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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".
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.
Apparently the elimination of the computer science department funded a 2% increase in the athletics budget.
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.
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.
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.
Not at all. The sports program is independent and actually feeds millions of dollars into the school.
Bringing sports into it may lead to discussion on cultural values - but the money spent by the school on academics and sports are not related.
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?
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,
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
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.'
Hey! We're not nerds. We're geeks!
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.
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!
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."
Computer Science is an expensive department to maintain.
Cite? It's actually a pretty cheap department. Just need office space and electricity for computers, which is really no different than, say, an English department.
I don't even really remember what I learned in English classes.
Sounds like we should shutter English departments if they're doing such a bang-up job educating their graduates.
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.
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!
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.
How many people around the country would know about UF if it didn't have an athletics program? It is proven that a good athletics program increase applications to a school. It is a marketing tool for the academic side of the school. So yes, a self sufficient athletic program, like at UF, is a HUGE benefit to the academic side of the school. By huge, I mean 10's of millions a year they otherwise would not have had.
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.
Interestingly, another article from the site you provided linked to here. I guess the UF athletic program has dumped ("donated" ?) a large amount of money into the university coffers.
That businessofsports.com site is pretty cool. It looks like I'm going to lose several hours of my life browsing there today, thanks!
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 kind of a shitty university do you get these from? In my country (not the US), I'm not even halfway and already I had to learn:
1. Operating System design;
2. industrial processor assembly languages;
3. UML;
4. java;
5. C;
6. C++;
7. Processor designs;
8. Math;
9. Logic;
10. MySQL;
11. Unix and Windows networking;
12. Internet protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, etc);
13. Networking architecture (internet tiers, wireless networking, industrial ethernet, etc.)
14. Logic boards (breadboards, soldering, reading ARM specs and erreta's etc.)
15. Writing a Bluetooth device driver;
16. Game design (3D modeling, OpenGL, storyboarding, etc)
17. Professional skills (project management, documentation, etc.)
18. Optimizing algorythms;
19. Learning industrial processes;
20. What did I miss?
Sound like the level of eduation in your area sucks balls...
Here be signatures
What you expected a message body?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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?
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.
Our countries have trade schools as well. We are discussing university education. It is possible we define this distinction differently.
I wonder If any uni in India will shut down their CS?
A good CS person just hard to find - most have no clue about BigO.
You can't get past the CS weed-out classes without learning about Big O.
You can't get through the anime club presentations without learning about Big O.
You can't join ACM if you know about Big O.
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