51–59 of 59 posts
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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 make money. If you spend less on them, you have less money overall, not more.
Again, I'm not a sports fan. I'm just pointing out the reality.
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 well-established fact that research-active faculty make better teachers Does anyone have a citation for this well established fact?
There may be some people who are passionate about both (and of course, people who don't give a crap about either)
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 C…
disclaimer: This is a political rant from the articles facts. This is a huge opinion article with a little bit of fact sprinkled over it accusing Gov. Rick Scott of doing the wrong thing. 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. For some fact. Florida's economy has been hit the ha…
Hey guys, UF student here. 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%. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzZsds2XcGnMWFpcnFiNEhvQkk/...
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…
It seems to me that UF is starting to focus more on its business school and on engineering anyway.
But I wouldn't necessarily say that the university as a whole puts more focus on the business school than engineering - in fact, before the Hough donation, the MBA facilities were located in between two floors of a very old building, and you had to actually duck down to enter, through a very short and narrow doorway, a la Being John Malkovich.
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. Could it be that such priorities are a contributing factor to the high unemployment rate?
UF's football program's 'budget' is a red herring. It's a profit center for the university. It doesn't "cost" 90M. It pays for itself, and a great bit more.