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From: arnold@csu-cs.UUCP (Ed Arnold)
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: C.S. Dept. woes
Message-ID: <2540@csu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Apr-84 07:05:49 EST
Article-I.D.: csu-cs.2540
Posted: Mon Apr 16 07:05:49 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Apr-84 08:29:49 EST
Organization: Colo. St Univ, C.S. Dpt.
Lines: 71


This is inspired by that lovely flame by Tim Giebelhaus.

I'm a 3rd year Computer Science student (going on 4) here at Colorado 
State University. We're located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Ft.
Collins Colorado.

As with your program, ours is not in the best of shape, although I don't
think our situation is as bad as yours. I have no impressive numbers of the 
number of majors, etc... But I will try and give you a general idea of our 
situation. 

Our entry level programming class has some 450 people, they work
interactively on a Cyber-170. They also use Xedit, which by the way is a
real dog of an editor. The language is Fortran. From there you move to
Pascal and about 250 people. This class is much harder to get if you are an
underclassperson and not in the major. 

Which brings me to one of our biggest problems, getting classes, whether 
you're in or not in major. Here, if you're in the major you're given
first shot at a class, but the core courses are so loaded that many times majors
cannot get in the core C.S. courses needed to take the upper level courses. This
is our one large bottle-neck. After this is passed it is relatively
easy to get the upper level courses, except for a few popular ones like
graphics.

This bottle neck in our 5 core courses creates problems for people trying
to transfer into the major from another major. The courses are very
difficult to get if you're not in the major. It seems the only way to get
them is to wait till you're a junior or senior, then you're high enough on
the totem-pole to slide in. As you can imagine the situation is horrifying
for an underclassperson who is paranoid about their schedule anyway. The
only way to transfer into the major is to take and pass these core courses
and it's almost impossible to get the course if you're not in the major!
(yes, I know. Life's a bitch :-)

Our other big problem is equipment, as with most departments we have too
little equipment for too many students. The main machine for the
lower-level courses is the Cyber-170, whereas the upper-level courses are
taught on the department's Vax-11/750. Graphics is taught on some fine H.P.
equipment. Once again too few for too many, this tends to make response
time really bad. I recall writing 1000 line fortran programs, putting them
in the run queue and waiting till the next day to get the output, this
practice is not unique. Load averages on our Vax have approached 50 at
the end of a semester. People must sign up and wait in line for a terminal
hooked up to the Cyber, there is also a 1 hour time limit on use. Sometimes
the C.S. lab looks like a train station with people waiting up to 2-3 hours
to get on a terminal where the response time is BAD.

Now for a few good points. Our faculty is good! I'd say that 50% of them
are excellent instructors. Another 30-35% are fair, and the rest are not
real good. As with computer scientists everywhere, our instructors have
problems with getting their ideas across to their students, but we survive.
Our faculty is also loaded to the gills in every course. I recall an
instance where an instructor forbade his students from asking him questions
outside of class or office hours. If he had not done so he would have been
hounded all day, and night, by students.

Our department is also formulating a solution to the core curriculum bottle
neck. All 5 courses will be open to everyone, no one will be able to
declare a C.S. major until they have taken a pre-c.s. curriculum and are
accepted into the department. Those with the best grades will be admitted.
This will allow everyone to take the courses needed and weed out those who
should not be in the major in the first place.

I'm a little curious about other programs. Anyone else have any horror
stories or comments?

       Cheers,
       Ed Arnold   {hplabs,hpfcla,unmvax,hao,denelcor} (csu-cs!arnold)
		   Colorado State University    Ft. Collins,  Colorado