Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted

[seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@uunet.uu.net (Michael Feldman)]

In article <23m9eo$src@gopher.cs.uofs.edu> beidler@guinness.cs.uofs.edu (Jack B
eidler) writes:
>
[stuff deleted]

>Suppose we use accreditation of the undergraduate program by CSAB
>as a criterion for "the best".  How many of Greg's best qualify?
>Not many.  Oh, I forgot, some of them feel they are too good, too
>superior to be evaluated by others.  That sounds too much to me
>like pork barrel, the very thing that is creating our national debt.

Yeah, that was one of the points in my interminable post about CSAB.
The other point was that less than 25% - FAR less, if you neglect
IBM's 11 participants - of program evaluators are non-academic.
The last thing I want to do is start a religious war over what's
a "best" school; one should simply use the relevant criteria for
the purpose. Your school and mine are among an elite, Jack; our
faculties recognize that fads should not drive our curricula or
our choice of teaching language.
>
>The fact is there is no such thing as "the best" in this case.  The
>best we can do is submit proposals and have them reviewed by
>unbiased reviewers, people who don't have a preconceived notion 
>that funding should only go to an elite few.  People who evaluate
>a proposal on its merits, the quality of the proposal, not the
>school where the proposer teaches.

Thank you, Jack, for saying this much more eloquently than I could.
>From the perspective of the Ada industry, the 100 or so schools where
Ada is heavily involved should be seen as the pace setters. The
curriculum program is one way - quite effective, I think - in which
the number of pace setters is increased.

Greg started this. He is many things (most of which I like, by the
way), but I never thought I'd end up calling him an academic snob...

Mike Feldman