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From: andy@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: Role of computer science
Message-ID: <892@Shasta.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Tue, 7-Oct-86 02:47:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: Shasta.892
Posted: Tue Oct  7 02:47:49 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Oct-86 01:22:38 EDT
References: <10331@cca.UUCP> <10410@cca.UUCP>
Reply-To: andy@Shasta.UUCP (Andy Freeman)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 49

In article <10410@cca.UUCP> g-rh@cca.UUCP (Richard Harter) writes:
>Are you suggesting that someone who wants to become an Electrical
>Engineer should not attend a university?  Would you like to go on
>record as saying that "The training offered at Stanford is academic,
>not professional"?

I heard in the late 70's (I have a Stanford BSEE) that the EE programs
at Stanford and MIT weren't accredited.  I still don't care enough to
check.  (I'm not sure what accreditation means in the professional vs.
academic argument, but it is interesting that no one at Stanford seemed
concerned.)

He continued:
>	Let me expand a bit on what I meant.  Someone who holds an
>academic position has definite ideas on what is important and what is
>not which are conditioned by the fact of his or her employment as an
>academic.  In particular, those areas which are live areas of research
>(or at least suitable for writing papers about) are important.  To an
>academic, the utility outside of academia of knowledge is only of
>modest importance.

You obviously haven't tried to live on a professor's salary in the
Santa Clara valley or near Boston. :-)  But seriously, professors
here consult extensively/expensively and/or have companies.  They
also get a lot of industrial funding.  Assuming that these companies
are getting their money's worth, either the professors aren't academics
(by your definition) or these companies value their academic bent.
(I suspect your definition.)

BTW - Stanford just started an undergraduate computer science program.
(This program is in the CS dept; the mathematical sciences and philosophy
degrees weren't.)  It is intended as a non-terminal degree, ie it is
for people who plan on advanced CS degrees; it is not supposed to train
programmers.  (I think it is a little weak in programming skills.)

The trend in Stanford's CS PhD program is to admit more people with
CS backgrounds, but I'd be mildly surprised if half of the people
admitted this year had one.  (I know that fewer than half did a
couple of years ago.)  Some of the professors here claim that
undergraduate CS programs aren't that valuable; some of them do
think that they are becoming more valuable.  (Then again, one of
the candidates for dept chairman said that MS degrees were for
people who didn't get a CS undergrad degree.  We didn't take him.)

-andy
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