dyer@spdcc.UUCP (06/02/87)
>In some cases, a good path is to do an MS CMPSC, work for a few years, >then do something like the Wang Institute software engineering program. I know this has little to with the subject, but it got me started on a sore point. Followups to comp.edu. "Something like" is indeed the word. For those of you who haven't heard it, the Wang Institute is officially defunct as of last month. The last class will graduate this summer. The name and the building have been sold to Boston University, but the software engineering program will not be continued. Needless to say, this was a preemptive strike by Wang and his board who acted before the faculty and students, not to mention the Mass. Board of Accreditation, ever had a chance to react. The exact reasons for his actions are not public, and he's not talking, but the recent financial performance of Wang Laboratories, legally and always assumed to be a separate entity from the Institute, is well-known. Funny how things got moving behind the scenes only once the Reagan tax reform bill was signed into law... Of course, Dr. Wang is not legally bound to spend any of his or his foundation's or maybe his corporation's money on anything he doesn't care to. I would make the point, however, that an academic program isn't the same as an unprofitable assembly line. You don't dress yourself in the robes and conceits of academe, apply for and be granted accreditation, hire a new president away from an established engineering school and accept students into a program which can stretch up to four years into the future for completion, only to cut it off as if it were a plant churning out Wang PCs in a market demanding IBMs. Or, at least you don't if you want to retain any semblance of respect in the academic community. Money itself was never an issue before, and certainly "cash flow" has never been and is not now the issue -- it is clear that an undertaking like Wang Institute would lose money from the start, and perhaps for a long time. At the same time, the school has never known austerity--the equipment and facilities were top-notch, the faculty handsomely paid at industry salaries. It's a measure of Wang's ultimate lack of commitment to the goals of software engineering education that he preferred to see the program killed off rather than taking steps to withdraw his participation in a smooth, orderly fashion while keeping the program alive. -- Steve Dyer dyer@harvard.harvard.edu dyer@spdcc.COM aka {ihnp4,harvard,linus,ima,bbn,halleys}!spdcc!dyer