University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department

As someone who works for a university, I can say that in some cases the athletics budget is completely separate from the educational side of things. They are independently funded and draw no resources from education.<p>I do not know if this is how UF handles its budgets.

Here's the email that Georgia Tech College of Computing dean Zvi Galil sent to the president of UF:<p><a href="http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/letter-from-dean-of-college-of-computing-at-georgia-tech-and-division-director-of-nsf/" rel="nofollow">http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/letter-from-dean-of-college-...</a>

There's more to it. See HN's previous discussion, ten days ago: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832685" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832685</a>

This article misses the reason behind closing the CS department. Was it completely due to budgetary concerns? Or was the University having difficulty competing with other CS schools. The article mentions the Florida Polytechnical University, has the creation of this school meant that their aren't enough CS students to fill classrooms at both colleges?<p>Though I, like most, was initially shocked that a CS school would be closing, maybe their is more to it than just budgetary cuts.

The federal government forces Florida to spend billions on Medicaid. Mandatory Medicaid increases are driving education cuts in budgets in nearly every state.<p>"Governments’ general support for higher education 25 years ago was nearly 50 percent greater than state spending on Medicaid. That relationship has now flipped: Medicaid spending is about 50 percent greater than support for higher education. If higher education’s share of state budgets had remained constant instead of being crowded out by rising Medicaid costs, it would be getting some $30 billion more than it receives today, or more than $2,000 per student." -- <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19orszag.html?_r=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19orszag.html?_r=1</a>

Not so fast. UF has something like 3 or 4 departments that, to an outside observer, would appear to be CS. The College of Engineering has a couple, which appear to differ depending on whether they enphasize hardware or software, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has one, and I think there's another one out there somewhere.<p>The one they are cutting seems to be the only one that does non-hardware research and offers graduate degrees, so losing it is a loss. The other (or others) that deal with the non-hardware side of CS seem to be only teaching, not research, and aimed at undergraduates.

&#62; the well-established fact that research-active faculty make better teachers<p>Does anyone have a citation for this well established fact?

Hey guys, UF student here.<p>Here's what was actually sent out to UF students about the decision. The link goes to the budget cut proposal. Currently the president of the University (Bernie Machen) is petitioning the state government to allow for tuition hikes above the already annual limit of 15%.<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzZsds2XcGnMWFpcnFiNEhvQkk/edit?pli=1" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzZsds2XcGnMWFpcnFiNEhvQkk/...</a>

Back when I was in school, the CS dept was kind of ghetto. We had an old run down kind of grimy building, while the Computer <i></i>engineering<i></i> department had this massive new building with great architecture. We also had a research facility that was some kind of interdisciplinary engineering thing - all people did was program but it was part of the engineering dept and probably had as much money as the entire CS department. At least a lot of CS students got to work there. Seems like CS invents all the stuff and engineering gets all the money to actually use it :P ---<p>"Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year. The increase alone would more than offset the savings supposedly gained by cutting computer science."<p>Okay, I'm not a fan of sports but universities spend money on their sports programs because they are PROFIT CENTERS. First of all, they sell tickets to the games, which makes money. Second of all they foster 'school spirit' which helps in getting donations.<p>If you look at Penn State (before the whole scandal) there's a perfect example of how that plays out. People donate to the school because they are nostalgic for the time they spent going to games and so on. It's stupid, IMO but it is what it is.<p>So really, saying people Universities should cut sports and focus on academics is like saying the government should save money by cutting the IRS's funding, or that drug companies could save money by cutting advertizing. No, those are the things that <i></i>make money<i></i>. If you spend less on them, you have less money overall, not more.<p>Again, I'm not a sports fan. I'm just pointing out the reality.

disclaimer: This is a political rant from the articles facts.<p>This is a huge opinion article with a little bit of fact sprinkled over it accusing Gov. Rick Scott of doing the wrong thing.<p>For anyone that has been to Florida or knows what Florida Economics are currently, I think Rick Scott did a good thing. I think more so, the University staff ought to be to blame.<p>For some fact. Florida's economy has been hit the hardest out of almost every state except Nevada. But with budget cuts, Nasa employees being laid off, a staggering 18% unemployment, roughly 25% of children homeless/living in motels or living in poverty, and Florida's homestead/business taxes being some of the highest in the country, he is only trying to cut government spending to the levels it should be lowered to. Instead of blaming a governor for his cutting of education, maybe this article should look at how he is trying to rescue a state from over spending so that taxes can be lowered so the economy may rebound a bit.

What I don't understand about U of F's decision is that computing is like mathematics in that it's a basic competency necessary for competence in many other disciplines. Shouldn't the graduates of the school's "Design, Construction, and Planning" school know something about programming so that they are not entirely intimidated by the idea of customizing the behavior of AutoCAD? The Education school -- how will it produce graduates capable of teaching high school computer science courses? One can easily come up with other examples.<p>Perhaps it is sufficient to hire a cadre of instructors to teach basic courses? Such a decision historically has been vilified by faculty unions intent on ensuring that research professors with PhD's are not replaced by "lesser" means of instruction. Never mind that many faculty despise teaching introductory courses where much of the workload is administrative and their specialized knowledge is barely put to use.<p>What I don't understand is how U of F seemingly thinks it acceptable to imply to the public that it taking steps which eventually will make it incapable of teaching basic computer science to any of its students. Surely, U of F's PR department would be horrified to convey parallel messages regarding its math department. Maybe we are all missing some important facts?

The "brand new" university mentioned is horrible journalism. The "Florida Polytechnic University" has been around for 24 years. It's been part of USF (Tampa) until now, when J.D. Alexander strong-armed it away from USF (threating USF's funding in the process). Now it will be nominally independent but closely affiliated with UF.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_South_Florida_Polytechnic" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_South_Florida_Pol...</a>

I'm surprised that CS doesn't bring in enough funding to justify itself on those grounds alone. I'm a CS grad student, but I'll confess that I don't know much about UF's program.<p>As for article asking the reader to imagine the outcry if they cut football or other big sports, the ones that would cause an outcry are probably immensely profitable. It's a fair question whether college athletics has gotten too big, but it's almost entirely irrelevant to this article.

That will do wonders for UF employment/salary stats.

Whoa! $1.7M for a computer science department and $90M+ for football? Whatever the funding sources may be, the comparison of the figures alone shows the general spending priorities pretty clearly. I bet the football team has no shortage of applicants either.<p>Could it be that such priorities are a contributing factor to the high unemployment rate?

frankly I could never understand all this sports obsession with US universities. universities are there to teach science, sports deserve their own and separate institutions.

IMO. This is PR stunt, It's standard OP in Florida to threaten to close stuff due to budget constraints. I can't remember a single case where they actually did even if they did not get the budget increese/tax hike that they said they needed.

Great PR move by the University to draw attention to the cuts. I hope.

<a href="http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/revcomp/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/revcomp/</a><p>You dumb fucks

If they really want to cut spending, just leave CS alone and just cut football team. :)