There has to be a connection between them. The athletics draw no resources from education, but how can this be so? Instead of increasing the budget of athletics, why can't the education budget be increased instead?
The education budget is set by the state (mostly). Athletics gets money from donors, ticket revenues and private funding. This allows them to spend as they see fit.
I believe most state universities are the same.
In other words, the difference between the athletics budget and the academic budget represents the priorities of Americans in general, not any specific group such as a universities administrators.
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 pro…
While this sounds nice, the truth is that most people do not need — or, in most cases, want — to code, or even to know how their computers work. As time goes on, the levels of abstraction increase, not decrease. And with things like the iPad and Windows 8, we can see that moving ahead for us right now. Computer science is not a "basic competency" — it's an extremely complex, So I don't think it's weird at all for com…
That's what they've been saying about spreadsheets[1] for my entire adult life.
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.
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.
I'm not sure if you are referring to the state budget or university budget here, but the university closed the nuclear engineering department a year or two ago due to budget reasons, the remnants of that program are in Materials Science now.
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.
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? Though I, like most, was initially shocked that a CS school would…
I think Georgia Institute of Technology only being a few hours away would be the bigger issue. GIT has a pretty significant ranking usually popping in and out of the bottom of the top 10 slot. Being from FL I know a lot of people that want to remain somewhat close to home and that are looking for a good program tend to apply there over UF. What is strange is that UF was generally in the upper ranks of Florida CS prog…
I don't think GT has any real effect on UF. Different states, different budgets, and really, a different level. UF is the big public engineering school in the state. Every other public university in the state is always fighting for the budget scraps after UF gets theirs. USF does have a decent program, but not great. It could benefit tremendously from more investment by the state. Faculty salaries are not competitive and make it difficult to attract and retain top talent.
Here's the email that Georgia Tech College of Computing dean Zvi Galil sent to the president of UF: http://saveufcise.wordpress.com/letter-from-dean-of-college-...
I don't really understand the structure of the different departments teaching computer science and engineering at UF, but it certainly sounds like a bit of a mess and over-due for a reorganization.
Even Georgia Tech, the first school with a College of Computing, still has a split with Computer Engineering still part of the College of Engineering but traditional Computer Science and everything else in the College of Computing. USF (Tampa) has both Computer Science and Computer Engineering in a single department within the College of Engineering, which seems to me to be about the most efficient structure. UCF (Orlando) had a Computer Science department in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Computer Engineering department in the College of Engineering but merged them together into one school a few years ago.
> the well-established fact that research-active faculty make better teachers Does anyone have a citation for this well established fact?
I laughed out loud at this. Faculty can run good research programs and be decent teachers but if they're only measured on research grant dollars, completed graduate degrees, and publications, why spend any extra effort on teaching undergrads?
The education budget is set by the state (mostly). Athletics gets money from donors, ticket revenues and private funding. This allows them to spend as they see fit.
I believe most state universities are the same. In other words, the difference between the athletics budget and the academic budget represents the priorities of Americans in general, not any specific group such as a universities administrators.
Is that the case, or it sounds like from the other commentors here that it also represents the effectiveness and focus on fundraising? If instead people were given a single fundraising plea form with 2 checkboxes (one for academics, one for athletics) -- which way would most people go?
> the well-established fact that research-active faculty make better teachers Does anyone have a citation for this well established fact?
Experience: My professors were shit, but I was able to do science in one of their labs and that got me into graduate school. Research faculty give opportunities that are impossible to find elsewhere.