University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets

[brentspeak]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2012/04/22/university-of-florida-eliminates-computer-science-department-increases-athletic-budgets-hmm/

University of Florida Eliminates Computer Science Department, Increases Athletic Budgets. Hmmm.

Steven Salzberg 4/22/2012 @ 3:13PM

Wow, no one saw this coming. 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.

Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely?

Students at UF have already organized protests, and have created a website dedicated to saving the CS department (http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/). 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?”

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.

[marmar]

1. That's insane.

nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

2. I've always seen this as a frivolous school. nt

[MrSlayer]

3. Who needs that longheaded sciencey stuff?

When you can have football and basketball? Clearly they are far more necessary for the progress of society than some elitist, fancy pants science classes.

[DonCoquixote]

4. If you want this to make sense

Check out my post about how Florida opened up Florida Polytechnic. Long sotry short, JD a;lexander just opened up a Florida tech amongst protests, now his buddy, the UF president, can shovel stiudent to Florida poly, and keep them out of UF, which is otherwise known as "where the Good Ol Boys" learn to secure power.

[Greybnk48]

20. I think you nailed it.

This is scandalous.

[eppur_se_muova]

30. That was a very informative post, thanks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002591717

I spent my high school years in FL. Come graduation I was looking to see what schools might be worth applying to (I was definitely majoring in chemistry, math, physics, or chem eng.). UF seemed to be the best state school for a science major at the time. I ended up going to MIT, and never moved back to FL, but it still pains me to see what is being done here. This is destroying an institution that took years to build up, and wrecking the careers of almost everyone involved -- hopefully including Scott's.

[joeglow3]

35. Honest Question

Is Florida Polytechnic a state school? I have always thought a way colleges could cut down on costs is to not offer every degree at every state school. To the extent you have a system of schools working together, you can work together to create synergies.

My wife was able to take her nursing classes at one state college campus, even though her degree is from the medical center, which is a different university. It would be a waste of money for the school to offer the same degree at all campuses.

[DonCoquixote]

37. Excellent question

It is a state school, but the talk is to try and make it the main tech school. Of course, given that UF had the top Computer Science program in the state, I expected them to fight that, but of course, it turns out that did not happen. The athletic program is really a smokescreen, because UF is so utterly agressive about maintaining it's dominance that I wpuld have been surprised to see them yield so much as a six pack of Coke to ANYONE, much less a new University that was formerly part of USF.

The other thing to keep in mind is that lakeland is already sandwiched between USF in Tampa, and UCF in Orlando, both of which are in the top ten enrollments IN THE USA, and both of them hated by UF. This is Lakeland wanting to AVOID synergy, to get in the way of the relationships between Tampa and Orlando, aka the places Polk County students move to if they want a job. Add into this the "heartland highway", and you have JD trying to draw development towards the rural (and Red state) inland, not those Coastal Yankee cities that vote Democrat.

[LiberalFighter]

5. As far as I am concerned

when a "college" stresses athletics over all else... Screw them!!

[varelse]

6. what an odd decision (nt)

[steve2470]

7. This is insane, can't imagine the rationale behind this nt

[Angry Dragon]

9. follow the money and you will have your answer

[neverforget]

8. Book learnin' is elitist.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. It makes zero sense UNTIL

you look at how much they get from athletic departments... which in my view are a scam.

Follow the money, it will make all the sense in the world then.

[d_r]

11. not defending this cut

this should not be interpreted as a defence of this cut:

This looks like the college of engineering eating the CSI dept. in response to the budget cuts. From outside, it looks to me like the UF Deans were charged with planning for the budget cuts. Some probably passed that planning to individual depts. and spread the pain around (e.g., every dept. cut 5% from budget). From what I read, it looks like the engineering Dean left the other departments in engineering without cuts, and placed all the cuts for the college on this one department, eliminating it and splitting its faculty into other departments. The philosophy of sacrificing one and leaving others strong, rather than cutting some to all and spreading it out. I'm guessing this is a reflection of "hard" engineering bias against the software side of computer science - one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong.

[Scuba]

13. Why cuts to academics when sports gets a bigger budget?

That's the question, not how to deal with cuts.

[d_r]

19. because it is a different pile of money

a different budget.

The UF athletic department is totally self-sufficient. It is one of the few athletic departments that is making a profit, and generally questions of "why should the athletic dept. be getting money when academic departments are not?" are valid questions, but in this case not really.

The athletic department at UF brings in more money that it spends. It is one of the few universities were the direction of pay goes from the athletic dept. to the university - they are generating money.

This is latest data form 09/10:
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ncaa-finances.htm?loc=interstitialskip

The athletic dept. brought in $117 million and spent $105 million. They brought in $12 million to the university, the university funded the ath. dept. 0.

Just because the athletic department has a budget that is increasing doesn't mean that it is money out of the academic dept's budget. At most universities it would be because the the athletic dept. isn't turning a profit, but at uf they are. So in this case it is not a valid argument. Again, though, I'm not advocating or supporting how the cuts were made, just trying to think about and understand the rationale. There's a big difference between understanding and supporting.

ETA: and I think it is a fair question of our culture and values that so many will put money into athletics rather than academics, but people are free to spend their money how they want and they are getting entertained, so there it is.

There's onerous budget cuts to the Florida Universities, and probably the most egregious thing is the cuts to USF while a branch of campus of USF in Lakeland is being invested in to make a full-fledge University as a political favor. That is bringing home fat in times of lean right there.

[Scuba]

23. Perhaps the very lucrative athletic programs should be funding academics.

[d_r]

36. they are

10-12 mill. a year.

again though this is rare case.

vast majority of ath depts lose $

[DonCoquixote]

26. Bingo

JD Alexander, the patraon behind Florida Poly, knows that until they are accredited, people will avoid his college like the plague, so he gets UF to drop it's program so that techies HAVE to go to Lakeland. Of course, considering Comp Sci majors still make good money, it shows a lot where he convinces UF to drop a moneymaker.

[FarCenter]

27. The Dean of the College of Engineering was given a mandate to cut $4 million from her budget

So consolidating the Computer & Information Sciences and Engineering department into the Electrical and Computer Engineering department is one reasonable way to do it.

http://www.eng.ufl.edu/news/special-announcement-by-the-dean-cammy-r-abernathy/

There are other cuts besides the CISE reorg in her plan. It is less than half the $4 million savings. Note that one objective is to avoid bleeding all the departments with continued haircuts until all are mediocre. I'd bet that CISE also provide a lot of service courses to other parts of the university, so making this move gives her more organizational leverage. When proposing budget cuts, always offer up something that is important to your boss and your peers.

http://www.eng.ufl.edu/files/2012/04/Budget-Cut-Plan-2012.pdf

[aikoaiko]

33. Most important post in response to OP.

Thank you.

[Populist_Prole]

12. Raising a nation of meatheads

Sigh......

[DCBob]

14. There's no shortage of CS engineers.. we just get them from Asia.

This is absurd.

[Jello Biafra]

15. This doesn't surprise me....

You can't win a national championship in football without a huge athletic department budget. Besides, all the computer jobs are being outsourced so what's the point of getting a degree in computer science when there are no jobs available.

[blueamy66]

16. hard to wrap my head around this

my guy's son loves the sports at UF but is also a math major......will wait to see what happens

[MrScorpio]

17. Idiocracy, here we come! nt

[DCBob]

18. I guess physics, math, biology, and other similar "boring" subject areas...

will eventually have their departments eliminated also to make sure the football and basketball teams have everything they want.

This is insane.

[hack89]

21. The athletic department is self sufficient

the issue here is the state of Florida cutting state support for higher education. The athletic department doesn't get state money.

[DCBob]

31. If the sports dept is doing so well then they should help out the depts that are struggling.

What good is a university that only has jocks and cheerleaders?

[hack89]

34. What is good is a university that doesn't have the support of the state?

education should be funded with taxes.

[fascisthunter]

22. LOL...

wow! FL gets dumber by the day.

[tallahasseedem]

24. I can't say this surprises me at all...

As an alumni of Florida State University, I'm quite familiar with universities putting athletics over education.

[pstokely]

39. Same place that has the anthropology department located in a strip mall off-campus

Some where will all these yankee transplants send their kids for a real education?

[Baitball Blogger]

25. It is Florida.

We need to maintain a certain level of undereducated people to fill all the service jobs and to accept the bullshit that gets passed by legislators and condoned by lawyers.

[rbixby]

28. Wow.....Revenge of the Nerds comes to mind. NT

[Javaman]

29. seems like a loss of .3 million...

Wow, no one saw this coming. 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.

snip

Meanwhile, the athletic budget for the current year is $99 million, an increase of more than $2 million from last year.

----------------------------------

Aside from cutting the Computer Science Dept, it appears as if they also cut the Math Dept.

[KamaAina]

32. UF had one of the pioneering comp sci departments

This is just mind-boggling.

[HiPointDem]

38. americans are too stupid for computer science jobs anyway. that's why we need to import IT people.

or so i've been told by several DU posters.

[quaker bill]

40. It could be posturing

There is a law out there that basically lines UF and FSU up for something called "University of National Prominence" status (the name is this or something very much like it). In short the legislature passed a law that allows certain as of yet un-named state universities that "qualify" for this designation, to raise tuition almost without limit.

It almost sounds like "let us qualify now or else"....

Of course Gov. Scott is all about the cuts, to anything, anywhere, no sense is required. So it may just be that and nothing else.

[LiberalFighter]

41. While they are at it they should eliminate the math department.

[FarCenter]

42. Computerworld -- "Florida university plan to 'decimate' computer science draws protest"

Computerworld - The University of Florida in Gainesville is on the verge of dismantling its computer science department through budget cuts and restructuring, a move that has shocked students in the program.

...

The president of the Computing Research Association, Eric Grimson, who is also a professor at MIT, wrote the University of Florida officials last week about the cut. "If you dismantle the research and graduate teaching components of the CISE department, you will almost certainly lose your strongest faculty members, and you will definitely lose your stature in this critical field," said Grimson in his letter.

"Computer science is a key driver of the nation's economy, and is critical to many national priorities, notably including national security, healthcare, and energy," wrote Grimson. "With a weak computer science program, the University of Florida will be unable to contribute fully to advancing these national goals."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226477/Florida_university_plan_to_decimate_computer_science_draws_protest

[MineralMan]

43. What's next? A Creationism Department?

Something's really screwy with this whole thing, and it's beyond the usual sports/academics battle, I think. Very strange.