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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.?
"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".
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
UF has the best overall academic reputation of any state school in Florida. You may not think of "engineering, CS, architecture" when you hear "UF", but that's also the case for the vast majority of state schools nationwide. Not everybody can be Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, Wisconsin, Washington, Ga. Tech, Michigan or Texas. Does that imply everybody else (e.g. UF) should drop those programs?
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??
and this is where i have to ask what is the core competency of a university? to make money? to entertain fans? to educate students?
Just be cause you can make money at something doesn't mean you should focus resources on it, unless it's one of your core competency.
If it really is a "profit center" and something they can make money from, great but they need to contract control of it out on set terms and use the money generated by it to increase the educational offerings and make it easier for them to achieve in their reason for being, educating students.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
That depends on the quality of your CS department. Football is not a profit center because of ticket sales, it is a profit center because rich alumni come back to remember the good ol' days of getting drunk and cheering for their fellow students receiving concussions, and then give large donations. If computer science departments inspire that sort of money-giving, they could become profitable also (and they might; if a rich alumnus owes his wealth to the education he received, he is likely to make a donation).
There is also the matter of research. Universities get a nice chunk of the money that researchers pull in from grants, and even more if those researchers hire graduate students (whose tuition is typically covered by the grant). A computer science department that has decent enoguh research could bring in lots of money for a university, as well as free advertising.
You know what does not help a university? Stories like this one -- stories about how they castrate their CS department to save a few pennies. I am curious about the rest University of Florida's budget -- how much do they spend on administrative salaries, resodding grass, and so forth. Chance are they could have saved the money elsewhere, if keeping the computer science department had been a priority.
Palm trees and 8
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.
That depends on the quality of your CS department. Football is not a profit center because of ticket sales, it is a profit center because rich alumni come back to remember the good ol' days of getting drunk and cheering for their fellow students receiving concussions, and then give large donations. If computer science departments inspire that sort of money-giving, they could become profitable also (and they might; if a rich alumnus owes his wealth to the education he received, he is likely to make a donation).
Computer science doesn't get you your own television network like football did for University of Texas, no matter how rich or successful your graduates have been. Of course, Texas killed their conference by getting that network, but that's a different story.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
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.
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.
Anyone who thinks music is a simple major is a damn fool.
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."
Their "core competency" is to educate students.
The football team generates a profit. Much of that profit is fed back into the university to fund academics. Eliminating the football team would thus necessitate further cuts.
It's amazing how shortsighted many Slashdotters are. Wait, no. The other word. Sad.
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.
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.
A state funded university is NOT a profit center of any sort. People who think this way are obviously the reason why this is happening in the first place. Its a school, not a pro football team. Seriously sad people.
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.
There have been many studies on this, and outside of a few well known programs, they are most definitely not profit centers. Even according to the NCAA own figures
Less than 7 percent of Division I athletics programs had positive net revenue between 2004 and 2010. In the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), only 22 of 120 schools showed positive net revenue for the 2010 fiscal year, eight more than in 2009.
For FBS schools, the median [subsidy] amount was $9.8 million in 2010
and this is where i have to ask what is the core competency of a university?
Gets 18-year-olds out of their parents' houses.
Also beer pong.
You're joking, but that is actually a sizable cost factor.
My university gets by with students doing about 99% of the IT administrative tasks, from running cable to running servers, from writing accounting software to writing course management software. You can NEVER get cheaper workers than your students as a university, they work for some extra credit. Try to beat that cost.
Need some new software? No problem, Software Engineering part 2 deals with creating a real life project and producing it from conception to installation in a team. Form 3-4 teams from the students of this year, give them the task to write that software. Hell, you will even get 4 complete custom built-to-spec solutions to pick and choose from, where even only one of them would cost you in the 5 digit range. Don't want a custom solution? Make it a requirement to use standard software and the teams should only "glue" them together. You write the specs, after all.
And all of that for some course credit.
Eliminate the CS department? Are you effin' kidding?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh, I forgot: In case you find out half a year later that the software sucks, just give the same assignment to next year's class again. You can even try over and over 'til you get what you want. Even if (like most people) you don't even know yet what you want.
Plus, you get the source.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Get outta my US you pinko commie! How much more un-American could you be to suggest dropping college football for something as petty as an education?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
This is what athletic departments claim. However, they cook the books in a variety of ways in order to support the claim. The real is, that if you count all the expenses and subsidies that athletic directors exclude, they are actually substantial drains on the universities--except for perhaps the top dozen programs in the country.
You can sell tickets to football games; you can't sell tickets to CS.
That may change.
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
Most collages have an IT Staff outside of the computer science department...
Granted most are hired by CS students who technically graduated but are not smart enough to work in the real world.
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.
Thanks for such an insightful summation of the problem!
I would have worded it a bit differently. I would have said that the problem is that UF is using a business model rather than the academic model you would normally expect from an institution that calls itself a University.
It is true that UF has given the world Gator Ade, but then it is also true that Gator Ade is now full of HFCS, which is not a very good thing to pour into the body of someone who is doing heavy exercise. UF has developed the faint, sweet odor of early corruption, like that emanating from a dead body that is not yet quite rotted enough to call carrion.
Will
Actually, with a major athletics program, they are profit centers. They (football and men's basketball, generally) fund the rest of the sports programs. I can't speak for UF, but as a former student of another SEC school, I can tell you that the athletics program did not receive any funding from the university or government, they paid for the off-duty police officers required for basketball/football games, and funneled large sums back to the university in scholarship funds each year.
That's not to say that they didn't *try* to sneak things in from university funds every now and then, but that was pretty much universally squashed by taxpayers and faculty every time. The programs paid for their own facilities and upkeep.
Now, whether the current state of major collegiate athletics is appropriate to an academic environment is another discussion altogether, but in my experience the programs aren't draining any university funds, quite the opposite. The value of the programs in revenue generation and in driving admissions (schools with great athletics programs do see those numbers move with the success of the programs) is objectively there. It doesn't feel particularly clean, but it could be much worse, I suppose.
sadly there is more truth in your comment than i'd like
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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.
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.
Portland State University's new College of Engineering and Computer Science building was paid for with an $8 million grant, and the school renamed after a returning EE grad Fariborz Maseeh, who made a zillion dollars founding a startup in MEMS. He was also a foreign student, originally from Iran, BTW. Many of the smart folks at Intel and Tektronix are graduates from what is now known as Maseeh. (It should be noted that he went to grad school at UT Austin and MIT).
EE is not the same as CS, but I figure this counts - they're a lot closer in similarity than either is to basket weaving or football.
I once read an article which noted that while Michael Jordan made something like $30,000 a day, he would have to play basketball for several hundred years to catch up to Bill Gates. (I don't recall the actual numbers.) I would be interested to see a comparison of total CS-related employment income vs. total pro sports income, especially when you could the Bill Gates, Larry E, Larry P, etc. I would expect that it shows that there is a potential for CS grads to contribute back to the schools that exceeds anything the football jocks can do. But it's mostly spread thinner among more people.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
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.
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.
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.
Florida has culture ?!!??!
Tuition is supposed to pay for the cost of schooling. Please explain why my taxes should pay for your schooling.
And, a better explanation is that the administration staff is overpaid. The president of UF makes $750,000 a year. That is more than the president of the country.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Don't confuse CS-related income with BIZ-related income. How much of Gates' income was from CS-related innovation? How much was from good business decisions? You could do something similar with Michael Jordan, but really, ALL of his income came from his athletic ability. You can't say the same about Gates.
The Google founders probably have the most CS-related income. For a while, they paid someone else to handle the business side of things.
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?
submitted as AC cause I was too lazy to login.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)
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".
But from the same perspective, all those football rooting alumni made their money elsewhere as well. This does lead me to wonder how much does the average CS graduate donate back to their U, or especially their CS/ECE dept.? I confess, I'm not a big donor by any count.
I should note that the last time I was in school, I ran into some of the basketball players in the gym occasionally - they were all good guys and worked very hard, and from what I could tell were planning on real jobs after graduation. I'm not denigrating anyone who can get a college to pay for your full ride! The ones I met were using it as an opportunity to get someplace in the world. Of course their practice and training schedule was intense - I doubt that any of them could have taken a full CS load at the same time even if they wanted to. There just aren't enough hours in the day. But, once those guys got out and got middle-class jobs, maybe their kids could do CS.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I also blame the GOP for a lot of things, and in this case they do deserve some blame, but you also have to blame the university for their knee-jerk reaction to having their funds cut. They probably paid Will Muschamp that much or more for his 7-6 season last year, not to mention how much they paid their assistant coaches.
They also could have courted boosters, especially alumni with CS degrees.
It was irresponsible for the state legislature to cut funding for education, an unfortunate trend throughout the country that has escalated the cost of higher education throughout the last couple decades, but I don't believe for a second the university couldn't have made this a priority. If they needed to scrape up an extra $1.7 million a year for their football or basketball team, they would.
I also don't like the idea that we expect the government to fund higher education but at the same time 1) we still expect students to pay exorbitant amount of money to attend college with money mattering more than academic achievement 2) the government doesn't actually control the universities. Until the federal government takes control of our higher education system it will continue to function as a place for rich kids to spend most their time partying. Most kids don't enroll in higher education to learn because we provide them with far too many opportunities to go to college while side-stepping the learning process, provided that mommy and daddy can foot the bill. Schools like UofF are the worst offenders in this regard, so is it any surprise they don't prioritize education and run the university like it's a business, the P&L reports dictating what stays and what goes?
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
What you expected a message body?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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).
Have gnu, will travel.
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?
At UF Football is a profit center. Since the story is about UF, I suppose that is relevant.
First - efforts to increase tuition at UF have been continually rebuffed by the Board of Trustees and the Florida legislature. The price of tuition is largely a political matter over which students have no control. If you want to see changes, get involved and vote.
Second, please stop perpetuating the "not with my tax dollars" trope. To the extent some small portion of "your taxes" (Florida has no state income tax, so you must be referring to sales or use taxes) is ultimately distributed by state government for higher education, it is done this way for the same reasons that my taxes are used to pay for building and maintaining the roads and bridges you drive on, and the law enforcement and fire departments that protect you and your property, and any number of other sovereign-provided privileges, immunities, rights and services that you enjoy as a citizen of the United States and (presumably) a resident of Florida.
Last year the Athletic department contribute $6 million to the university (beyond the Services used by the department). http://www.uaa.ufl.edu/uaa/Executive_Summary_2011-2012.pdf
So, by cutting football (read the budget) You would be killing two more similar departments, not just CS.
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.
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.
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.
Made me so mad I lost control of my grammar.
Check your premises.
Even there it isn't. Surprisingly enough, the entire athletic department operates at a net loss.
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.
I think "Computer Science" came about in the 80's. Prior to that, computer software skills were bundled into Management Information Systems (MIS) degrees.
Or math. Or compiler or OS theory. Or language theory. Or algorithmic theory. All of which makes for a far, far better coder.
Check your premises.
It's almost guaranteed that UF Football is a profit center. Yes, many programs cost more to run than they bring in, but perennial top 10 teams, especially those in the big conferences (SEC , oh yes) make money. Lots of it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I don't think you understand the mindset of today's Republican Party:
1. The only fair tax is a flat tax, and the only purpose of government should be to push that tax rate as close to 0% as possible. Charging fees for government services is OK. For example, national forests do not manage themselves, so those who visit should have to pay a fee to cover the costs of managing the national forests.
2. Building and maintaining the roads and bridges you drive on should be the responsibility of private corporations. The state should auction off all public roadways and use the proceeds to pay off all public debt. The new owners should be allowed to collect tolls, and by the magic of the free and unregulated market, any roads worth maintaining will be maintained.
3. Law enforcement should not be a financial strain on tax payers. Private security firms like Academi, previously known as Xe Services LLC, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide, do the job of maintaining law and order for efficiently that government agencies like the local police department, state troopers, FBI, CIA, or US Army. Under the current system tax payers still have to fund the hiring of these firms, but ideally individuals who care about law and order will contract with such firms to patrol their neighborhoods and keep skittle-toting thugs away from their property.
4. The US court system is bloated, backlogged, and too expensive to maintain. Private arbitration firms can dish out justice more efficiently. Eventually all of the US courts can be privatized, especially the meddlesome US Supreme Court that is still stacked with FDR appointed activist judges who constantly trample on the Constitution.
5. The original signed copies of the US Constitution should not be preserved in bloated and wasteful tax-payer funded government agencies such as the National Archives, Library of Congress, or national institutes/museums. The Constitution has such a high value that it should be auctioned off to the highest bidder, along with the holdings of all these other government agencies. Private depositories and wealthy collectors can preserve our national treasures more efficiently. Museums that house such artifacts should be entirely self-funding from ticket sales and the private sale of over-priced artifacts, such as the Declaration of Independence. Those who cannot remain solvent should be allowed to fail.
6. Fire departments should not be tax supported. Those who wish to have fire protection should pay fees to the fire and rescue company of their choice. Here is a great example of an efficient operation: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/
7. Sovereign-provided privileges, immunities, rights and services should not be the responsibility of a tax-supported government. All privileges, immunities, rights and services should be treated as commodities to be auctioned off and/or privatized so that the delivery of such privileges, immunities, rights and services will be more efficient.
Bottom line: Asking tax payers to pay for anything is morally reprehensible.
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.
Their "core competency" is to educate students.
Now I understand why they just fired all of the teaching assistants. So they can educate the students better.
Thanks for clearing that up.
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.
all undergraduate study, at every state college, is covered 5/8's by taxes. tuition is only the other 3/8. That is the portions in FL at least - not sure about other states. That is why "out of state" and graduate students pay more. and that is why a state college costs less than a private one.
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.
Well, skippy, I do vote and I don't go to university. I am a real adult. I actually work.
Sales, use, and property taxes are taxes and a portion of my taxes go to support the university system. Gas taxes go towards building and maintaing the roads. If you live in Florida, then you probably use the roads and bridges, enjoy the protections of the police and fire departments and all the other things you mentioned. If you don't live in Florida, your taxes don't go towards any of that.
What you didn't explain is why my taxes should go to something that will not benefit me or the rest of society. Explain why my and everyone else's tax dollars should go to paying someone's college tuition for an education that will benefit only that third person?
Hell, if you are so hell bent on giving your money to someone else, you can mail it to me.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
That doesn't answer my question. Explain why taxes should be going to pay for any tuition at all. I will see no benefit from it and neither will most people. You want to go to college, you want to get a degree, a degree costs money, so why shouldn't you ALL the cost as you will be reaping the benefits of your education? And, more importantly, why is tax money going to support degrees that will cost more than the seeker will be to pay off?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
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
Tuition is supposed to pay for the cost of schooling. Please explain why my taxes should pay for your schooling.
The idealized view is that a educated public makes a better society.
The cynical view is that your legislature doesn't give a damn about education, but needs a university as a status symbol.
For a more pragmatic answer, much of modern technology stems from universities. Businesses don't like to invest in basic research because it's not going to make a positive impact on their next quarterly earnings report. But your state taxes support institutions that do keep basic research alive in this country, and your federal taxes boost it (e.g., via the National Science Foundation grand programs).
And even stuff that isn't invented at universities is often invented by people who your tax dollars helped educate. (Yeah, there are some famous examples of non-educated people who did cool stuff, but how much of our total innovation do they account for?)
And finally, university towns tend to have a more educated populace than a similarly-sized town without a university, and so businesses like to locate there. That provides jobs even for non-educated people; every business needs clerical help etc., which may not sound very glamorous, but beats the hell out of flipping burgers for a living.
If you want to whinge, I suspect you'll find that we spend more money on corporate welfare than we do on higher education, and that corporate welfare money just goes into some shareholders' pockets. At least you're getting something, perhaps indirectly, from the public investment in education.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
Is it just me or there aren't many companies hiring software developers in areas that have warm climates?
Because we would prefer that the general populous be educated. The more the better. It is to our detriment even. Under educated societies are dangerous in a number of ways - even for the people who are "better/above" than the general populous. It's not a place I would want to live, at least. So what your tax dollars are paying for is a better society. Thinking that it is merely paying for some individuals chance at success is vastly short-sighted.
Well, skippy, I do vote and I don't go to university. I am a real adult. I actually work.
When trying to convince others that you are “a real adult[,]” it’s probably a good rule of practice to avoid remarks that make you seem like a petulant child.
What you didn't explain is why my taxes should go to something that will not benefit me or the rest of society. Explain why my and everyone else's tax dollars should go to paying someone's college tuition for an education that will benefit only that third person?
Florida residents are subject to and bound by the laws of the State of Florida. Except where federally preempted, the supreme source of law of in Florida is the Florida Constitution. Article IX, Section 1 of that document provides, in pertinent part:
The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law . . . for the establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning and other public education programs that the needs of the people may require.
Art. IX, sec. 1(a), Fla. Const., available at Flsenate.gov (emphasis added).
In other words, the simplest answer to your question is “because it’s the law.” If you don’t like it, you are free to (a) relocate to another state or (b) avail yourself of the provisions of Article XI, Section 3, which sets out the method by which citizens such as yourself may propose amendments to the Florida Constitution through ballot initiative. Whining about your taxes here is the coward’s option, and wholly unpersuasive.
"Establishment, maintenance, and operation of institutions of higher learning" doesn't including tuitions support. Conversely, if you believe it does, why aren't institutes of higher learning also a part of the "high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education"?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
So, you are saying that secondary education is, in fact, under-educated, yes? You don't want to live in the U.S.A of today? Or, are you setting up a straw man?
Prove that a population consisting solely of college graduates most of whom are in debt from getting their degree(s) is better than one in which not everyone has a college education.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
when did I say any of that? We currently live in a decently educated society. So, NO... I didn't say that I don't want to live in the USA of today. And that is because more people are able to afford higher education. and NO I don't believe that high school is not enough - even private schools.
If you are looking for further examples, look to any first world nation. If you are looking for a contrast comparison, look to any third world nation. Notice any distinct patterns? Figure there may be a correlation? I know that you would love to save an extra few dollars on your taxes (and we really are talking a small amount), but the consequences are simply not worth those savings, IMHO. Lastly, if you really need a professional opinion, rather than common sense, I would direct here http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~moretti/lm46.pdf .
I would go as far to say that the decrease in average education levels, created by increased costs in higher education from our taxes NOT going toward it, would result in crime levels that offset the savings in increased police budgets. That is, in the end you wouldn't be saving any money.
Students attending Florida’s state universities have to pay tuition to attend. As I’ve already pointed out, state law requires that the state expend money from general revenues for the “establishment, maintenance, and operation of” these state universities. I’m not aware of, nor have you pointed out, any “tuitions support (sic)” that exists as some separate series of payments to college students. I certainly don’t remember receiving any such “support” when I attended UF, so enlighten me, if you will. Supporting cites to specific provisions of the Florida Statutes, Laws of Florida, and/or Florida Administrative Code would be helpful and appreciated.
At bottom, I think your problem is with the law--chiefly, that you don't control it. I suspect that, like most people who’ve taken up the “not with my tax dollars” refrain, you believe that you should receive the benefits of citizenship, and of residing in the State of Florida, without cost to you—at least not unless *you* approve of any such costs in advance. In other words, you reject the sovereignty of the government of the State of Florida and of the United States of America, believing (foolishly, to be sure) that *you* are an exception to the laws which govern all other citizens and residents.
Or, perhaps you are simply making an (ineloquent and contrived) argument that you don’t like the state of the law, in which case your gripes were already addressed in the portion of my previous comment regarding relocation and/or ballot initiatives, supra.