OT: Florida cuts their entire Computer Science dept and increases ...

[ZenConn]

the athletic budget? I know sports brings in a lot of money but this is crazy.

Cutting their CS dept

 

[suzyq]

the athletic budget? I know sports brings in a lot of money but this is crazy.

Cutting their CS dept

Gotta love the SEC.

 

[Huskymaniac]

And Calhoun is the monster who doesn't care about academics. The NCAA doesn't care about what the SEC schools do because they bring in the money.

 

[hungry husky]

Yeah, pretty heinous stuff. I'm actually a student at UF (for a few more weeks) and there were some SERIOUS protests across campus (I'm talking thousands of people). Pretty apparent where the school's priorities are.

 

[arnie3]

I kept looking for the punchline in this article, but unfortunately this was not a joke. I can't imagine what the Administration was thinking when they signed off on this! UF has a great academic reputation, but this makes the university seem so out of touch with the future needs of its students. Does the school really need to add $2 million more to its athletic program? With the addition of a new Poly University, this makes the Governor's statements look foolish!

 

[upstater]

Just checked U. Florida's athletic department budget. The athletic program, even at U. Florida, receives $4.5 million in aid from the academic side in the form of student fees and direct support. As well, it earns $8 million in royalties (for the sale of sweatshirts and the like) which constitute 100% of the school's revenue on royalties. If one assumes that, say, only 80% of that is related to athletics, that's another $1.5 million that should be going to the academic side.

On the other hand, the school brought in slightly less than $10 million more in revenues than it did expenses. Most of the revenues (33%) came in the form of contributions to athletics.

I'd say, looking at everything, Florida is about $4 million in the black for athletics, but of course this doesn't take into account the taxpayer subsidy for cost of attendance for athletes (the AD only reimburses the school for tuition) which is up to $4 or $5 million as well as any debt payments for bonds on athletic facilities and stadiums. U. Texas for instance has about $250 million+ of debt.

Bottom line, look at that contribution # from alumni. That's the number that stands out above everything. So, even though the school isn't "making" money off of sports, they sure are raking in a lot of alumni dollars. I'm pointing this out not only to say that the money may be lost if they started cutting back, but $30 million a year signals a lot of interest from alumni, and therefore a lot of pressure on the presidents. Let's see how much pressure the computer science people can exert on the UF President.

 

[District-Husky]

This computer / Internet thing is never going to catch on.

 

[IMind]

There are probably some reasonable ways you could eliminate a stand alone Computer Science department and consolidate to save costs. There's a ton of overlap between various departments: Math, Engineering, even Philosophy and Business... it just seems like they went about it in a really bad way... the press is abysmal. They certainly didn't do a very good job of selling it to anyone.

 

[DogMania]

Preparing students for viable careers is way overrated.

The folks at UF obviously have never seen that NCAA Student Athlete commercial that they show on TV all the time.

Can you imagine the resentment the current CS and potential future CS students must be feeling toward the UF and the Athletic Department.

I bet if you took a national poll as to which university balances athletics and academics better, UConn or UF, Florida would win in a landslide. It's all about perception!

 

[phillionaire]

at least the body odor problem on campus will decrease. somewhat.