The retail/digital information giant intends to donate $10 Million to the UW for the purpose of doubling the size of the Computer Science Department, with a new building.
The UW CSE Department has an outstanding reputation and admission is very selective. Since we are talking about a state that has a shortage of seats for the coming increase in college-age applicants, wouldn’t the money be better spent at other, smaller state colleges whose CSE departments are being starved by budget officials at the capitol? We need to find innovative methods to provide an education to able college bound students. Spreading around the resources instead of concentrating them at one location might provide the additional computer savvy workers that are needed.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2016/10/06/cse-gets-major-boost-with-10-million-donation-from-amazon/
Private money. Donor’s choice as to where and how it is used.
Quite frankly the world does not need many mediocre CS students. The great ones are easily 10x more productive than average ones.
I do not think spreading the money around would be a very efficient use of the money. By doubling up the size of the existing department, many synergies could be realized. $10M is not a whole lot of money…
The CSE department at Washington is capacity-limited to admitting only about 40% of already-enrolled students who apply to the CSE major (only a frosh get direct admission to the CSE major, leaving most to compete for admission later), mostly with GPAs from 3.4-4.0. If doubling the department size doubles the CSE major’s capacity, then the environment will become much less of a “weed out” one.
https://www.engr.washington.edu/current/admissions/admitstats
Admission to CS program at UW is somewhat unfair; especially to those kids who want to wait until after first coupl of quarters to decide on major. Decisions for those kids are made mainly on how they do in two intro programming classes (CS142, CS143). These are really brutal classes and sometimes deductions TAs make for subjective aspects of your code are enough to spoil your chances.
it is private money…and amazon is not exactly doing it because they are so loving and want to just help out. it is to try and increase it’s supply of computer people and possibly outsource some research to the school that they may not want to do in house. I am sure with the 10 million donation amazon will help guide what the school invests in.
plus, it is good PR and a tax advantage too
$10 mil could certainly buy a lot of new computers/servers/licenses at several state schools if Amazon were to diversify the donation, but it’s still not enough money to make a significant impact. The big challenge for many schools is how to manage recurring costs, not just one-time investment costs.
Amazon likely did this for tax/PR reasons, and probably to get some “free” research out of it. Which is fine.
Excellent idea to give money to a top CS program in a top flagship U instead of to lesser programs. There is a need for expansion and this is a very appropriate place for the gift. The best students will be served, especially since they need to limit CS majors now.