
University of Florida guts computer science department in budget-cutting move - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/university-of-florida-guts-computer-science-department-in-budget-cutting-move.ars
======
jballanc
Even more so than free healthcare, the one thing that separates the US from
the "rest of the world" is the availability of free higher education. Of
course, the caveat is that most of the rest of the world is far more
restrictive of _who_ may attend university.

In the past, this was always touted as an advantage of the US system. Sure,
you have to pay for college, but you don't have to stress over a placement
exam that will determine your fate at an early age. Anyone with the motivation
can get a higher education.

Except, that's not how things have turned out. It seems that attaining a
college degree has become an obligation in the US, for no good reason. People
like to talk about the ever increasing proportion of the population that hold
college degrees, but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with
college degrees matches the fraction of available jobs that require college
degrees?

Instead, the US seems to have a death-grip on the notion that "more college
graduates = more better jobs". So, instead of scaling back college acceptance
rates and spending limited funds to provide an excellent education to a few,
the US will water down college education until its as filling as the beer its
college students will spend most of their 4 years drinking, only to emerge
with a degree in underwater basket weaving.

~~~
_delirium
> but does anyone ever ask if the fraction of students with college degrees
> matches the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees?

I think the imbalance is actually in the other direction, if you ask it that
way: the fraction of the population with college degrees is considerably
_lower_ than the fraction of available jobs that require college degrees.
Unemployment among people who don't have college degrees is very high,
suggesting that there aren't enough no-degree-required jobs. And when no-
degree-required jobs do come on the market, they get massively over-applied
for, like when McDonald's announced 50,000 job openings and received _a
million_ applicants.

Now whether those jobs _should_ require college degrees is another story. For
better or worse, employers demand degrees for a wide range of jobs, and you
often won't even get past an automated HR screen if you don't have one. Until
employers start offering more jobs to people without degrees, people will
continue to feel that they need one, so they can qualify for those openings.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> available jobs that require college degrees

It seems to me that a large number of jobs that list a degree as a requirement
don't gain much by requiring a degree, except a smaller stack of resumes to
dig through.

Why does a secretary position require a bachelor's degree? Especially when
it's _any_ bachelor's degree, regardless of major?

~~~
glesica
> It seems to me that a large number of jobs that list a degree as a
> requirement don't gain much by requiring a degree, except a smaller stack of
> resumes to dig through.

Yes, the stack of resumes is smaller. However, I think the key here is that
the _employer believes_ the stack of resumes is likely to have a higher ratio
of "good" candidates to "bad" candidates.

In economics this is called "signaling". The degree may not endow the person
with any particular skill necessary to do the job, but it indicates
("signals") to the employer that the person has certain characteristics that
allowed them to earn their degree.

In this case, they can show up on time, complete assignments in a timely
manner and use a computer (along with some other things, I'm sure). These are
(in theory) qualities that are required to earn a college degree. They are
also required for almost all jobs, including fairly menial ones.

The idea is that you can create a pool that is richer in the desired
characteristics by limiting it based on the signal.

So, let's pretend 50% of the general population and 75% of the college-
graduate population can, say, complete assignments on time (just an example,
no "lazy college student" anecdotes please). If you allow anyone to apply for
a given job, 50% of the people in your hiring pool will be able to complete
assignments on time. But if you limit the applicant pool to just the college
graduates, you get to choose (semi-randomly in the case of job interviews)
from a pool in which 50% more of the people (75%) can complete assignments on
time. This means you are more likely, all else being equal, to end up with a
person who can complete assignments on time.

Of course the usefulness of this sort of signal is dependent on whether the
assumed characteristics _are in fact_ required to earn a college degree, YMMV.
But this is why employers require college degrees for jobs that don't seem
like they should require one.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I know. My question was rhetorical, and mostly kvetching due to my fiance
trying to find a job and being stymied by the fact that she doesn't have her
degree yet.

The problem with those numbers is that we have no idea what % of the general
population can complete an assignment in time, especially when you consider
that as a hypothetical employer I don't care about the general population - I
only care about the percentage of the population that's applying for my job.
Again, this is all personal and highly biased, but if I had to pick a random
person from my college classes and my fiance to complete some given office
task, I'd give it to her, hands down. (But of course, not everyone is marrying
her. Luckily for me!)

~~~
glesica
I agree that this sort of broad-strokes signalling is probably highly
ineffective. However, given the difficulty of hiring, employers are likely to
seize upon anything that can ease the process even slightly.

There have been interesting ideas in the tech sector, the StackOverflow jobs
site for one. It would be interesting to see if anything can be done outside
of tech to make hiring more effective.

Good luck to your fiance!

------
yummyfajitas
It's important to note that this isn't a budget issue. The CS dept was cut by
$1.7M, but the athletic department had their funding raised by $2M (total
athletic budget is $99M).

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

Interestingly, the state government seems very supportive of STEM and has
thrown $49M at the creation of Florida Polytechnic University. It seems it's
merely the university administration that wants to cut it.

[http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/scott-approves-
state...](http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/state/scott-approves-
states-12scott-approves-states-12th-university-florida-polytechnic-
after-2317216.html)

~~~
khuey
The athletic department's budget comes out of the athletic department's
revenue. This is very much a budget issue. The reason why UF needs to cut this
money is precisely because of this creation of a new University. Even less
state funding is now being divided among even more universities.

[http://chalkboard.blogs.gainesville.com/2012/04/blog-
generat...](http://chalkboard.blogs.gainesville.com/2012/04/blog-generates-
buzz-on-uf-cuts-wrongly-links-to-athletics/)

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's one pool of money under the control of the university. What prevents UF
from funneling some of the athletic dept's revenue to subsidize the rest of
the university?

I realize that the university might be motivated to implement budget cuts in
ways that harm voters (in order to make voters angry about it), but it's
hardly clear that UF doesn't have $1.7M worth of waste. Nor is it clear that
the $2M increase in the athletic budget will result in a > $2M increase in
revenue.

------
_delirium
Big discussion yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3876564>

------
cantankerous
This article DOES NOT PROVIDE ENOUGH INFORMATION on why this restructuring has
taken place. Is it really just a ham-fisted budget cutting move or is there
something more subtle going on? It looks like the university also had an ECE
department that it was able to consolidate into, at least to some extent. It
also does not provide any information on the numbers related to the research
of the Computer Science Department. How much money were they bringing in in
grants? How many papers were they writing? How many students were moving
through the department? If these numbers don't make enough sense, or they
don't stack up to other departments when a cut has to be made, then it really
just boils down to something like this.

It seems completely absurd that a thriving research department would be
shuttered because of budget reasons, which is what the Forbes article (and I
use that term loosely, "post" is probably a better word) seems to imply, and
this may be the case, but I'm quite skeptical.

Sometimes, if you have a bad set of faculty that create a stagnant department
(no research, bad teaching, all tenured, and all resisting hiring good new
faculty to maintain the status quo) you have to take dramatic steps to get rid
of them so you can trim back on your budget (tenured faculty make a lot more
than new faculty) and breath new life into a program. In some cases, the only
option to reboot a department may be to scrap it entirely, offer zombie profs
new spots in a similar department, and bin the rest you don't like or offer
them much-less-cush teaching jobs where they have to work for dinner. Later on
the department can be restarted and reconstructed from new and preexisting
good faculty. I'm not saying this is the case here. What I am saying is that
there can be real reasons to scrap an entire CS department this day in age
when you have budget problems, or even if you DON'T have them. I don't know
the particulars here, but it sure would be nice if people weren't so self-
righteous with these postings and gave us more facts so we could understand
how crazy the situation actually is instead of hearing about (unrelated)
athletic budgets.

All the Forbes post is really doing is engaging in sensationalism by co-opting
the notion of American decline via self-sabotage that's so popular right now.
I wish we could hear some more about the real issues.

------
overshard
I see a future where more and more Universities start doing this. The
University of Florida had many more issues than this but Universities just
can't keep up with how much the field of Computer Science changes. They were
built around books and static resources that you come in and study and get a
job after four to six years where that information is still relevant.

Four to six years in Computer Science is an insane amount of time, so much
changes in the world of CS in this amount of time that basically your
information is outdated by the time your graduate.

Most of my CS friends have dropped out after 2-3 years and gotten great jobs.
(Albeit they all went in with a solid working knowledge of programming and
work experience to begin with.) People who go to college to learn CS to get a
good job in the field tend to leave getting a corporate Java programming job
which just doesn't interest the majority of programmers/potential programmers
anymore.

~~~
Radzell
I agree the education system is completly broken more so for comp sci than
anywhere. There is no need for 4 years of school. Why do you need bio and
comunication. Before anyone say that grammer and english help you in a career
look back at your college career did you honestly take those classes
seriously. I have comp sci course I've past and haven't retain one word.

~~~
jwoah12
I don't know how to say this without being offensive, but your entire comment
is evidence that people should be taking those courses seriously. You may be
an extremely competent programmer, but when I see the spelling mistakes and
inability to communicate effectively, I would be hard-pressed to take you
seriously in any way.

~~~
kls
I know it is not your intent and I have tried my best to not take offense to
your comment but their are a lot of issues that can affects ones ability to
communicate in a particular medium. In this particular one (written) dyslexia
can be almost debilitating, if a person has dyslexia, the are no more or less
incompetent than any given person they just strive to overcome a disability in
the way they their mind works. If the parent poster happens to have dyslexia
then your post is the equivalent of walking up to a person on the street with
a speech impediment and telling them it is hard to take them serious because
of how they talk. I know that was not you intent, which is why I do not take
it personal, but I did want to draw the parallel. That being said, I do
disagree with the contents of the original post. I think their is a lot of
value in a good CS program.

~~~
scott_s
The reason that his ability to communicate is relevant is that he specifically
questioned the value of a _communications_ class.

~~~
kls
From the grandparent post: _but when I see the spelling mistakes_ . I don't
disagree with the conclusion that the original poster did not present a
compelling argument, even if it where spelled correctly, but spelling has very
little to do with ones ability to reason. All too often people use it as an
indicator of intellect in other areas of reasoning, when doing the same thing
in public to a person with speaking difficulties would be out of the question.
It is roughly the same offense, but for some reason it is far more acceptable
in written communication, this causes a lot of long harbored issues for those
that suffer from the affliction.

~~~
jwoah12
I think it really comes down to two things: 1\. It is (generally) obvious if
someone has a speech/language disability when you interact with them face to
face. 2\. Sheer probability dictates that it would be ridiculous to ignore a
metric (written communication skills) that I find useful in evaluating people
for fear of offending a VAST minority of cases. What percent of the time do
you think that someone exhibiting incorrect spelling or grammar online is
doing so because of dyslexia or another disability, as opposed to simply being
lazy or unprofessional?

I would never knowingly ridicule someone who suffered from dyslexia or a
similar disability, but I think we have to be careful of becoming so
politically correct that we are afraid to criticize or hold anyone accountable
for anything.

~~~
kls
It's pretty prevalent 1 in 10 people (at the top end) that you interact with
has dyslexia of some form. Among people in the arts it is much much higher, I
am making an assumption here, but I would assume it is significantly higher on
HN given that their is a population of designers that frequent the site. It is
far more prevalent that speech related disabilities, but less recognized
because people are embarrasses about having it, some of that embarrassment
comes from the fact that unlike a speech condition it is acceptable to
highlight their disability, many times to discredit their argument.

 _as opposed to simply being lazy or unprofessional?_

I can't begin to help you understand how many times I have been called lazy
for not being able to spell, and how frustrating that is. That is the problem,
you assume the majority are lazy people that cannot spell and don't want to
learn, so you immediately assume someone is in the majority, because well you
set up the odds that they are. But if 1 in 10 suffer from it, and the
prevalence of people on HN exhibit spelling mistakes at close to the same rate
would in not be just as valid to assume that maybe those that do exhibit them,
may be in that 1 in 10 population.

