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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!!!!!
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.'
Indeed. TFA is very misleading and inaccurate opinion piece written by a contributor who usually focuses on healthcare issues. If you read the items he references in his hack job, you'll see that CISE program is not eliminated at all. The computer engineering programs are being moved from CISE to the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Graduate programs and research work will continue in computer engineering there. Most graduate programs and research work in CISE will be eliminated, but the computer science BS and MS programs will remain. The projected savings are $1.36 million out of a $4 million in cuts across the university.
For what it's worth, this article is one of several opinion pieces carried by Forbes attacking this decision and all are full of inaccuracies and outright lies. Computer science research is being cut. The computer science programs remain. Computer engineering research remains but is moved into Engineering instead of CISE.
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.
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."
It would not be smart if your only goal is to run the University as a business, where you cut unsuccessful revenue centers and fund/build/grow the more successful ones to focus on profitability of the corporation. From that respect, economy of scale works the same way as it does at Coca-cola or Wal-Mart. Cut the under-performers. It is cheaper, easier and more profitable to pump out 10 million of the same widgets than it is to pump out very small batches of all-different widgets.
HOWEVER
If you are a believer in the concept of academic freedom and in the power of diversity of knowledge and thought (idealistic, I know) then it is vital that more successful departments fund less successful ones. I, for one, want there to exist people who study Latin, despite there being a limited usefulness for it as a career. I want people who study ancient Macedonian philosophy, basket weaving, Sanskrit and all the other fields that most people might deride as training for a career at McDonalds. I want there to be someone who knows everything there is to know about the inner politics of ancient Sumeria. The sum-total of human knowledge is vast and it is important that it be preserved but also expanded with the rigor of academic scrutiny.
I want this done, because the concept of Academia demands it. If we churn out millions of kids at a time all with the same thoughts and ideas gleaned from mass-market jobs training programs, we will lose the intellectual diversity that is needed to preserve academic and scientific expansion. There may be nothing that someone studying ancient Indian tapestries can ever tell a nuclear engineer that will advance his work, but both types of people are necessary to increase the useful progress of art and science.
I understand that the bills need to be paid in order to keep the lights on, and also that there are fields that have much more use in the real world as careers. There are certain fields that have more utility in advancing cutting-edge science and, rightly, should receive more attention for their greater potential to advance the human race. However, we shouldn't neglect more arcane knowledge entirely because of this. The more popular fields need to subsidize the less popular ones, less we risk whole branches of study dying off. This is not the most efficient method of creating profit for the university, but that shouldn't be what universities are all about. They should be about increasing the sum-total of human knowledge in all branches.
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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