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From: ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: equipment
Message-ID: <402@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 9-Aug-87 16:46:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: ndsuvax.402
Posted: Sun Aug  9 16:46:15 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Aug-87 01:04:05 EDT
Organization: North Dakota State University  Fargo, ND
Lines: 18
Keywords: why rich get richer


     One topic I have not seen this group address, but which should be interest
ing since there are both academic and industry people as active contributors is
the concentration by industry on aiding the most prestigious universities to the
exclusion of the rest of us.  Of all the gifts of equipment made by U.S. 
industry in 1985-86, more than 70 % went to the 20 top schools in the nation
( e.g., Stanford, MIT, Univ. of Texas).  Yet those schools graduate less than
1% of the B.S. in Computer Science, less than 10% of the M.S. in Computer 
Science and less than 25 % of the Ph.D. in Computer Science graduates and the
percentages of graduates from those schools is going down.  In almost all cases
those schools were not more aggressive in going after equipment grants.  In 
many cases, they hadn't even figured out how to use the equipment by the time 
it arrived.  Why does industry concentrate on those few schools when most of
their potential employees come and increasingly will come from other schools?
In some cases, those other schools have individual programs fully as large as
the programs at the favored few.  They could benefit just as much from gifts of
equipment and students at those schools would be likely to be more favorably
impressed with the giver since the school would not have alternative equipment.