The federal government forces Florida to spend billions on Medicaid. Mandatory Medicaid increases are driving education cuts in budgets in nearly every state.
"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."
-- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19orszag.html?_r=1
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. The one they are cutting seems to be the only one that does non-hardware research an…
All the departments share strong overlap in required (undergraduate) coursework however. And the department being cut is the one that is responsible for teaching these courses (OS, Data Structures, etc etc).
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…
Among the general public, possibly, but that's also true of mathematics. Among scientists, it looks like it's going the other way to me, approaching math and statistics as something that many people need to know at least a little of. Even over the past decade there's been a significant shift. In the early 2000s, most bioinformatics research was done by biologists in collaboration with computer scientists, with the biologists providing only the biology side of things. Today, it's increasingly common for biologists to be expected to understand and work with the tech side as well. At the very least, if you're a younger researcher working in a data-heavy area (and maybe even if you aren't that young), people expect you to be able to write some Python, interface with SciPy, and navigate matplotlib.
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. I do not know if this is how UF handles its budgets.
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 athletics draw no resources from education, but how can this be so?
Because athletics raises its own money.
> Instead of increasing the budget of athletics, why can't the education budget be increased instead?
The increased budget for athletics is coming from the money that athletics raises.
Where is the money for the education budget coming from?
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…
Among the general public, possibly, but that's also true of mathematics. Among scientists, it looks like it's going the other way to me, approaching math and statistics as something that many people need to know at least a little of. Even over the past decade there's been a significant shift. In the early 2000s, most bioinformatics research was done by biologists in collaboration with computer scientists, with the bi…
I'll agree with that. The scientific data sets are only going to get bigger.
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.
Last I heard, LSU and Nebraska were the only two schools with athletic programs that were both financially and nominally self-sufficient. This was in 2009, I think. This link gives some financial stats on athletics programs starting with the 2004-2005 academic and ending with the 2009-2010 academic year.
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.