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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.
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.
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,
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.'
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.
I think you're mistaken. Their athletic department costs the university over $100+ million per year, but only generates about half that in revenue (see this handy link). Maybe they couldn't come up with the head coach's bonus this year (he got something like $2.5 million)?
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
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."
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
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.
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.
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...
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