Univ. of Florida Announces Plan To Save CS Department 112
New submitter WIGFIELD7458 writes "This appears to be a major change in plans that will save the Computer Science Department. Thanks to everyone in the Gator Nation and beyond for speaking out! The battle isn't over yet, but this is very encouraging news. I would urge the students, faculty, and alumni of UF to continue to express your support for the essential academic mission of your university."
Sounds like a "Statue of Liberty Play" (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are the Park Service, and your budget gets cut, one ploy is to close the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument, not some campground in South Dakota, hoping to get a reaction and thus get the money back.
Sounds like the University of Florida did the same thing.
Re:Sounds like a "Statue of Liberty Play" (Score:5, Insightful)
The Statue of Liberty is not going to go to California, while the professors from the CS department might.
Re: (Score:3)
statue of liberty is not moving to calif.
its too afraid of the mega-grope it might get from TSA should it attempt to travel...
Re: (Score:1)
She may be a terrorist after all, you never know.
Re: (Score:1)
She is an immigrant.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm surprise nobody has melted her down for the copper yet. The US has pretty much given up on the whole 'give us your poor, your downtrodden, etc...' thing which she stands for.
Re: (Score:3)
The Statue of Liberty is not going to go to California, while the professors from the CS department might.
No one is going to California anymore. People are leaving California now. Witness the growth of the surrounding states. Most of it is from Californians leaving. Even the illegals from Mexico are beginning to pack up and head back. California is an economic hellhole, and it's not going to get better anytime soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They could have just closed the Department managing Journalism degrees. Instead, they picked the one most relevant to tomorrow's economy.
Re: (Score:2)
Right - which is exactly why the ploy worked.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Similarly if you are a school district, the first thing you cut is bus service, which irritates the hell out of parents, who now have to drive their brats to school.
Re: (Score:3)
Or they will will have Union sponsored adds, explaining how these budget cuts, will reduce books, or teachers... Not the Second Assistant to the Administrator Assistant to the Assistant Principal. Or cuts to Guidance Counselors who are basically the dumbest people in the world, who cannot figure out basic concepts like filling out a schedule, or the fact that there is are Middle Ground of colleges between Harvard Level schools and The Local Community Colleges.
Well your grade are not straight A, you have onl
Re: (Score:3)
Hell, you Can get into Harvard with B+ averages. It takes a really good SAT and a bit of showing off, but its certainly doable. Very few doors are permanently closed just because you screwed up in High School, I hate the fact that Guidance Counselors and the media in general make adults think they can't get a good education just because they didn't do awesome when they were in high school.
Re: (Score:2)
Statistically they're right though ... you can't count on that, and you can't make it happen. You can work really hard, and you might be the one in ten-thousand applicant who catches their fancy. But don't mistake that luck for having made it happen, when you only made it possible.
Re:Sounds like a "Statue of Liberty Play" (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, you Can get into Harvard with B+ averages. It takes a really good SAT and a bit of showing off, but its certainly doable. Very few doors are permanently closed just because you screwed up in High School, I hate the fact that Guidance Counselors and the media in general make adults think they can't get a good education just because they didn't do awesome when they were in high school.
I understand the feeling. Guidance counselors were totally useless for my siblings and I (who end up choosing careers in CS, STEM and Health.) But I can understand them, their inability that is.
The way I see it, college-level guidance counselors are an extension of the HS concept of daycare. We shove droves and droves of youth through HS without methodically and systematically exploring their options in a post-HS life. That is the type of discussion that should occur when nearing the end of Middle School (and that's what is done in many countries.) It should not be occuring when a 17-18 year old kid is out of HS asking himself for the first time "now what?".
Guidance is a years-long process that starts early on. It cannot be pigeonholed into a 30-minute stop-by session with a counselor in college. That is too little and too late, in particular for kids who would have been better off *NOT* going to college. Some of the young people we see nowadays with useless degrees, they would have been much better off if they had just worked a lot and explore what the world had to offer (before committing to 4 years of grief and student loan debt.)
Re: (Score:2)
Or they will will have Union sponsored adds, explaining how these budget cuts, will reduce books, or teachers... Not the Second Assistant to the Administrator Assistant to the Assistant Principal. Or cuts to Guidance Counselors who are basically the dumbest people in the world, who cannot figure out basic concepts like filling out a schedule, or the fact that there is are Middle Ground of colleges between Harvard Level schools and The Local Community Colleges.
Well your grade are not straight A, you have only maintained a B+ average grade, You should look into community college, or vocational schooling. As those B+ grade will not get you into Harvard, thus you will not succeed in life.
Bro, the amount of grammatical mistakes seem rather anachronistic (for lack of a better word) when they occur in a message admonishing people for not getting straight As.
Re: (Score:2)
In OH, they first cut buses and sports. Obviously, it worked.
Great Insight (Score:1)
This happens all the time imho.
In my home state of NJ the education system is chock full of small school districts, each with their own set of administrators and highly paid superintendents. My hometown put on the ballot a tax increase to cover junior high sports, the Knowledge Bowl, and various and sundry interesting programs. It passed.
Now, if they put on the list "a secretary we don't need and a huge raise for the principal" I doubt it would get passed.
Cities also do this with threatening police and fire
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, it seems like UF was playing a game of chicken with the state legislature by using a key STEM program as a ploy in response to their frustrating cuts to the school's budgets by ~25% over the last 5 years. Hopefully some backroom deal was made with the legislature to stop further cuts, but on the face of it it just looks like UF flinched first. If there is no backroom deal then not only did UF fail at playing chicken but they also have severely damaged the institution's academic credibility in a f
Or maybe the football version... (Score:2)
If you are the administration and your goal is merge the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), and the Department of Electrial and Computer Engineering (ECE) and you know that poltics in both departments will resist your call for a merger you instead try a the football version of the statue of liberty play.
With one hand, the administration fakes a "pass" proposing that both departments cut their CS funding causing the defenders for separate CISE and ECE departments to get ou
Re: (Score:2)
The parks service could turn the badlands into a parking lot and far fewer people would be upset about that than if they sold the statue of liberty for scrap metal, but there are other people, myself included, who are far more impressed with natural beauty than a statue. Better to save both than to cut one for something as stupid as "Congress wants to cut the budget and the parks service's lobbyists were the least effec
Damage is already done (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you even consider getting a CS degree here now?
Re:Damage is already done (Score:5, Insightful)
They are simply doing what everyone else does already. UF is a good school in general, not one to simply wave away because of department restructuring.
I'm a VT grad, btw. No bias for or against UF.
Re: (Score:1)
Where there is smoke ....
A local "college" here was having issues for a few years, yet they sponsored a huge Xmas light show every year costing millions. There were rumors of accreditation issues for years, parole, then halfway through a spring semester, it folded. Teachers didn't get paid. Water and power didn't get paid and all the students were told that because the school was under parole, their credits would not transfer. This hurt the seniors most.
Similar things have happened to high schools around
Re: (Score:3)
The CS program isn't going away (the program is accredited, not the department), it was just going under different management to reduce overhead costs.
no accreditation just list the school and tell peo (Score:2)
no accreditation just list the school and tell people the full story that you did your classes and the school messed up. Also sue for a full refund.
Re: (Score:2)
Calling bullshit - here's why:
High schools are governed and accredited by the state, not by an accreditation authority. If a school is failing to meet standards, the school is taken over by the district and the relevant staff and teachers are replaced. If an entire school district is that crappy, the state board of education usually comes in and takes over.
In either case, students in such a situation still have to pass state-written tests and meet minimum state standards. Otherwise, they don't get the diplo
Re: (Score:3)
I'd imagine that varies from state to state.
In georgia, SACS accredits high schools. [yahoo.com]
Re: (Score:3)
That is Ok because Math and CS majors look down on CPEs/EEs
Re: (Score:3)
Nonsense, the Math majors look down on everyone else, and the CS majors know they would have trouble existing if the EEs didn't pull their asses out of the fire from time to time.
Re: (Score:2)
... the engineering department (though, typically this is not a good idea, since CPEs/EEs look down on CS).
Reminds me of a joke my EE professor told us (our CS department is in the engineering school): Why is the CS department part of the engineering school? Every school has to have a special-ed program
Re: (Score:2)
Still? I saw EE contempt for CS 25 years ago. Engineers in general display contempt for, oh, the entire school of business, the law school, and all the art and half the science of Arts and Sciences, in particular, science such as History, and Library Science and other disciplines that sound like they attached "science" to the name to give it more legitimacy. EEs are the elite of the elite, sneering even at their fellow engineers, especially civil and agricultural. Possibly the contempt for CS stems fro
Re: (Score:2)
My various degrees were EE and Computer Engineering, but I have a CS minor. My first semester undergrad I took the CS Assemblers course before I could even take the EE courses (pre-reqs), since it looked interesting and was part of the minor.
The course was excellent. The material was good. The professor was good. The TA was (IMHO) even better than the professor. The projects were cumulative and built on other in such a way that if you wrote crappy code that was hard to re-use you'd experience why that was b
Re: (Score:2)
Why would you even consider getting a CS degree here now?
The curriculum from that university is decent; the pay to be received in the field is equally so, and tuition costs are relatively modest for FL residents. For North FL residents, it might be the best option in terms of location. It should not be the case that people living close to this flagship university having to move out of state or to central/south Florida just to pursue a STEM degree. It should never be the case in any state, to force its residents to pursue an education somewhere else (specially if
Let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)
1) Triple the tuition for traditional students (i.e. nerdy males).
2) Give full scholarships to nontraditional students (i.e. attractive females).
3) Allow nontraditional students to earn extra credit by pretending to be interested in traditional students.
4) Profit!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Does it involve a heist, con, or scheme? (Score:5, Funny)
Univ. of Florida Announces Plan To Save CS Department
Please tell me that a complex plot is involved, possibly involving George Clooney in disguise.
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of politics and intramural rivalries involved. It's tied to the creation of Florida Polytechnic, the STEM school recently separated from USF.
The chairman of the Florida Senate budget committee, JD Alexander, pushed hard for the conversion of USF Polytechnic (campus is in Alexander's district) to a separate university. At the same time he proposed cutting the USF budget by 58%. The budget cuts were significantly modified after it was discovered that USF was to suffer close to 80% of all the cuts to the
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody really went there for one before...
STEM is the future (Score:4, Insightful)
The primary focus of any healthy society should be to churn out the most skilled STEM students possible. We still need barbers and bankers but keep in mind that Taiwan churns out something like 55,000 Electrical Engineers a year. I have no idea if they are glorified electricians or the next Tesla but it certainly shows that they know where to focus their efforts.
Plus look at what happened to the world economy when it had too many MBAs around?
The mere thought of cutting the CS department shows the thinking of a group of weak minds. These are the sort of people who don't save any grain for the next spring's planting.
Re:STEM is the future (Score:5, Insightful)
$70k/yr CS grads don't send multi-million dollar thank you checks to the University Fund, businessmen do.
And most of the MBAs and Finance majors are doing just fine on Wall Street again. The market has almost doubled in 4 years, so big bonuses all around! The smart ones in the back room are trying to figure out how to pop this current bubble to they can take 2 quarters off without the obscene bonuses, and then have another 100% runup to skim another 10% off the top. Stability is not profitable, volatility is!
Re: (Score:1)
70% of Fortune 500 CEOs are engineers, let alone STEM in general. They're the ones sending those multi-million dollar thank you checks.
As has already been said, STEM is the future. You said nothing to refute that, though it seems you think you did.
Re:STEM is the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Just so you are aware, Wall Street bonuses have little to do with the market being up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html [nytimes.com]
It is the investors who generally gain the most from the market being up, the largest investors typically being pension funds, university endowments or 401K accounts belonging to individuals.
So learn a little before shooting off your mouth.
Mod parent down... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The mere thought of cutting the CS department shows the thinking of a group of weak minds. These are the sort of people who don't save any grain for the next spring's planting.
Your post is filled with meaningless hyperbole and babble, and is way off base anyway. The university announced a restructuring of the CISE department so that computer engineering was moved in with other engineering disciplines and planned to eliminate doctorate-level and research-based CS work. The BS and MS programs were to remain as is. The post-grad and research work in computer engineering would continue in the engineering department.
But, hey, none of that matters, right? What's important is churni
But do we really need a separate CS dept anymore? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, there are plenty of "pharmaceutical science" programs out there. Oh, and Computer Science is not just math and electrical engineering - for one thing, there is nothing "engineering" about computer science; for another, the focus of computer science is on a very narrow part of mathematics (mostly theory of recursive functions and category theory) and the sort of courses required for a real math major, like analysis or analytical geometry, would be relevant to less than 1% of all programmers.
15+ credits of mandatory I/II/III advanced math courses in a CS degree that are "relevant to less than 1% of all programmers"...doubtful there has ever a more pointless credit filler associated with a degree.
I was on the path of CS until I hit that rather pointless math brick wall, and chose an MIS degree instead. Figured I find value in the MIS business courses a hell of a lot easier in the real world than CS math courses I would (literally) never use again that would cost me thousands.
Re: (Score:1)
Wow, I've been working on network protocols and performance for nearly 20 years, and I've only encountered a little calculus in a handful of research papers. It's never been necessary for my work. In fact, I have a hard time imagining the kind of work that would require calculus.
Numerical analysis? Sure, but you'd probably want to bulk up on the math for that kind of work anyway.
I was required to take three semesters of calculus for my CS degree. I think that any educated person should have a basic unde
Re:But do we really need a separate CS dept anymor (Score:5, Insightful)
No. I speak as someone with a MS in CS, so I may be a little biased, but saying CS should just be Math & Engineering is much like saying Physics is just applied math, or chemistry is applied physics. While one is built on the other, there are basic tenets taught in CompSci that would never come directly out of Engineering or Math. While there is a lot of overlap, subjects such as Data Structures or Autonoma Theory (off the top of my head) are VERY different than anything that would be thought of as engineering or math. Core concepts such as these affect the very way that CS majors view the world. It is a different level than just applied math & engineering.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
There's a reason most of the top engineering schools have merged the Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science departments.
It's called "compromising for budgetary reasons". That doesn't mean it's the ideal approach.
Re: (Score:2)
"There's a reason most of the top engineering schools have merged the Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Computer Science departments." -> Yes, they want them to work together. Electrical Engineers are the bottom of the pyramid, Computer Engineers the middle, and Software Engineers / Computer Scientists the top. Were it not for the people "below" us, actively developing things, typically in conjunction with us, we'd still be programming computers with vacuum tubes.
Re: (Score:2)
.. like saying Physics is just applied math, or chemistry is applied physics.
When I was at University, my Physics professor told us "chemistry is just outer orbital physics".
Re: (Score:3)
Computer science isn't about computers. It's about computing. Computer science is not computer or software engineering.
Many computer science departments teach some elements of software and computer engineering, and I've heard many in the US are actually software engineering departments, but that's not what CS actually is.
Yes, computer science itself is very mathematical, but so is physics.
Re: (Score:2)
This probably explains why so few people working in software engineering have a computer science degree and those that do typically aren't very good software engineers. Most real world software engineering really has very little to do with math or science. It's much more akin to digital carpentry.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Physicists are not civil or mechanical engineers. Computer scientists are not software engineers. They're separate disciplines, and shouldn't be conflated. But for some reason people like to do it when talking about CS.
Think of it this way - first year physics students and first year engineering students both learn Newtonian mechanics. The civil engineering students then go on to learn about solving real world problems using Newtonian mechanics. The physics students learn other things, like relat
Tech / TV / CARs need a TECH / vocational school (Score:2)
Tech / TV / CARs need a TECH / vocational school. The hard fact is that they really don't fit that well into a 2-4-6 year College plan. It is the relic of an older time that they try to fit into. Now it's real issues when you have places like TRIBECA FLASHPOINT ACADEMY that is a 2 year tech like school. Some of the class plans are Film + Broadcast, Recording Arts, ECT but the issues is that it's only 2 year (that should be good to get a job)
But at one TV channel they want a 4 year degree in communications
Re: (Score:2)
Tech / TV / CARs need a TECH / vocational school.
That depends on what you're trying to do with the "Tech / TV / CARs" -- if you're trying to repair existing ones, then a vocational school may be a good option. If you're trying to design new ones from scratch (or even design significant modifications to one that already exists) that I'm going to use, I'd kind of like at least one (ideally most) of the designers to have advanced engineering or science degrees.
That's why the May 2011 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics [bls.gov] (the first set of data I found;
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I find that Computer Science is one of the most narrow disciplines. Compare computer science, say to the curriculum that a Chemical Engineer gets:
Physics 1 year
Calculus 2 years
Numerical Algorithms
Control Theory
Organic Chemistry 1 year
Physical Chemistry 1 year
Thermodynamics
Mech and Electrical Engineering intro
Separation Phenomena
Unit Ops
Process Economics
etc.
It can be used for many careers - some of the people I know who went through that are now in geology, or used it as pre med.
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree; having any sort of thorough knowledge about computers requires at least some education from almost all parts of the STEM curricula. Any person who actually gives a shit about computers should know (with at least some rudimentary level of competency) a whole spectrum of things from semiconductor theory to abstract models of computation. The set of sciences and fields of mathematics you need to now master to have a solid
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. I've looked at the curriculum in Computer Science. Absolutely minimal basic science. One semester of physics, chem and calc which if you were any kind of high school student you would be able to place out of anyway. How can you do more than lightly scratch the surface in something like semiconductor theory with one semester of physics and no physical chemistry or thermodynamics?
Re: (Score:2)
Please tell me you have examined the curriculum of all computer science departments, worldwide, and made your determination that way?
Re: (Score:2)
Can't remember the last time a maths lesson covered the most efficient way to search for a string in a large body of text, or parallel programming techniques, or any of a million and one REAL COMPUTER SCIENCE techniques that have little relevance elsewhere.
I did Maths & Computer Science. Coding Theory - mathematical base but almost 100% computer science applications. Graph Theory - 50-50. Logic - Almost entirely computer science.
There really is a vast distinction there that, if you don't grasp, proba
Re: need a separate CS dept? Econ, Physics, Stat (Score:2)
The SCIENCE of computING, of creating ever more intelligent machines, of how to build better ARCHITECTED machines based on a better understand of the nature of data, its inherent structure, and methods to transform its usefulness (algorithms, etc) is far, far from
Re: (Score:2)
Universities don't have a "Automobile Science" dept. They don't have a 'Radio Science" dept. They don't have a "Television Science" dept. They don't have a "Pharmaceutical Science" dept. If you want to enter those fields, you study mechanical, or electrical, or chemical engineering, etc.
Others have already pointed out the flaws in your other examples. I thought I'd offer a link that shows why the one I bolded is a spectacularly bad example for the argument you're trying to make:
Pharmacology Departments World-Wide [meduni-graz.at]
(You may also find the Wikipedia article on pharmacology [wikipedia.org] useful to understand why it's a rather large field of study.)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's see here...Computers are typically more complex than automobiles and radios. That's just the hardware. The programs themselves are another level of complexity, on top of that.
"In reality it's just math and electrical engineering." -> And flying is just flapping your arms really fast.
Reminds me of a story I heard... (Score:2)
Might have been a Boston high school or something, but it's kind of irrelevant to WHERE.
The principal/school board were faced with big budget cuts, and so instead of cutting arts and sciences or liberal arts, they cut all the sports programs. They did this because they knew that parents would complain more loudly about the sports being cut than educational programs.
Sad state of affairs, though our public education system is pretty dismal nowadays, at least in the US.
Why have a CS department? (Score:1)
This was stated in the last front page article, but top schools (MIT, for example) have combined CS with other departments. Can't Florida be like these other schools?
Re: (Score:2)
Because MIT probably did it for other reasons than trying to save some money? It's MIT.
What is really going on there? (Score:2)
When I first read about their CS department going away, I wondered immediately if there is more to the story than meets the eye. At my university we have a hugely dysfunctional CS department - many faculty blatantly abuse their tenure. They just got their MS program cut, in fact, but nobody's complaining because everyone knows it was a lousy program due to lousy faculty. I have to wonder if there are reasons for dismantling the program that go far beyond budgetary issues. If it were a healthy department I d
Re: (Score:2)
Then maybe being forced to FIX the problem (which is likely to be cultural and systemic rather than some random event) rather than just ignore it and sack people is a good thing.
Now you have to tell people they are sacked because they do a crap job, not just "because we don't want a CS department any more". You can best do that by hiring better people and not renewing contracts.
And "tenure" is really the most ridiculous concept I've ever encountered. It seems to be a US-only thing, too.
Re: (Score:1)
Ya want fries wizzat? (Score:2)
misunderstanding? driving away CS research (Score:2)
That statement sounds like contentless spin. I would like to know just what the misunderstanding is. Yes there still will be a CS *program*, but my (mis)understandin
Comment removed (Score:3)
Downside (Score:2)
10 Are you ready for some football?
20 Go To 10
Re: (Score:1)
Perhaps they should had closed the CS department if their faculty is trolling Slashdot all the time. Why aren't you trying to get grants, or teaching undergrads?
Re:As a member of the faculty of UF (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps they should had closed the CS department if their faculty is trolling Slashdot all the time. Why aren't you trying to get grants, or teaching undergrads?
If you don't get 30 FPs in the first seven years, no tenure.
Re: (Score:1)
Their plan was sheer elegance in its simplicity (Score:3)
Media attention seems to have saved the CS department whereas their researching and teaching did not.