Re: Are 'best' universities being targeted

[netnews.upenn.edu!gopher.cs.uofs.edu!guinness.cs.uofs.edu!beidler@rutgers .edu (Jack Beidler)]

In a number of posting, including the original posting, as one who
is not at one of "the best universities", I was wondering what
makes a school "the best".  Over the years as a computer scientist/
software engineer I have found that I can rarely use the term 
"the best".

Greg's list of "the best" contains at least two universities that
do not have undergraduate computer science programs and at least
one university that only recently started offerring an undergraduate
degree in computer science!  Surely Greg doesn't want to
automatically give money for Software Engineering and Ada Education
to schools who don't have undergraduate programs in the discipline,
or do not have a track record at the undergraduate level.

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.

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.
-- 
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|  John (Jack) Beidler				                   |
|  Prof. of Computing Sciences   Internet: beidler@cs.uofs.edu     |
|  University of Scranton                  BEIDLER@JAGUAR.UOFS.EDU |
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