A few days ago, UF announced it planned to kill its Computer Science department. Given the essential role of computers today, I took that to be a sort of Washington Monument Ploy — an attempt to show the legislature and the governor how bad the cuts to the state university system are biting — and I didn’t even bother blogging about it. Sure enough, University Of Florida Announces Plan To Save Computer Science Department.
What a surprise.
I do have to say, though, that the Florida legislature’s slash and burn approach to state education, while a disaster from almost every rational point of view (investment in human capital, civics, state prestige, to name only a few), likely will benefit the University of Miami. We are a private institution, and we’ll benefit as first new hires gravitate here, then as students do (when the tuition gap shrinks), and finally as existing faculty become increasingly easy to lure away to places where they do not count the pencils.
In the eyes of those who hate an effective public sector that’s probably a feature, not a bug, but I don’t think it is any cause for celebration.
