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Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School 291

Posted by CowboyNeal from the in-the-wake-of-disaster dept.
baldbobbo writes "According to University President Scott Cowen of Tulane University, the School of Engineering will be greatly reduced. I have to wonder, as a student who can graduate in May 2007 (the deadline for those students to still receive a degree in any of the cut majors) with a Computer Science degree, but wants to stay an extra year, should I transfer to another university, graduate on time, or switch majors?"
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Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School More

Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School

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  • huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:18PM (#14215960) Journal
    Why would you want to stay an extra year without a degree? If you want to take non-required classes, just take them after you get the degree.
    • I know someone who stayed for an extra year and an arts degree doing languages... Just because he's a comp sci student doesn't mean that he can't get another degree.

    • Re:huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by aprilsound ( 412645 )
      Financial Aid tends to dry up when you already have a degree (and aren't pursing a new one.) 46% of all college students receive federal aid, not to mention private scholarships, state equalization grants, and so on. Probably not affordable.

      As for the poster, you still have 2 years and you want to take your time?
      Abandon the sinking ship that is your school; unless you like the idea of having a degree from an institution that no longer has a CS program. In the new tech world, your reputation can make or b
      • I'm with the parent on this one.

        I think the questions I'd like answered are:
        1. How are you paying for college
        2. What kind of impression have you made on your profs so far
        3. Is there anything keeping you from leaving
    • A degree alone won't neccessarily get you a good job. Most employers like to look for real world experience in internships and co-ops. I wouldn't recommend rushing through college to get your degree in time if it means sacrifcing experiences like those. Either switch to a new major that will encapsulate the old program (should one exist) or transfer to a new university (I'm sure you won't be the only one doing so).

  • How about . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:18PM (#14215961)
    You talk to your student advisors? That's what you pay your tuition for. How the hell would a bunch of random people on Slashdot know what you should do in some strange particular circumstances that we couldn't possibly know the details of since we aren't on the staff for your school?

    • Re:How about . . . (Score:5, Funny)

      by tjr ( 908724 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:26PM (#14216007) Homepage
      Don't be silly. Random people on Slashdot know everything.
    • When's the last time you talked to a student advisor? I just graduated, and the advisors were my worst source of advice.

      • Re:How about . . . (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:34PM (#14216062)
        Well, they're at his school and they're going to have a much better clue about what the school is offering and how he can use those services than a bunch of random slashdotters who don't know a thing about his school (and many who have either never been or haven't been to college in eons).

        If this was a more general question that didn't hinge on cuts at his school, that'd be different.
    • OTOH, the advisors are not going to be impartial, are they? They work for the school.

      I would look at switching. If the *earliest* he could graduate is the very *last* semester they'll offer the degree, that sounds very risky. Many people don't end up graduating as soon as they thought they would.

    • Re:How about . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NOLAChief ( 646613 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:56PM (#14216151)
      because some of us who post to slashdot actually are alumni. And because it should be news for nerds when some of their fellow nerds are getting screwed. I graduated from Tulane in 2004 with a degree in mechanical engineering, one of the programs that is due to be cut.

      If you haven't figured it out yet, I heard about this today and I am furious. How does eliminating a quality engineering school strengthen the university? How does it strengthen the community? New Orleans is trying to rebuild. I know, my house in Metairie (jefferson parish, next door) got flooded. Life sucks, but ultimately we will rebuild. And guess what? engineers will be needed to rebuild the city and make it a better place in the long term. who better than engineers with a personal investment in the area? seriously, i have to wonder, with cowen making foolhardy decisions like this for the university he's paid to run, what business does he have running the mayor's rebuilding commission?

      Switching gears, as an alumnus, what does this say about my degree? does this mean it's worthless? if so, i want a refund, mr. cowen. every single penny i've given to the university. every single bit of blood, sweat, and tears i gave to earn my degree and try to make the university and the community a better place for it. every year you complain that alumni donation rates are down. it adversely affects your precious us news and world report rankings. want to know why we alumni aren't giving the university a dime? because of shit like this. i'm tired of being alienated at every turn.

      As for the submitter, being eligible to graduate in 2007 makes you, what? A sophomore? You still have time. Run. the good faculty will be jumping ship and if you think the tightwad financial twits will give any money for design projects to a doomed program, think again. Half the time it was like pulling teeth even before the storm. and do what I'm going to do. tell everyone you know thinking about attending tulane not to bother, regardless of major. You can't be world class without students, and you can't be world class without the support of the alumni.

      sorry about the rant. had to vent

      • Re:How about . . . (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Fausthero ( 926389 )
        I totally agree with Chief here. The New Orleans community will be needing all the help they can get when it comes to tackling the great engineering problem that is New Orleans. It makes no sense that they should cut the engineering department when a majority of the other departments, lets say the French, or mythology department doesnt get cut. This is bullshit. So of course Tulane takes the easy way out and axes the program while emphasizing its liberal arts (read drop out alcoholics here) program. And
      • I'm a student at Georgia Tech, and after the hurricane a bunch of Tulane students got temporarily relocated here. I guess they'll be staying longer than they thought...

      • Yeah, dude. Come to Virginia Tech. We're expanding our CS program, and we just moved from the College of Arts and Sciences to the College of Engineering, where we get better backing and more funding. We'll take care of you.

        Plus, we're a drinking town with a football program. There are 17 bars within 5 minute walking distance of campus.

        Bundle up if you're from New Oreleans, though. There's about 2 inches of ice that's accumulated this evening.

        //sysadmin, technical staff, CS department, VT.

        ~W
    • I would say, don't listen to the parent poster. Get your advice from slashdot instead; that means less work for us. Which means, more time to post to slashdot. Where I can give advice to the likes of you....
    • work for the university. my father was an undeclared advisor for a while at the university in which he was a full prof. he had people come to him with an ACT of 3. yep, this fine institution let people in with the lowest ACT you get get...
      it was against university policy to tell people to drop out (and try to get their money back). there was remedial this and remedial that. as long as you had money.

      i know why you ask people at random. it's worth talking to persons that

    • Re:How about . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by adrianmonk ( 890071 ) on Friday December 09, 2005 @01:02AM (#14216723)
      You talk to your student advisors? That's what you pay your tuition for.

      That doesn't mean they're anything other than completely worthless.

      I went to school at the University of Texas, and I dropped out and then came back 7 years later after working in the computer industry for the whole time. During the intervening time, they had changed the number of the intro computer science class (CS was my major) from CS304P to CS307, and they changed the language from Pascal to Scheme or Haskell (depending on the section). Even though I had originally tested out of the original intro class and the class after that and had gone on to take several other CS classes and do well in them before dropping out, the advisor that I talked to in the CS department still insisted that I needed to take the new intro class.

      I explained that I was quite confident I could handle picking up where I left off in the program instead of starting at the beginning. She countered that if I didn't take the intro class, I would "miss out on important concepts like recursion". I assured her that I was well-acquainted with recursion already, etc., etc., but she wouldn't budge.

      Luckily, rather than giving in to the urge to set her straight using a very loud and unfriendly tone of voice, I retained my composure, and we worked out a plan where I would register for the intro class, then on the first day consult the professor and let him make a determination whether the class was necessary for me or not. If the professor decided I didn't need the intro class, then I would take an additional upper-division CS elective as a substitute. (And, this isn't the point of the story, but on the first day, they agreed, and I switched to the appropriate class. Then I took the Compilers class as one of my upper-division electives, which was tough but an excellent experience.)

      Anyway, the point is this: had I been younger and more naive or for other reasons believed that the advisor knew what they are talking about, I probably would have wasted a semester taking that class and put myself a semester behind. That would've cost me a great deal of money since I was paying for my own school and living mostly off my savings, and it would've served no purpose at all.

      So, my advice to most any college student is that you should never assume that a department advisor knows what they're talking about or has even made an effort to understand what your situation is or determine what is best for you. They do often have insight or knowledge into what the rules are and how the department works, and you should take advantage of that information. Sometimes they also have good advice based on experience. (Like "never take class X and class Y in the same semester" or something of that nature.) But don't ever assume that what they say is automatically the best course of action for you.

  • Stick with it! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by joshjoneswas ( 855233 )
    The aggravation of switching schools is far too great. Many of your credits may not transfer and, as experience tells me, the relationships you have built with your professors thus far will work wonders in the senior year and beyond when it comes to those pesky deadlines and loads of work!
    • Same with changing majors at this point. Of the three options graduating on time is the most reasonable.

    • Re:Stick with it! (Score:2, Informative)

      by aBum ( 907857 )
      As someone who has switched schools, I can tell you the parent is completely correct. Plus in addition to all the lost credits you'll have (or should I say won't have), there's the problem with not having pre-req's for some classes and planing your schedule becomes a serious pain. Plus you have to be able to come up with every sylabus from nearly every class you've taken so the school you're going to can evaluate the course to see if they even will consider it equivalent to one of their courses. Plus it'

  • Why? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by breadiu ( 706188 )
    Why say in a program that's going to be cut? The reputation (past and future) of your degree reflect on you. It would be advantageous to matriculate into a program that's going to remain strong for the foreseeable future.

    • Re:Why? (Score:2)

      by Surt ( 22457 )
      Only if he's going to grad school. In the real world you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who cares about the strength of a program over the strength of the overall university. You can graduate from Stanford in computer science of all things and still get employed on the strength of the Stanford name. No one cares if the comp sci program is crap. And for graduate school admissions, 90% of his leverage is going to be letters from profs + test scores. So if he's looking at grad school, he should make su
  • Finally one university that clues in to the problem of oversupply of engineers?

    • Re:Too many engineers (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Seumas ( 6865 )
      Not so much cluing in to the problem as surrendering to the inevitability that we can't compete with the rest of the world in the field?
      • Why is this inevitable? We have the best post-secondary eduction. The most resources to throw at engineering projects. The biggest market for those projects. IMHO, also the most creative and solidly reliable engineers.

        Sure other countries (China, India) have *more* engineers. But I firmly believe that quality beats quantity. And as those engineers get better, well, they're going to come to the U.S. for a competitive salary. And then, guess what - they are on "our team."

    • Re:Too many engineers (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      oversupply of engineers

      You have an undersupply of engineers in the USA - management just don't realise that.

      Back when I was doing failure analysis of power station parts my job was made very easy by a list of easily avoidable mishaps that had happened in US power stations. I could look at almost any problem that came up and then find a well documented US example where it was ignored until it caused a complete shutdown of a plant - even problems that are trivial to fix in the early stages and easily identi

    • No, note CowboyNeal's tagline:
      from the in-the-wake-of-disaster dept.
      Tulane University is in New Orleans. It might be more accurate if the headline read "Hurricane Katrina Reduces Tulane's Engineering School." TFA doesn't mention engineering specifically, and I wouldn't be surrpised if all programs shy of medicine/nursing have been reduced.
      • Hmm, I see. New Orleans will take decades to recover from that mess. In fact, it may never recover and may die a slow and horrible death as a city. Anyhoo, if one has to work as a truck driver or framer, an engineering degree is quite useless. A 4 year EE degree actually makes it more difficult to find work, so when I apply for work, I describe my degree as a 3 year Comp Sci instead. Nobody has ever asked to see the degree certificate anyway...
        • Hopefully New Orleans will wither away and New New Orleans built on the high ground overlooking the old city will flourish.
          • Hmm, *is* there high ground there? or do they have to move 100 miles inland?
            • I saw a little map somewhere showing the flooding. There was lots of high ground. You couldn't have the particular combination of river AND coast, but it seems like that wouldn't be such a bad compromise to avoid periodic complete destruction. Maybe not even high ground, but POSITIVE elevation seems like it might be wise.
      • TFA doesn't mention engineering specifically,

        This page [tulane.edu] has more details.

        "A total of five programs - Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Exercise and Sports Science - will be eliminated."

    • You see, there was this thing with a broken levee in New Orleans that caused a lot of problems. You might have heard about it in the news. The thing is, that levee was made by civil engineers. Obviously, if civil engineers can't handle a simple levee, then maybe it's time they stood back and let liberal arts majors have a crack at it. Tulane is going to be supplying those liberal arts majors.
    • Finally one university that clues in to the problem of oversupply of engineers?

      Yep. The school of business, the cost of which are bankrupting the whole school, will continue to grow. The graduates will continue to have Forbes fueled dreams of sucksess. You know, clueless and greedy morons who chase IP nonsense. They think of themselves as corporate raiders ready to continue a fine tradition of dismantling US industry, offshoring and putting money in their pockets. Most will end up serving coffee, cler

  • Switch majors? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by castoridae ( 453809 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:25PM (#14216002)
    It would seem that you're not committed to Computer Science, since you're willing to switch majors. That said, if Tulane is cutting that program, it seems they don't consider it to be an area "where it has attained, or has the potential to achieve, world-class excellence." Assuming you don't have a strong preference as to your major, why not pick something that Tulane does consider world-class?

    If you have an engineering bent, I would think that civil engineers are going to be in hot demand there for quite some time. Seriously.

  • How did this get posted? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mainsail ( 809793 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:26PM (#14216005)
    Now Slashdot is an academic advising website?

    • Re:How did this get posted? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:58PM (#14216158) Journal
      Now Slashdot is an academic advising website?

      Since the only thing most advisors do is apply their experience to your situation, yes.

      Maybe a roomful of academic advisors can match the cross section of experiences you'll get from a front page slashdot post.

      He's not just asking "what should I do with the next few years of classes," he's also asking "how is this going to affect my life"

  • who are your professors? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:26PM (#14216008)
    Who are your professors? You're worried about graduating, they're worried about getting (or keeping) tenured positions. Who will be around to teach your final classes?

    This shouldn't be your primary consideration, but it needs to be on the table.

  • greatly reduced? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fireduck ( 197000 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:27PM (#14216019)
    according to this chart [tulane.edu], the only engineering remaining is chemical and biomedical. everything else (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Engineering) gets cut [tulane.edu]. That's an extremely dramatic cut.

    My suggestion is to leave ship. Sure you could stick it out, but with the program being eliminated, there's little incentive for faculty to stay (they'll all be looking for jobs elsewhere), and less incentive for the school to spend money on student support (computers, etc.). End result is that you'll likely have a lot of classes taught by part-time folks who are being recruited at the last minute when every untenured junior faculty doesn't show up for spring semester (because they've also abandoning ship).
    • You can bet the remaining engineering courses will get cut eventually.

      You don't really want to graduate with an engineering degree from a school who's claim to fame is their "awesome" womens studies major.

  • A Suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Parafilmus ( 107866 )
    If you want more school, go for a Master's degree. It's only 30 more hours. Why take another year undergrad, when you can get another degree for about the same number of hours?

    • Re:A Suggestion (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      If you want more school, go for a Master's degree. It's only 30 more hours.
      Is that true? Has US education really declined that much? Not only do you have to check that US graduates didn't get something from a degree mill, postgraduate students from a reputatable university don't have a minimum one year for a masters like in other countries so we have to ignore that qualifiaction as well?

      • Re:A Suggestion (Score:3, Informative)

        by j-turkey ( 187775 )

        Not only do you have to check that US graduates didn't get something from a degree mill, postgraduate students from a reputatable university don't have a minimum one year for a masters like in other countries so we have to ignore that qualifiaction as well?

        Perhaps you have you are not famaliar with the credit hours standard [auburn.edu] which is common amongst United States colleges and universities. The GP is talking about 30 additional credit hours, not clock hours. A typical courseload is 15 credit hours per se

      • That doesn't mean 30 hours of total work. That's 30 "credit hours" which means 30 hours of lectures/whatnot PER week over the course of a semester. Ofc, that 30 hours is probabably going to be split over multiple semesters in order to be managable since the "30 hours" doesn't include the massive workload that professors expect to be done or studying or anything. In short "30 hours" in this context probably doesn't mean what you think it does.
    • If you're doing a course based masters you'll have to do more than 30 credits. If you're not, there's this little thing called research that takes up an inordinate amount of time.

  • Site Summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by XanC ( 644172 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:31PM (#14216047)
    There's a lot of useless information to wade through to get the good data, so I'll summarize what happened. (As an alum in one of the cut programs, I've read through it all.)

    ~100 faculty laid off from the Medical School downtown. ~50 faculty laid off from the main uptown campus, nearly all from Engineering. Cut programs: Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, and Computer Science. Remaining: Biomedical (which was, in fact, our strongest), and Chemical.

    Also, previously there were the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering. Now it's going to the the School of Liberal Arts, and the School of Science and Engineering.

    Leaves me wondering where exactly I stand, having a recent degree in a program that no longer exists. I'm more worried about the kids who were planning to go back next semester in one of these programs, and only find out today that it doesn't exist!

    • Gutting the medical school can't be good for the biomed program can it?
    • The biomedical program is going to suck with no other engineering department, CS and a gutted med school. Here Biomed is a program, not a department. I have a CS BSc, am enrolled in the electrical engineering department, in the biomedical engineering program. Biomed is inherently cross disciplinary (bio-medical-engineering).

  • Faking it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by syntax ( 2932 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:34PM (#14216063) Homepage
    As a Tulane CS grad -- I think they're faking it. Tulane's CS program at least has always suckled at the teet of Netscape and Yahoo due to former students, like David Filo, being at the helm. This seems like yet another scheme to just pull money -- which honestly, they could use at this point -- out of their corporate sponsors.

    • Re:Faking it. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by NOLAChief ( 646613 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @11:10PM (#14216218)
      you know, I hope they are. can never quite tell what's a moneymaking scheme and what's not with cowen. he's known for floating crap likely to be unpopular around the holidays and after finals when no one's looking. if he is faking it, it's a lot of ill will to kindle, though, and could backfire. i as an alum (ME '04) am furious and feeling alienated. like hell am i going to contribute any money to the tulane general fund. At least not until cowen is run out of town on a rail. were i a faculty member, i'd be polishing my resume anyway, not wanting to put up with this shit forever. and what does this say to the students? that you're not valued? apparently so.

      • Re:Faking it. (Score:2, Informative)

        by cspring007 ( 705809 )
        This seems like the same thing they pulled with the footbal program earlier this year. A lot of people think they are faking it. Scott Cowen has proven to be one of the most underhanded manipulative college presidents in history. I half think that he did this just so he could hold a press conference and claim that it was a historic restructuring of an american university. He actually said 'this is a move that will forever affect Tulane University for the next ten to twenty years' Another thing is that h

  • Leave (Score:4, Insightful)

    by alienw ( 585907 ) <alienw.slashdot@ ... inus threevowels> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:35PM (#14216066)
    Get the hell out of there as soon as you can. If they are cutting the program, the professors will be more worried about finding a new position than actually teaching. There aren't enough openings out there for a whole engineering department that is about to get cut.

  • Uhh.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 ) <kcocknozzle.hotmail@com> on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:36PM (#14216069) Homepage
    Tulane University to Reduce Engineering School
    ...Reduce it to what, rubble? Smithereens? A small puddle of goo?
  • I have to wonder, as a student who can graduate in May 2007 (the deadline for those students to still receive a degree in any of the cut majors) with a Computer Science degree, but wants to stay an extra year, should I transfer to another university, graduate on time, or switch majors?

    I would not reccomend changing majors. CS will be one of the most in demand majors this century. The reason I say that is because the internet is coming everywhere in the world and all the users will need software. As we go

    • EE looks better than CS (Score:3, Informative)

      by xtal ( 49134 )
      Disclaimer: I have a BSc. EE

      In my experience, the engineering degree puts you above people with CS in the interview process early in your career. The core bits are crossed over, such as algorithms and discrete math. It is likely an engineering grad, especially an EE, will have taken more advanced mathematics courses than a CS grad - or at least, the default path through is much more math intensive.

      Maybe I am wrong, but that is my experience. Exceptional people always stand out no matter what their majors, b
      • My experience has been different. The engineers I've worked with couldn't do software engineering - they came up with an original solution, and then layered ugly hack upon ugly hack upon it as it needed to grow. End result, the stuff eventually became more or less unmaintainable, and G-d help the next person to come upon the code who wasn't familiar with it.

        I'm not referring to BSc engineers, either - these are guys with Ph.Ds who spent most of their academic careers writing software. Lots of experience doe

        • I'm not referring to BSc engineers, either - these are guys with Ph.Ds who spent most of their academic careers writing software.


          I think I found your problem..
        • Engineers shouldn't be allowed to write code unless it's embedded. Otherwise they think that things like Matlab are a good way to develop multi-thousand line programs. Or maybe that's just the research engineers I run into.

  • Admission Letter in Hand... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wev162 ( 721318 ) on Thursday December 08, 2005 @10:55PM (#14216149)
    Wow, this must be a fairly recent decision. I received an admission letter for the undergrad EE program less than a month ago. Guess this solves my dilemma over whether to attend Tulane or not post Katrina...
  • A couple of things.

    First of all, once you've had your first job, no one really gives a crap where you went to school. They care about what quality of work you did at your last job. They care that you *did* go to school. That's about it.

    Second... someone talked about the 'reputation' of your school. No one cares. Tulane is a name-recognition school, and in most parts of the country no one will even know that it no longer has a CS program. They'll either recognize the school name or not. Did you know that UC
    • First of all, once you've had your first job, no one really gives a crap where you went to school. They care about what quality of work you did at your last job. They care that you *did* go to school. That's about it.

      Which makes it all the more critical that your first job be a good one. It sets the tone for the rest of your career. If your first job doesn't impress than you will have work against the tide to get a second job that will impress.

      And how do you get a good first job? Well, a good start is to
  • According to University President Scott Cowen of Tulane University, the School of Engineering will be greatly reduced. I have to wonder, as a student who can graduate in May 2007 (the deadline for those students to still receive a degree in any of the cut majors) with a Computer Science degree, but wants to stay an extra year, should I transfer to another university, graduate on time, or switch majors?

    Don't worry, programming jobs in the US are being reduced faster than the staff at your CS department.
  • I understand the need of a university to cut programs to balance their budget, but am I the only one that sees rather bitter irony in eliminating the Civil Engineering department in the wake of the Katrina levee collapse? Don't you think you'd maybe want to expand it, and maybe focus on levee construction, hyrodlogy, and related topics so that such a disaster doesn't happen again? I know there are other schools who cover it, but don't you think there will be a fair number of young, native New Orleaneans (?) who lived through the flood, and want to major in civil engineering to ensure something like that never happens again?


    • As a 35 year old native new orleanian, most of us did not go to Tulane. Cost would be a major factor. When I was in school it was 15k a semester. So if your parents made decent money the pell grants did not cover it and the loans were not worth it.

      I grew up 8 blocks from Tulane. Most of the people I knew who went there were from elsewhere. I would say 85% to 90% percent of Tulanes undergrads were from out of state.

      The Masters programs had more locals. Due to continuing education.

      I did my time in a ti
    • Although I'm without hard numbers, very few Tulane grads stay in the city. Most are a quick in, hello, and good bye. My advisor at Tulane seemed, well, shocked to hear that I was staying in the city. He indicated that it was very uncommon, only a handful stayed.
  • I just finished my Tulane Application... all of 5 ours ago. Requested Major: Computer Science. :-x

    Not that it matters anyways, I'm probably going to Georgia Tech. But damn, what of the timing!
    • At least it was after you finished your applications and not after you had accepted an offer from them. It also means that you can save yourself the application fees unless you've already mailed it out.
  • Especially for engineering. I used to live no more than ten blocks from campus, and I now live 5 minutes from there, so I and my friends from school have spoken to each other about Tulane w.r.t education for the price---and we would know about expensive education, because we went to an expensive private high school. But that's just my unbased (but very biased) opinion---I actually don't know much about the Engineering department, except that Tulane isn't known much for it.

    I will mention that several enginee

  • Thanks everybody (Score:2, Informative)

    by baldbobbo ( 883186 )
    I really appreciate the feedback...very nice to hear from active engineerings (thus the reason for posting in the first place). I've tried contacting my advisor, but he's a little busy finding a job, so please cut down on knocking on the mod's. They understand at least. Second, you have to understand that New Orleans has been my home my whole life. The most time I've spent away from it was the time here at Mizzou (and I was forced here because of my parents, not because of its "outstanding" CS program) and
    • Yo Bro.

      I am a fellow New Orleanian who has lived away from the city for 5 years. A hard place to leave. No place like it. I graduated from De La Salle many moons ago, before it had girls.

      Besides the girl gone wild vids, and the drunken rampages in the quarter, New Orleans has so much to offer in culture, food, music, etc, only locals tend to know our city is not based in the quarter.

      My parents retired to Florida, and I spent time here and mucking about South America. We all miss the city. And as a mat
  • If the university is even making the announcement, they do not take those programs seriously as a core component of their charter. This will impact how your degree is initially recieved, and may impact the quality or opportunities offered to you while you are there.

    Transfer to another school soon (is January too soon?). This will minimize the complications of getting a degree granted from another institution - most have minimum credit requirements.

    Makes me wonder if this is a sign of times to come, though.
  • that we should pull funds from the endowment at anything other than the legally mandated minimum rate.
  • Seriously, it is hard to make a decision such as the one you have asked, but you need to start looking at other universities and soon. They have already laid off all the professors. Yes, the degree will "technically exist" until the cutoff, but they have already gotten rid of the professors. What this means is that you will have all brand new temporary professors. Very few will have good technical/research experience and even fewer will have more then 1 year of experience teaching, even less will even have
  • As others above said, jumping to another school is probably a good move. Your faculty are going to be far too deep into CYA mode to pay attention to the needs of undergrads. That being said, since you're a) already in the South b) used to paying private-school rates c) going to a school with a good reputation and d) close-ish to Houston [subset of the first point], I'd seriously suggest taking a look at Rice. Rice has a very strong program in CS, and is a good school overall from what I've seen and heard

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