R.I.P Tulane Computer Science

In a shocking decision today, the Tulane University Board of Trustees voted to eliminate several degree programs.

These include Civil Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science.

All faculty in these departments were told that their contracts would expire in June 2007.

God knows, we need to keep critical programs like Russian, Portuguese, Musical Theatre, Medieval Studies, Women's Studies, Jewish Studies, Digital Media Production, and African Studies.

Why would Tulane need to produce people that know how to create computer networks, power grids, or, say, levees?

They are also laying off over 130 faculty from the Med School. I guess we don't need doctors either.

See more here for undergrads, and here for grad programs.

Unbelievable...

Comments

[Trina]

okay, i hear ya... but hey, lay off the musical theatre! ;)

[Aaron Weidenhaft]

Dear Lord. And I thought I was upset about the Men's track and field cut.

[schroeder]

Holy shit! Pardon my cajuneeze, but what the fuck!

Can we eliminate the Tulane Board of Directors?!!

[ashley]

Yeah, and CS, with a faculty of about 9, happen to have a Fullbright fellow and an IEEE fellow.

Oh, and there also happens to be that Yahoo! Founders Chair in Computer Engineering. Hopefully David Filo can get his endowment back.

[cynthia]

no need to diss on other (also crucial) faculties to make your point. and just for the record, professors in the areas you seem to think are useless make about a third of what enginering profs make.

[ashley]

Cynthia,

I don't think they're useless, I just don't think, at this point in time, that they're critical. At this point in time, I think that New Orleans needs engineers.

I also know that Engineering salaries are much higher, but faculty are expected to bring in their salary in grants every year. You're supposed to "pay your own way" via grants. Not necessarily that way in all liberal arts departments (of course, there aren't as many big $ grants available in liberal arts areas of study).

[Mr. Clio]

Dang. I'm a lowly political philosophy Ph.D. who was thinking about pursuing civil engineering for the good of the tribe. My wife's a Tulane doc, so I was hoping to go for free.

Guess I get two strikes. One more and I'm out.

Don't know if Mrs. Clio lost her job yet or not.

BTW, I'm a liberal arts guy, but you can blast all you want on liberal arts, Prof. FYYFF. You're dead right; New Orleans needs levees and grids and networks.

[Cynthia]

Well, here's your explanation - Tulane engineering has never been anything to write home about. When people want a ranked engineering program in the state of Louisiana, they go to LSU. So Tulane is obivously deciding what type of institution it needs to be while it rebuilds, just as it did when it was expanding in the last century. It is a liberal arts research institution. Engineering was there so students could make their parents happy, not because it was a high-ranking program, and certainly not because Tulane was graduating students to work locally. So it actually makes more sense than the Med school lay-offs.

[ashley]

Bullshit.

CS, for example, has an IEEE fellow, a Fullbright fellow, and an endowed chair in computer engineering. This, out of a faculty of 9.

Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

[ashley]

Oh, and Cynthia, David Filo, Tulane CSE grad and founder of Yahoo!, donated over $30M to Tulane.

I guess we don't need grads from weak programs like that, huh?

[Cynthia]

I'm not saying I agree with it, but I'm sure that's the reasoning behind it. (And like it or not, LSU's engineering programs are all ranked in the top 100.) I've been in a PhD program at Tulane for six years now and have worked at various levels of teaching and admissions. College beurocracies are the ugliest, most offensive processes in the country, and most of my friends at Tulane, my boyfriend (who taught at Loyola), and I have all lost our jobs. But, again, the point I made originally was about the importance of the programs they have decided not to cut. Why don't you bitch about the sports programs that they chose to maintain instead? Sports programs across the country - even the biggest - take economic losses at every major university every year. And Tulane sports programs? I don't think I need to break that one down.

[ashley]

I still think it's incredibly shortsighted. I don't see anything resembling Filo-type donations coming from fields like, oh, Latin American studies, fer example.

Keeping football and baseball and basketball keeps donations from alumni up. That's why they didn't axe football a few years ago.

I bitch about what I want to bitch about, and I bitch about this because it's important, and because nobody from engineering is going to contribute another penny to Tulane.

[Cynthia]

Yes, lucky for the Latin American Studies Department that the Stone family (Anthropologists) made huge contributions to that department and others because they are the only department that wasn't in danger of going under when the rest of the graduate programs were for years.

And I hope those alumni you mentioned are contributing big to Tulane because, judging from the empty dome every week, they aren't even supporting the school by going to the games.

[ashley]

One would think that Filo's contributions alone could have saved CS&E like the Stone's contributions saved Latin American studies.

Not in Cowen's great master plan.

Sigh...

Seems like you just want to argue, Cindy. Looks to me like we're basically on the same side.

[JM]

Heard about this in email today:
http://savetulaneengineering.org/wordpress/

[Matthew]

tulane mechanical engineering is well within the top 100 programs in the country, and outdoes vanderbilt.

the program is already established and doesn't require a high cost in the way of equipment or materials each year, as does a medical or biomedical engineering program.

this feels more like a political restructuring than anything else, and i think it is an extremely bad move. personally, i think that the sports programs should be the first to go...not academia.

[GP]

CS, and probably the entire EECS Department, pulled their own weight. CS expenses are the faculty. That's it. They sure as heck didn't buy new computers every year or even once in the 4 years I was there.

Football was kept so we could get slaughtered by a few Top 25 teams and collect big paydays next year. Not that anyone really cares about watching Tulane in the Stupid-Dome. MAYBE, if we were in the SEC we could come close to getting it half-full. Maybe.

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I am in my second year of college and I want to major in computer science. The thing is I keep on reading about how I won't be able to get a job because of the people overseas. My dad however says that it shouldn't be a problem and computer science majors are in shortage. I really want to go for computer science, but is it true that it will be tough to get a job when I graduate because of all the people overseas?

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Is there a difference between a degree in Computer Science and a degree in Computer/Information Sciences?

[Yudu]

When I was a sophmore in 1987 there was a kid on my hall who went on to found Yahoo. I can't for the life of me remember his name but he was smart. Yahoo sound kinda computery to me. Maybe we should let them stay.

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