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From: andy@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: equipment
Message-ID: <484@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Mon, 10-Aug-87 17:29:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocky.484
Posted: Mon Aug 10 17:29:30 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Aug-87 05:43:18 EDT
References: <402@ndsuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: andy@rocky.UUCP (Andy Freeman)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 54
Keywords: why rich get richer

In article <402@ndsuvax.UUCP> ncmagel@ndsuvax.UUCP (ken magel) writes:
>				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.

You are going to hate to read this.  Remember three years ago when
"every" school started an AI program?  Where did they get the staff
for these programs?  Stanford just started a BSCS program and is very
concerned about finding adquate staff (especially professors).  (If
you'd like to hear why Stanford didn't think an undergrad program
was a good idea, despite substantial long-term pressure and
offered incentives, please ask.)

I am NOT saying that all of the best people/work are/is at the best
schools or that none of the bad people/work are/is at them.  However,
there is a critical mass phenomena and good computer science professors
are not nearly as common as computer science departments.

There is also the issue of what industry supports.  At Stanford, we
have to buy equipment for "mundane" activities like coursework.
Equipment is donated for specific research projects.  There may also
be a "type of research" question.  For example, a lot of universities
have workstation development projects; most of them look like rather
mundane industry projects - the kind of thing that universities don't
do very well.  Industry's reluctance to support these "competitors"
is very understandable.  In short, industry tries to support activities
that universities do better (and that industry benefits from) when such
support makes a difference.  Industry supports exceptions because
such support makes a bigger difference than support for the average.

>In many cases, they hadn't even figured out how to use the equipment by
>the time it arrived.

Examples please.  My friends at other top schools say that they have
much the same problems we do; we're using what we've got as efficiently
as possible and we still don't have enough.  (My research is currently
stalled partly because of a computron shortage.  I'm hoping to get a
lot done during a planned machine exchange because some of the old
computers will still be here while a newer one is being installed.)
Occasionally we get machines that are unusable - industry expects us
to make them useful in return for the donation.  (Different schools
have different priorities.  Stanford doesn't do much of this sort of
thing; MIT and CMU do more of it.)  Some of this is good, but we've
got to be careful because it isn't always the best use of our resources.

-andy
-- 
Andy Freeman
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ARPA:  andy@sushi.stanford.edu
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