There are over 400 graduate students here in the CISE department at UF. With the cuts to all TA funding plus half the research faculty instantly being forced to stop research in addition to those faculty who do not wish to remain as teaching only faculty there will be 200+ of us graduate students leaving. At over $10,000 a year in tuition, the loss of these 200+ graduate students tuition is far in excess to what the college of engineering as a whole stands to save by consolidating and gutting the department. Next year instead of a $1.3M deficit to plug they will have an additional 2M+ less in tuition revenue alone. I would love to see where the dean decides to turn to next to "consolidate." This is not a sustainable approach to a budget deficit because she is greatly devaluing the degree in the eyes of the current students and we are going to transfer elsewhere to finish our degree programs. She can honestly apply the 5% budget cuts across the board to all departments and let everyone take a small hit or irrevocably damage computer engineering at UF and still have a budget issue.
University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
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Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great point. After all, computer science is a relatively unimportant discipline. It's obviously a waning field. As we've seen in the news, people with CS degrees don't make much money and almost never get rich, so they are unlikely to donate to schools later on in life.
AsI understand it, there are several CS departments in the college. Several tomato plants.
Tomatoes? EE one of 5 CS department? All the good courses (and one bad one)I had were taught by CISE faculty.
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#63Is this the same University of Florida that did this: Give a 6 year 24 million contract to a coach of a so called amateur sports team ? http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4374311 Is this the same UF that gets a cut of SEC 2.25 billion dollar contract ? http://m.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2008/08/2008... ? Yes I think it is. Hmmm I wonder why they have nothing left for cs education.
The UF football program is profitable so it does not matter how much they spend on their coach or their program.
The CISE program at UF is profitable, so it shouldn't matter how much we spend on our program.
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#64I'm a current UF student, and what the hell?! The presidents of UF and FSU are lobbying the government to allow the universities to increase tuition without limits (ie, without asking the Florida Legislature again), and UF comes out with this? Is this their way of sending a message to the Legislature? "Don't approve our tuition hikes and this will happen"? They're asking for a tuition hike to make UF more "competitiv…
I'm also a UF student, and would gladly pay more in tuition if it meant saving our department.
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#65Let us think - how is an engineering department taught by mostly non Engineers? Odd I know, but rumor has it CISE does it. Not so with EE/ECE. BTW, CISE instructors are welcome to join EE/ECE - most of their research is done together already anyway. But hey, who cares about figuring out all of the details, lets just make this a sensation like all the other BS news.
Wat?
"Engineering department taught by non-engineers" You mean because CISE profs don't take the FE/PE? Is it because they haven't taken the order of the engineer oath? What makes one an engineer?
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#66Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#67I graduated from UF in 2009, with degrees in both Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. UF was running into huge budget issues, which they mostly took out on Liberal Arts. At the time, the Computer Science department was under Liberal Arts and Sciences, not engineering. The department chair at the time, Sartaj Sahni, responded by cutting teaching funding and letting some of the best teachers go. UF had a few t…
Well said. I was honored to have you as the programming team pres while I was at UF.
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
What the hell happened? He was the only one that cared.
Fired since he didn't have a PhD
I graduated in 2004 and did NOT like Dave. Too much ego. He cared more about people listening to him talk than learning the material. I know he was loved by others, and am sorry he lost his job.
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#69As a 2002 graduate, it pains me to see this. More so, when they are saying that they will cut the TA funding. I got through college because of my TA scholarship, and I still have fond memories of teaching the undergraduates. Some of them are still friends. We also did some nice research in my Masters, a lot of concepts(Grid/cloud) which we are currently using in our Startup. In any case, I just hope the department an…
Did you complete undergrad in '02, or were you a TA at that time? I completed my CISE undergrad in '02 and thought it was an excellent program, despite the convoluted organization.
As an aside, what does your degree actually say? The '98 catalog didn't actually have a "computer science" program, and the CS curriculum was offered as "Computer and Information Sciences" via either the business school or CLAS. Do you ever get people confusing your undergrad degree with the equivalent of MIS? (IIRC, the MIS-equivalent was DIS at that time.)
Re: University of Florida shutting down research in Computer Science department
#70Thank you, Rick Scott!
Easy there, the UofF doesn't need Rick Scott's help to completely blunder something. I left Gainesville in 2010 and that entire freaking town has one of the most ANTI-progress sentiments I've ever seen. The one shining star on the horizon will be the construction of the University's 40 acre tech hub. Let's hope they don't flub that one.
40 acre? I thought it was just one building downtown.