[Edu-sig] Low Enrollments

[Chuck Allison]

Hello Arthur,

Saturday, October 15, 2005, 9:04:48 AM, you wrote:

A> It seems to me the issues here are all tied together quite neatly with some
A> of the discussion of the previous thread - small business vs. large
A> business, the impact of companies like Microsoft (well maybe mostly just
A> Microsoft)  in the marketplace and on traditional notions of the
A> relationship of large companies to educational institutions, etc.

Microsoft's affect on our CS department is noticeable. It mainly
consists of giving us Visual Studio and other software for free, and
that a small number of our faculty are stricken by Microsoft worship.

A> Suffice it to say that there is zero question, none -  that Microsoft's
A> tactics over the last 15 years have had the effect of stifling the impetus
A> of smaller players to direct efforts towards innovation in a very wide
A> swatch of the potential area for such innovation.  This isn't a quirky,
A> iconoclastic view of things.  The fact is certainly getting noticed in very
A> mainstream industry analysis. And at Microsoft, I'm sure. The days of the
A> creative, innovative, entrepreneurial developer allowing themselves to spend
A> their energies to become the uncompensated market research department of a
A> Microsoft are over. A whole vibrant market segment has simply dried up and
A> gone away.

I have witnessed this and agree.

A> Which doesn't yet touch on Microsoft's ability to influence agendas in
A> academic settings.

A> To the extent that the CS departments have allowed, and continue to allow,
A> themselves to be company towns for the major industry players, they deserve
A> what they get.  And if what they get is a lack of interest, maybe that is
A> saying something optimistic about who our kids are today.

I have been a force for company independence, and our department has
pretty much remained so. However, just Thursday we had our semi-annual
advisory meeting with representatives from local industry, including
small companies as well as Symantec and Novell. They are pretty much
unanimous in their excitement for .NET. They want more C# programmers.
Interesting.

They did get excited about my bringing up Python though - as a first
language, and also for workplace use (I teach Python at Symantec).

-- 
Best regards,
 Chuck