History or basketball…

Posted on April 23, 2012 by nickgb

University of Florida is under severe budget cuts, around 30% this year, so I can almost understand needing to gut its entire Computer Science department:

The University of Florida announced this past week that it was dropping its computer science department, which will allow it to save about $1.7 million.  The school is eliminating all funding for teaching assistants in computer science, cutting the graduate and research programs entirely, and moving the tattered remnants into other departments.

Total savings: $1.7m, which is almost enough to pay for … the increase in the athletics budget:

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.

About nickgb

Computer programmer, lawyer, and aficionado of many dorky things that, in reality, you probably can't be an "aficionado" of. nickgb is a fanboy of Whedon, Sorkin, Gary Cole, Matthew Perry, and anything that brings together casts of his favorite shows (which, by definition, were all canceled "way too early").
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  • http://poisonyourmind.com dedc79

    Oh well, at least it’s not like computer science is a growing and important field with tons of job opportunities….

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Nicotine-Jones/100001350187119 Nicotine Jones

    My guess is that the issue here is tenure. There are situations where you can’t contractually cut professors unless you cut the whole department.

    It should be obvious that this is a bad idea, but given the way university budgeting works right now, sometimes there aren’t a lot of choices.

    And while it’s easy to ring the “just cut sports” bell, it isn’t always as straightforward as a dollar-to-dollar choice– those are probably different pots of money.