* business
* biology (location, location, location)
I don't think engineering, CS, architecture .... sorry.
Is it April 1st again already? Surely this is some sort of joke?
To be fair, you would probably have a better chance of introducing "mens' studies". You could major in strip clubs, beer consumption, and ... I'll let you work out the rest.
University President: Our website is down! Quick! Get it back up!
Staff: Sir, we have no more computer science department. Remember?
When asking UF officials about this bold move, one official stated, "Dude just wait. This is only the beginning of The Plan, we are looking forward for a 25 and 50 year agenda to close all remaining schools in the state, we will be Agenda 21 compliant. Our sustainability plan is on schedule"
They are running an online petition on the website here: http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/how-you-can-help/
Personally, I can vouch that the research output from one of the professors in this department, Tim Davis, (http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~davis/) has found its way into industry software like Matlab and other engineering applications. It will be a loss to the community to see this go.
Grievance mongers.. nice little sexist jab there.... also nice bit of hypocrisy in general... 'how dare they cut something I like to fund something they find valuable! Here are a list of things I don't find value in they should cut instead!'.
Seriously? While some of those degrees look more like they belong at a technical school or a community college, some look legit to me. Also, academic Religious Studies (as I assume the Religion department is) tend to look at religion in a more anthropological and sociological perspective than a "belief and preaching" perspective. Thus, the typical Religious Studies department would be a very bad fit for a seminary.
... move beyond computer industry imposed constraints on those who use computers. Time for those who use computers to automate for themselves.
The football coach alone may make more than the entire CS department costs. Make football intramural and allocate resources to education.
I'm curious: why Computer Science? The program shouldn't be very expensive on a per-student basis, especially compared to the physical sciences. Was the department just uniquely dysfunctional or under-performing? Why not cut, say, physics? Not that Physics should be cut either, but the choice of Computer Science seems arbitrary.
"Golf and Sports Turf Management" - I thought you were joking. A BSc in that?!
Excuse me while I die laughing.
Hey, in Florida Golf and Sports Turf Management Degrees are need to work on some Golf courses and such. Also, Recreation, Parks, and Tourism is a huge part of Florida and is why there is no income tax.
by dropping all the departments!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
He disagrees about which subjects are valuable. I don't see any hypocrisy in that, just a difference of opinions.
Religion (this is why we have seminaries!)
Religious Studies is completely different from seminary; Religious Studies being the one where you actually are informed about religions, seminary being where you are misinformed about one.
they probably need the money to help the team. Everyone knows SEC football titles is WAY more important then actual classes.
For all the Teaching Company fans out there, it is ironic that Bruce Edwards makes some of the best Math lectures available around. So there he is moving education into the 21st century when the same university he teaches at is forgetting that the 21st century is going to be a mix of computers, robotics, and biology. I wonder what their stance on evolution is?
How is "Women's Studies" note sexist?
Florida has to cut the budget somwhere, and universities are hotbeds of radical socialist indoctrination. Especially computer science. Now, if the CS department could pay its own way like football does that might be different.
Fortunately, Florida State has found a solution to the problem: their economics department has found a sponsor who will provide lots of funding in return for veto power over new faculty hires. UF is no doubt looking for to improve on the method.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I knew a few people who went through programs like that when I lived in FL. It can lead to a very lucrative career. It may be a stupid society that generates the need for the program - but the people in the US who study it now are not stupid.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The author of the TFA implies that the University cut the CS program to bank roll athletics. In fact, the athletic department receives NO funding at all from the school! Not only that, the athletic department gifts the school $6-$8MM annually, and has previously upped the contribution to help the university not have to make cuts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Florida_Athletic_Association
So it's OK to decry the dropping of a major department, but don't let the story get spun by the ignorant or those with an agenda.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
And how did not get written as note?
OK, giving each of these an enormous budget does not make sense, but I think each of these are legitimate lines of study in some proportion. You really do not think Sociology is a big deal?? ...As in the study of the thing we all complain about all the time and would really like fixed, if only we could better understand how it really works??
Hey! We're not nerds. We're geeks!
Computer Science is an expensive department to maintain. If the school wasn't doing well in it, there's no reason to keep it around. I'm sure there are dozens of other colleges in the area that still have program you could get into. When I went to college there wasn't such a thing as a computer science department outside of major, very expensive universities that I couldn't get into. So I majored in English and took whatever computer classes they had. Here I am, all these years later, a DB admin. I don't even really remember what I learned in English classes... I'm pretty fluent in English... so maybe that.
You don't build strength in your movement by turning students and faculty from different departments against each other. You say a tax revolt is "needed", but so far it's only in your imagination. There's no course charted for it, and it won't happen. The most likely way to keep the CS department intact is for the students and faculty to continue the organizing around the issue that they've already been doing. Once they're organized, they can shut the whole university down until their demands are met. That's how collective power works, not by sitting at home deciding not to pay taxes and praying that everyone else is doing the same.
By the way, I'm sure those 3 music degrees don't actually represent 3 whole separate departments, just different course arrangements.
CS overlaps with quite a bit, so I can see some redundancies.
However, I'd have first cut useless junk like diversity studies or political "science".
Very few sysadmins that I know have degrees in computer science.
They have degrees in science, engineering, or for some, no degree at all. All focused on problem solving skills, but no so much on the heavy math that comes from CompSci degrees. We need to worry about getting things built and keeping them working -- the most efficient way to sort something doesn't really come up too much.
And as someone who has worked for a university ... I was surprised how none of the IT staff taught classes. Some of the CompSci faculty hadn't been in the industry for 10+ years, and would show slides w/ 15 year old computers in them. It was cringe-worthy.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Staple a check to your sternly worded letter.
You are mistaken... football is a profit center,not a cost center for universities. You can sell tickets to football games; you can't sell tickets to CS.
Football is NOT a profit center, it only appears that way if you ignore some of the costs: extra campus security required to protect the campus during and after games (drunken fan students cause a lot of direct property damage and indirect assault damage), all the non-football sports programs that you MUST fund if you want football and federal funds under Title IX, etc.
Speaking as a Gator who went to school back when if you wanted to study computers you had to go into the Engineering School it sounds like they are moving backwards. As in like when I went to UF if you wanted to study CIS you had to take Calc 1-3 (ok...most of us were fine with that), Chem 1-2 (hum...), and Physics 1-2 (gahhh?), along with some other very non-CIS related but much more related Engineering classes. In effect if you wanted to learn to be a programmer, network engineer, or even a web designer you had to have the background of a EE.
It was total overkill and drove a lot of students away from the department. But at the time, late 80's-early 90's, the whole PC thing was still relatively brand new so that a large institution like UF had not adapted its curriculum was no huge shock. Disappointing yes but not all that shocking.
Now TFA is very light on details on how what the new curriculum for students would be. If they are indeed going back to asking CIS students to have EE level requirements. So this might just be a bit of good ol' yellow journalism. But it is indeed worth of some attention such that we can full details on how and why this is happening.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
My wife and I both graduated from this department several years ago. This department offers the best education; the liberal arts counterpart program is weak. If you want to be good, or you want to be the best, you would enroll in this department.
My wife and I have both launched into incredibly technical and lucrative careers, and now that we are raising our 2 children I'm continually alarmed at the divestment of science and engineering in this country. This morning I joked with her that our jobs will be secure for the next 25 years, because now our children won't even be able to enroll in a department of this caliber. In fact, if I want our kids to become engineers, at what point will I have to send them to India or China? The University of Florida is certainly taking a step down.
This may be related to the recent stripping of USF Polytechnic from USF creating the twelfth public university, Florida Polytechnic.
Lot's of politics here, possibly related to a powerful senator's retirement plans!
Anyone who thinks music is a simple major is a damn fool.
What percentage of students who graduate from computer science programs actually practice computer science after the fact? I speculate that number is extremely small, and the vast majority go into software development, with most of those building web applications. Many media schools offer courses in building web applications. Oh, and if your institution offers mathematics, why do you need computer science?
I work for an engineering college at a big university and we have some departments that really need cutting. I'm talking departments that, literally, have less than 10 students. Well when you have low enrollment numbers like that you don't really bring in the money to support a department head, a few professors, support staff, and so on. They are a drain on resources and need to be cut.
One way or another, a department needs to bring in enough money to support itself. Now that could be directly bringing in money through research grants, but can also be through tuition. Departments that do a lot of teaching but little to no research can be plenty valuable because if students are coming for those classes, they are bringing in tuition dollars.
If they can't bring in money to support themselves, meaning pay the salaries, capital and operations costs, all that kind of thing, then they need to be cut in size or eliminated entirely. It is neither fair nor smart to say "Let's grab money from a successful department and use it to prop up an unsuccessful one."
No, it IS a bad thing... Right now everyone who lives if Florida is concentrated in Florida. If it sinks those guys are going to move SOMEWHERE and do you really want that spread out over the whole country?
Football is a profit center at most universities, at least most big ones. The reason the coach can get paid so much is because they bring in that kind of money. Where I work, football, men's basketball, and donations fund the entire athletics department. I'm talking all the staff and facilities, and every single scholarship including all those for non-money sports (like volleyball and women's golf). Oh, and they give back some money to the general fund. As such they get to pay the coach what they like. They make the money, they can afford it.
Sports make a shit ton of money. On tickets to be sure but media is the big one. Schools are paid a massive amount for the rights to televise a game. Then of course there's merchandising. They license their logo for products and fans love to buy them.
So no, in most cases cutting athletics would cost the school money, not save money. University of Florida is certainly one of those, they make a lot on their athletics. If you want to cut athletics because you are a geek that hates jocks then ok, but call it what it is. They best idea money wise is to keep it around.
I am posting as AC because I am well aware that a lot of UF fans/alumni are rabid in their support for the school and own shotguns. Things may have changed since my time at UF, but when I was there there (1999-2003) there were many redundant computer degrees:
Decision Information Sciences (School of Business)
Computer Information Science (School of Business)
Computer Information Science (Liberal Arts and Sciences)
Computer Information Science and Engineering (College of Engineering)
Digital Arts and Sciences (Fine Arts/Engineering)
The delta between these degrees was maybe 10-15% change in classes. It could be that they are just trying to clean up a lot of that redundancy, and streamline their operations.
Now here's something that should attract students!
4 years of Sping Break!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Bet Willy from the Simpsons holds that degree.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Come to UCF where academia is still a higher priority than sport (although that gap is slowly getting smaller).
There are tons of areas where your degree in CS can be put to use.
Well everyone knows that computer's just aren't science! Computers have no place in modern society.They are obviously saving that money for something more important to today's world, like Administrator salaries or classes in Intelligent Design.
Thank the Republicans who control the Florida legislature who have been cutting funding for education while at the same time providing more tax cuts and subsidies to business all while creating another State university that won't dilute the already deficient funding for education.
Universities are for all sorts of purposes. Education is one, a big one. They make a lot of their money from student tuition and spend a lot of resources on student education. However that's not all they do. Research is another. Universities do a shitload of research of all types. Some of it is pie-in-the-sky pure research, some of it is targeted development, some of it is corporate funded, some of it is government funded, etc. Public service/access would be another, at least for public universities. They often run public museums, have public libraries, and so on. They give some back to the public (and are required to).
However they are also out to make students happy. University is NOT supposed to be some place you go for 4 or 6 or 10 years to do nothing but study and hate life. You'll have trouble funding a lot of people interested in doing that. They work on that happiness in all sorts of ways and sports is one of them, particularly in America. Americans love them some sports and university sports are popular, and not just with the students. Also it happens to be that you can make some money doing it, as well as getting advertising for your school.
None of the goals are mutually exclusive, nor are any of the smaller goals I didn't enumerate. Universities don't have to focus all on one thing and you don't have to trade off one for another. This is particularly true because the money doesn't all come from one place, it isn't all in one pot. For example a big $10 million research project doesn't take away resources from education. That money comes from a grant, and it isn't as though it could be stolen and given to classrooms, that would be illegal and if you tried, you'd not get any grants.
Likewise it isn't as though you could just take all the money brought in by athletics and spend it elsewhere, because then you'd have no athletics program and bring in no money. Same with donations to it. Those are made for a specific purpose and you use them as the donors want or you don't use them at all. We got a stadium upgrade/expansion recently on account of a large private donation from a guy who played football here at one time. That money couldn't go to anything else, he donated it to athletics and that is what it had to be used for. However that expansion didn't hurt the general fund at all, it was funded by that donation, so it isn't stopping a new 100,000 sq ft engineering building from being built.
There's no reason sports can't be one of the things universities do, and I see no reason to hate on them for it.
No, you shuld be hiring programmers with a technical degree. CS programs don't make scientists. They don't make programmers. I've yet to figure out what good they are, since they give a shitty liberal arts education, which I do value (in a dollars sort of I want to hire you because you'll contribute to my company) and a shitty engineering education, and a shitty programming education. Most of the CS graduates wasted a lot of time and money on getting nothing more than a hangover and a tech school education. However, the tech school grads went to college because they're hungry and want to make themselves better.
As a computer science graduate I often ask why I did not have the choice to get a degree in systems administration.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You want to study Computer Science? Enroll somewhere else. You live in Florida, and want to study Computer Science cheaply at a state subsidized school? Move.
If folks in Florida sees no point in educating Computer Science students, let 'em. The loss will be theirs. Say "Hello" to your new neighbors from India.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Most tech schools tech real IT skills and have any number of different tracks.
CS tends to focus to much on coding and high level theory. Some CS programs are so much on the theory you get people who are poor programs out of them.
also they don't trun out people who can do ADMIN work / other IT work.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/022511-it-graduates.html
Now when you can learn more in a 2 year tech school that so that most CS programs are to long and don't cover the right areas.
Now we need IT to be more like a trade with going education that is not just BA, masters, PHD, post doc, and other higher level stuff that you see at colleges. For some to have to take a 2+ year on going education with all the filler and fluff classes is not the right way to learn new IT skills and for working pro's it likely you can only find classes that fit your time at community colleges (most are only 2 years BUT DO OFFER classes as NON Degree) or tech schools or online classes.
DOES NOT COMPUTE
The sad truth, is that most of the university money doesn't come threw students. But threw grants, alumni donations, government support, and sports.
If schools really wanted to save money, they will stop building new buildings every couple of years, and use the money to renovate existing buildings, for those of you in college, I challenge you to analyse the utilization of the classrooms of all the building at any one moments, I would expect that during peak hours there is a 50% utilization of all the classrooms. However when you try to build a brand new building you get more support from the big payers.
The school I recently graduated from is building a brand new Business Building. Why? Who really knows. Business students don't need much. A classroom with a projector for power point, a podium, and the ability to break up in small groups, perhaps some Wi-Fi. We are not talking about Science classes that needs Gas for Bunsen burners, or large equipment to study new and interesting stuff. They can operate well in a normal classroom. Why build new ones, when the old ones work fine?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
IT should be at the NON Degree / Non-Matriculated Student level as a lot of TECH / IT work does not fit in a Traditional Degree plan.
Move to a Badges system http://chronicle.com/article/Badges-Earned-Online-Pose/130241/
I don't get the outrage here. The article might just as well have positioned this as moving the education to the new Polytechnic. But that's not good for page views. So we get this opinion piece instead.
Based on tuition and costs, there could be anywhere between 85-200 students covered by this department to get the $1.7M savings. And there is a Polytechnic being created in Tampa specifically for this kind of thing. Why invest in something that is going to be poached by your new University anyway?
A number of posters have been wondering why UF cut the Computer Science department. It is because the administrators at the University of Florida want more funding from the state of Florida, and a useful and popular STEM program is a higher value hostage than, say, any Arts and Humanities program.
My basis for this is OP's linked article in Forbes, which quite transparently links the elimination of the department with state budget cuts. Could you imagine how that would read if UF threatened closure of a Literature department and elimination of courses in postmodernism and semiotics? Most sane people would yawn at that.
People need a way to learn / certify the skill they have gained in smaller increments.
And college CS is to long and is not life long.
Bottom line, employers need to stop requiring or even preferring degrees. Phooey! College degrees are such an expensive, artificial barrier to employment. Employers need to focus on just getting the people who have the skills, period - whether they learn from a training center or under a tree from their uncle. Recognized certifications are probably a good litmus test of whether people have the skills. And then, employers need to go back to the good ol' fashioned apprenticeship programs like they had in the 1800's for blacksmiths and so forth. And...here's an idea...why don't employers provide training, and ongoing training, for their employees? Wow.
I graduated from CISE in 1989 and have a little feedback. The Dean of the College of Engineering asked CISE to merge with Electrical and Computer Engineering and apparently they refused to cooperate. This plan is a result of the Dean being displeased with CISE not doing what she wanted.
Trying to determine what is best for the UF College of Engineering it seems that this is a stupid idea. CISE is responsible for bringing in 17% of the funds of the College while using 10% of the resources. They also have a high percentage of esteemed professors and a high number have been awarded NSF CAREER grants. So, using objective standards, it is arguable that CISE is the best department in the College. Punishment is not appropriate for one's best department.
A better solution would be to cut all the College departments 2% which is the amount of the cut. It's a shame that in the real world, the best solution does not involve cuts to athletics. I note from a previous poster that Athletics costs $100M per year and generates about half that. Perhaps it would be more logical for the state of Florida to drop all college athletic programs, but this is America and football trumps engineering.
Ya, dat dus suck. All dat reeding, riting, litterature, english, and term papers. you can leev out all dat filler and fluff classes cus the only skilz you need to suckseed are programs skilz. And its about time I get payed what dos MSCS and "software enginers" guys get paed.
Their sports budget of 99 million is being raised by 2 million (no kidding).
Which proves you've never actually been to a seminary, as you have no clue what is actually taught there. (Not a faith-based argument, but rather a curriculum one.)
Study of women, versus study of men.
Studying rocks versus studying trees.
The world would be a lot better off if people didn't feign upset at some fabricated discrimination just to justify their own prejudices. I've heard the same protests about African-American history, it's never genuine, and you'll have to pardon me for being judgmental, but I'm sure you are as well, with a preconceived notion of the class being full of some man-hating rhetoric.
Sure, it could be done from simply a biological perspective (though I recall some examples of how doctors just did not want to think about gynecology no more than a century ago), but there's more to human gender than just the mechanics. And you can do it without finding explanations like "Women are genetically less intelligent than men, the numbers show that" to justify discrimination.
As a UF engineering alumni, i shed no tears for a CS department. Like some have mentioned, it's a glorified BS is technology buzzwords, nothing more. The students are worried because they will not be able to perform in real engineering department. Boo Hoo.
Most of those are well-defined areas of academic study. For instance, most of the ______ Studies majors are all about studying the history, culture, and challenges of a particular society. There's some BS there, but there's BS in physics too (e.g. the Bogdanov Affair), and there's some valuable stuff that comes out of those departments.
The 3 music degrees make complete sense: Music Education is about teaching music and preparing students to work as school band directors and the like. A B.A. in music is about the academic study of music, including its theory, history, physics, and psychology. A B.M. in music is for those training to become better classical or jazz performers. My guess is that they overlap faculty and courses quite a bit.
I am officially gone from
If the athletics department makes money, it's sole purpose should be to plow that money back into other departments that train students to do actual useful things (i.e. non-entertainment oriented tasks which would exclude ethno-musicology, gender studies and performance art and include math, engineering, accounting, CS, architecture and so on).
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
UF's president has proposed a new faculty to be called "The Faculty of Luddites and Creationists". In other news he has also declared that the university calendar will be set back 100 years and women will not be permitted to enroll in any UF programs. The Geography department will be required to flatten all their globes as they depict a false view of the world... IDIOTS at UF.
Now we can move on to eliminating the sciences altogether. After all, they teach hackneyed ideas like global warming, evolution and more than four elements; stuff we sure don't want our kids learning.
The blame for this squarely lies on the Republicans which control Florida's Legislature. To understand what is going on here Florida Legislature has been cutting funding for all universities and therefore are leaving schools with not enough funding to operating, leaving difficult tuition and funding choices. UF would not have made these cuts had their funding not had taken a massive hit. If the media did its job and tracing this back to Republican policies it would be something that people would remember at the polls. Don't like attacks on our schools so we can give more tax breaks to billionaires who move jobs overseas? Maybe time to vote Democratic.
Most countries highly prize computer science and technology, that the US seems to no longer be able to afford to develop a skills base for being a leader in technology. While other countries are increasing their investments in technology education we are cuting them. This indicates the Republicans path they have the US on to a third world future.
Totally correct. Why should companies get well-rounded individuals who know more than a few tech tricks and can think for themselves. Companies should be happy with narrow-minded people who are only good for one or two things while they are in style; when the style changes, companies can get rid of those people get some new hires who are narrowly focused on the new whiz-bang stuff. IT changes much too quickly for people with a depth of knowledge. People just need to get over the fact that they are to be nothing more than fodder for the next mini-trend in IT. They'll be happier being only employed for a bit before they are let go to pursue...well...maybe they can find work as garbage collectors.
Am I the only one who suspects a desperate attempt at getting attention to reduced state funding for education?
The president of UF gets a total annual compensation of $751,000. So, by cutting an entire department, they were able to save ~2.25 times the salary of the president of the university. How is it he is worth 44% of an entire department?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Sounds like a real lucrative career path there.
I happen to have gone to a large midwestern big 10 and I've heard all the same thing about the sports program. I've also worked at said same school while my better half was doing her PhD work, and then some after. They paid the "big 2" coaches well over a million a year. Plus get to keep paying it on contract buyouts.
Let's just say they aren't paying their administrative/it staff, nor even most professors like that.
So when the engineering dept called up looking for a donation, I said, sorry but no. When the U quits pissing money away on the big 2 coaches like that, call me back. Until then you get nothing.
If having sports is a revenue center because people donate to it, you don't have to bitch about it. You can swim against the tide.
My state funded high school, which does not piss buttloads of bucks away on sports programs (it has sports, but they clearly aren't a focus like at college) does get a nice donation from me, every year.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Everything I have seen/heard coming out of Florida, starting with the 2000 elections, moving through the Martin shooting and now this makes me consider Florida to be a 3rd world country embedded within the United States.
How good of a program was it? If it was mediocre at best isn't it better for the university to put funding into programs it can do better and let students that are interested in a computer science degree pursue their studies at a university with a better program?
This is why CS people AREN'T QUALIFIED to be IT people!
Consider it the difference between an architect and a contractor. One does complex work, but the other is responsible to get your house built on time and budget. Sure contractors don't need a degree, but even small IT departments are easily million dollar plus now... Definately worth having a person with a degree.
What kind of money are typical CS workers directly responsible for???
I saved computer science. What did you ever do?
Aside: ever since I was in my CS program, I've always disliked the name "Computer Science", largely because I spend two full years of college never using a computer for any of my classes. Calling it Computer Science puts the machine at the center of the endeavor, whereas really it is an abstract conceptual field, like all liberal studies.
I think the field should be called "Computation".
What you expected a message body?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I don't understand why every University feels like they need to offer every program. Do we really need a computer science program at U of F? Obviously it's being closed due to lack of interest. If people want to study compute science and they live in Florida they have plenty of other options.
IT is even easier to offshore than manufacturing, there is nothing to ship, just zap files back and forth.
No reason to teach CS, or IT, in the US. That stuff is on the way out. Stick a fork in it.
Does a CS professor who has never had a real job in IT actually have anything valuable to teach? I doubt it. If you need a class to learn about developing software, then software development isn't for you. No one who's done anything significant in IT ever learned anything useful in a CS class. CS is one of the fortunate fields where you can do great things and make a ton of money without even bothering with college. Jobs, Gates, Torvalds, Ritchie, Zuckerberg, etc. Just do it.
Some states are pushing colleges to specialize and develop a critical mass of faculty and graduate students in what they specialize.
I don't understand why everyone is so hacked off at this. This is clear evidence that UF is not where you want to go to study comp-sci. If you are a student you can forget about UF. If you are some other school, it means more prospective students for you. And really, do we need a bunch of half-assed computer science programs in this country? About the only people who get the shaft on this are the computer science staff at UF, as they need to find a new job, and students who enrolled in comp-sci at UF (though really it's not that hard to go to a different school. I know you kids think it's the end of the world, but it's not).
Dude,
I have a degree in CS, and I learned how to administer unix system 20 years ago over the course of 2 weeks by just playing with it.
The other posters are right. You want to go to a trade school, not a university.
Have gnu, will travel.
As a computer science graduate I often ask why I did not have the choice to get a degree in systems administration.
You did have a choice. You could have instead gone to your local community junior college and gotten yourself an associates degree in "computer technology"... because being a sysadmin is (in the 21st century) no longer constitutes being in a "profession", nowadays it's merely only a skilled technical trade, much like being an "electronics technician" (aka, parts-swapper). Computer Science and Computer Engineering, however, are still considered professions, though it's uncertain for how much longer they'll remain so.
When budget cuts happen at a University, usually they must eliminate entire departments, as you can't selectively fire tenured faculty within a department, outside of reasons like gross misconduct. Otherwise, you're picking some pretty serious fights with accreditors, civil courts, and faculty professional organizations (AAUP, etc.).
But why was computer science chosen? Usually, it's low-enrollment, low-income (from grants, etc.) programs like philosophy or entomology that fall under the axe, often at smaller campuses within a state system. Does the computer science department not bring in enough government grants and private development money? Enough tuition-paying students? A good enough track record with placing students in professional careers that make use of the education?
Is this part of a game of University - Legislature brinksmanship where the University is threatening to cut desirable programs in a thinly-veiled effort to shame the government into coughing up more money?
I too was on the initial bandwagon of outrage but then I read TFA. FTFA:
From a different article:
Clearly the point here is to start moving computer science and technology disciplines over to Florida Tech(which is called, at the moment, USF Polytechnic). If you can get the same (or superior) programs from UF the incentive to go to Florida Tech will be smaller. I wouldn't be surprised to see many of the faculty from UF move over to USF Polytechnic. Basically the idea is to create a dedicated institution specifically designed for the sciences/engineering instead of having these disciplines taught at UF.
As much as people hate Rick Scott (count me in), and as unpopular as he is - doesn't it seem there might be a longer view to take here?
So long as you are fine with footing the bill via taxes. If you aren't, then you need to deal with cuts. It isn't fair to ask undergrads to have their tuitions balloon even more just to support shit that they have no use or interest for. Nor it is fair, and not really ethical or legal, to take research money from a grant for a specific purpose and redirect it to other uses. So you need to foot the bill for that shit with your tax dollars. You do that, I'm pleased to have whatever you want. You don't then I'm sorry but shit has to go.
If you try to fund everything by taking money from things that are doing well you end up driving everything to mediocrity or worse, which them means that they won't do so well, you'll get less students, less money and get in a nasty feedback cycle of things going to shit.
Also I'm not talking about getting rid of all professors, just departments, and the associated overhead. My office is in the ECE department and we have processors that specialize in FPGAs, antennas, remote sensing, lasers, bioinstrumentation and so on. However they don't each get to have their own department. They are all under the auspices of ECE.
So with your Latin example I'm fine with having a professor of Latin in the Languages department. I'm not fine with having a Latin department.
Like it or not universities have to run like businesses because bills have to be paid. You have to decide what is and is not worth spending money on. This is more true than ever with cuts from public funding. We are a public university but we are now below 30% public funding. The rest is tuition and research. The lower that public number goes, the more we have to concentrate on what brings in money.
Well computers are on their way out anyway. What kids need today are the skills to build hunting and gathering tools!
In all seriousness, we need more CS departments and less social engineering departments.
No, you shuld be hiring programmers with a technical degree. CS programs don't make scientists. They don't make programmers.
Linus Torvalds. Yukihiro Matsumoto. James Gosling. Should I continue?
I've yet to figure out what good they are
Operating systems. Compilers. Database engines. Distributed algorithms. Network Protocols. Should I continue?
since they give a shitty liberal arts education
Care to name a university or two that fit that description? And once you do that, care to explain how these two examples might describe the CS departments at, say, MIT or CalTech?
which I do value (in a dollars sort of I want to hire you because you'll contribute to my company) and a shitty engineering education, and a shitty programming education.
Most of the CS graduates wasted a lot of time and money on getting nothing more than a hangover and a tech school education. However, the tech school grads went to college because they're hungry and want to make themselves better.
See, you have been waiting for a while to say this. It's been fermenting on your head, rationalizing your critique of CS as a means to pet your own ego, and now you have done it on the public interweebz, getting a hard-on in the process. Please continue, let us know how you feel.
'Nuff said :-(
Eliminate the English department
Why should we train our next generation to code when our MBA is taught that quarterly profits are maximized by outsourcing everything? To hell with the long term; let's just grab everything we can now and screw the future.
Check your premises.
Considering Governor Scott's general mindset, it would appear that the objective is probably to create a school dedicated to turning out code pushers with wind-up keys in their backs, uncorrupted by access to a liberal-arts education. People who'll go to work every day and do what they're told, unencumbered by such pollutants as critical thinking skills or any awareness of some rather inconvenient parts of history.
Made me so mad I lost control of my grammar.
Check your premises.
It IS the university of Florida. It's all football and partying. We should do the right thing and give Florida to Cuba.
Clearly the next step is to have server maintenance done by the volleyball team. And the basketball team can handle the campus networks. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Anyone know the size of the football budget for this school? IMHO, 1.7 million is a small portion of that budget.
I think "Computer Science" came about in the 80's. Prior to that, computer software skills were bundled into Management Information Systems (MIS) degrees.
One nation under God.
God is good. God is great. Let us thank Him for where we were in "Biblical times".
With luck, we'll be back there real soon.
Only religion will set you on the path to American Freedumb. Strong religious faith can bring about the end to the Evil of Progress (except as it benefits the mind-controllers, of course).
Just look at what strong religion has done for the jews and the muslims! C'mon! Don't you want to live like them?
Again, like Tennessee, Florida gets it right.
Bye 'bye Miss American progress ('ceptin' fer self-protectin' shootin' irons!).
Next stop, year 0!
more women in power and more equal women would have solved this problem by adding more fuzziness to the game.
sad that they did not try that approach.
add fuzziness and complexity folks, that will cause sheeples to adhere more to flogics.
If they don't have/can't raise the money, this decision is justified. The school has to justify its activity to taxpayers, who can't keep endlessly funding education when they are in the red, and if this department, for whatever reason, wasn't attracting students, then it's not a bad move.
Although I'd like to see colleges and universities drop Liberal Arts programs, so that students don't think that it will get them widely available jobs, and at the end of their graduation, find out otherwise.
If they are trying to save money, why fund a new state university /
http://www.usforacle.com/news/scott-approves-new-florida-polytechnic-university-1.2733717
so florida wants to concentrate on their football program i guess?
Good deal for UCF and Florida Tech
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I wonder If any uni in India will shut down their CS?
Apparently, the damage has been going on for awhile.
But no, it's one of the Kochtopus tentacles.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm working for the Horticulture department, which isn't in any danger of getting cut.
There's a really great joke in there somewhere about trimming hedges, or maybe grafting plants, but I just can't put my finger on it.
Computer Engineering is more of a hardware level approach, where the goal is is optimize basic elements but not complex systems.
I'm sorry for my Computer Engineering bias showing so obviously here, but..."basic elements"? If you, as a Computer Scientist, see devices such as microprocessors as "basic elements," I think you need to branch out a bit. Sure, there's much more to a computer system than the processor, and you need plenty of software to get all the hardware components working together, but I still would classify an ARM or Intel or GPU (or countless other types of) processor as a "complex system."
Nothing against Computer Scientists or software engineering or anything...lets just give credit everywhere its due.
There, I feel better now :-)
The administration needs to explain this to the public. Frankly it seems idiotic to me to suspend computer science at a very good university. What I suspect may be going on is that Florida has an over the edge, extreme, right wing, governor. The man is a dogma infested, pseudo educated, half wit. I'll bet that the University is under a financial attack from its own governor and must do nonsense like this to appease him. His ilk is doctrinal in that they consider education exists only to cause employment of graduates. Apparently poets, astronomers and basic computer scientists according to them should never be in college in the first place. After all, when we look at the classifieds we just never see poets wanted just like we don't see computer scientists wanted.
Well, this is fine. The more CVs I can chuck in the recycling bin, the easier my job gets. UF just found a spot in File 99 next to Argosy and University of Phoenix...
I think even their underwater basket weaving majors can do the math on that one.
You sound like you disapprove of underwater basket weaving majors ?!
I think with rising sea level that major has some future in Florida
Because that's not really what's happening. The new polytechnic university and this move at UF have nothing to do with each other. The timing was just a coincidence.
Furthermore, the new polytechnic university wasn't really needed and the state can't afford it. It was the brainchild of a moronic state senator who wanted to make a legacy for himself on his way out the door due to term limits (he also has a road to nowhere project in the budget) by converting a satellite branch of USF in Lakeland (not Tampa) with a couple thousand students into a full fledged university. Furthermore, by ramming it through the state budget instead of going through the plan laid out by the State University Board of Governors, it will take several years for this new university to get accredited, so they will have trouble actually attracting students.
Meanwhile, they've cut the budgets to the other 11 state universities by a combined $200 million this year, with FSU, UF and USF taking the biggest hits.
-- nolesrule
In the future, the University of Florida will drop all physics courses. But they will continue with a mathematics curriculum since paper and blackboards are fairly cheap.
1.295 billion dollar endowment (http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2011_NCSE_Public_Tables_Endowment_Market_Values_Final_January_17_2012.pdf) and 1.7 million dollars is too much money for a lucrative academic major that produces some of the highest paid graduates in the country (average BLS statistics will tell you that). This is obviously politically motivated.
Women's Studies ...you get the idea.....
Communications
Issues Of Latino Homosexuality: The Untold Story
Suburban Sociology As Expressed In Liberated Atheist Literature
Fundamentalism In Today's Society: A Presentation Explored In American Folklore
Liberated Darwinism And Liberal Multiculturalism In The American Landscape
Research Capstone In Feminist Evolution In Modern America
Dynamic Exploration Of Mexican Endeavors In Today's Society
Masterpieces Of Liberated Multi-Ethnic Dance
Contemporary Asian Symbols: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Contemporary Female Morals & Life
Contemporary Middle Eastern Civilization: Ideas In Transition
Universities are the countries future - NOT a profit centre.
Given that Florida is one of those anti-science states, they are probably making room for a new Intelligent Design course.
I have degrees in Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Computer Science and the math needed for Comp Sci was trivial. I'm a sysadmin, also, and I think not having a Comp Sci degree for that is a risky proposition. 95% of what I do is easily done by anyone who drifts into System Administration. But the remaining 5% of what I do---often in an emergency---is dangerous to the health of a company. I've had about 10 of these critical events. 9 I resolved quickly. The one time I couldn't was when a 'system adminstrator' who didn't have the necessary background, stepped in before I got there and 'fixed' the problem.
You must not be from Florida. The idea of opening a new university for STEM when 4 established institutions (UF, FSU, USF, UCF) are sorely lacking in funding and get cut every year is unbelievable. This is cronyism beyond anything I have ever witnessed, plain and simple. Poly wont even be accredited when its opened!
CS tends to focus to much on coding and high level theory. Some CS programs are so much on the theory you get people who are poor program[er?]s out of them.
You can get fourth-rate students out of any program.
Theory is what teaches programmers to sort in O( n log n ), rather than in O( n^2 ) + brag about some negligible optimization you made that saved a line of code.
If you haven't had all the theory-type classes, you're not qualified for anything more than programming up an algorithm that someone else has carefully specified for you.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Florida Tech is Florida Institute of Technology. It is a private school in Melbourne, Florida.
China is laughing at us. Remember the commercial with the Chinese students laughing after the professor says "now they work for us". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTSQozWP-rM
Florida has a university.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Disband the athletic department and sell the stadiums. Create a reality TV show of students actually studying instead of partying.
Is it just me or there aren't many companies hiring software developers in areas that have warm climates?
Less competition!
Keep 'em stupid so they vote Republican.
Then they'll be able to get Home Schooled phd's. Dr. of Flat Earthism.
The CS students plan to takeover "The Swamp" and sell tickets to the CS bowl. Football vs. Computer Science it a winner take event.
My college has the Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Everytime they ask for donations, I ask what is the difference between the two? The answer is: Which electives you choose. I heard last week that the dept is dropping the Computer, will once again just be Dept of Electrical Engineering.
My college did this last year. Not a CS major, because they are in some ways a java mill, but the biggest issue is that the college killed a graduate program it was quite renowned for, and the CS department, a place that was small, had an excellent SF ratio, and was one of the few programs that produced employees with starting salaries of 80k. They also killed the art studio department, which I was in favour of.
So technically UF doesn't have a standalone CS department since its been absorbed into the CISE department (Computer and Information Science & Engineering).
They still issue degrees in Computer Science, (not yet ABET accredited but in the processing of getting accredited) in the form of :
a BS of CSE (more engineering-based) and BS of CSC (more liberal arts-based)
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/academics/undergrad/
Somewhat analogous to the EECS college at Berkeley, where they stress that the best current and future real-world solutions should not be viewed as segmented into software-only and hardware-only solutions. which is exemplified by their CS and EE division professors doing quite a bit collaborative research.