Signs Of Our Decline, cont...

April 23rd, 2012

Over at Forbes, Steven Salzberg notes a troubling development:

"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.

Let’s get this straight: in the midst of a technology revolution, with a shortage of engineers and computer scientists, UF decides to cut computer science completely?"

The short-sightedness of this decision would be bad enough on its own merits. But, as Salzberg notes, it gets worse:

"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."

If you're asking yourself how this could possibly make sense, you need look no further than the big media contracts such as this one between FU and such corporations as Fox Sports.

This is the current culture in microcosm. Investments with vast yet non-immediate returns are abandoned in favor of the quick buck.

If we truly find ourselves in a losing economic position opposite China or the EU a generation from now, we will need to look back no further than decisions like this one for explanation.

Rick Scott's Assault On Schools

Dec 15th, 2010

Incoming, far-Right Florida Gov. Rick Scott has one of the most extreme approaches to school voucher expansion ever seen. The real downside is not the assault on fair and equal education but the potential for encouraging criminal enterprise.

Mother Jones reports:
"Scott's plan is radical because it's designed to get around a constitutional problem the state encountered a few years back when, during Bush's tenure, it attempted to create vouchers to send public school students to private schools. But Scott apparently believes that his proposal will slip through, in part because the money could be used for other public schools. There are many flaws in Scott's proposal. But here's a biggie: It’s likely to be a fraud magnet.

As soon as the state starts handing families $5500 a year, it's virtually assured that enterprising thieves will devise various schemes to help them part with those funds, including by starting "independent" for-profit virtual schools, charter schools, and other predatory "educational" institutions. While the idea of privatizing the education system may seem like a big money saver, and no one really loves school bureaucracies, putting that much taxpayer money out there without adequate oversight (i.e. bureaucracy) is a formula for disaster."