Dr. Dobb's Journal, CA
09-05-07
Ah, That Special Time of Year
Jonathan Erickson
To everyone's delight, it's back-to-school time.
If you are a parent, teacher, or student, this is the best part of the year —it's backto-school time! Parents can offload their bored, waterlogged offspring; kids can get away from bossy parents; and teachers can feel optimistic —probably for the last time until this time next year.
The new school year used to mean new #2 pencils, Big Chief tablets, and bigger backpacks. Along the way, that shifted to new laptop computers, cell phones, and iPods. Now, its all about back-to-school iPhones, which, short of burgers and fries, seem have everything school kids want. According a recent Shoplocal.com survey that polled 500 preteens, 73 percent want to start the new school year with new gaming systems, 70 percent want new computers, and 69 percent want cell phones. Education marches on.
And then there's tuition. It's hard to forget about tuition and other "student fees," especially at the university level. The problem with student fees isn't just having to pony up all that money; it's trying to figure out exactly how much money you owe and why you have to pay it. Jeez, you need a college degree just to figure that out. Universities and mobile phone companies must hire the same accountants to design their undecipherable fee statements.
And in deciphering the fee structures, what a lot of computer science and engineering students are discovering is that they're paying a premium for pursuing their chosen major. At the University of Nebraska, for instance, engineering students pay $40 extra per class credit. Likewise, undergraduates at Iowa State University's School of Engineering pay about $500 extra annually.
In truth, there's nothing really new about public universities tacking on extra fees for certain class. Schools like the University of Kansas, for instance, have been adding special student fees for several years —and not just for engineering students, but for majors across the board. But what's new this time around is the justification for doing so: Universities say they are competing with private industry for top-notch domain experts, and charging extra class fees is about the only way to pay the higher salaries these folks command. One of the dangers of this, of course, is that, as reported in the New York Times, poorer students are sometimes opting for majors that don't require special fees instead of going for, say, a degree in engineering.

It's ironic that at the same time we decry that the U.S. isn't graduating enough engineering students, we're make it more difficult for students to attain engineering degrees. So here's my proposal.
For starters, we can agree that it's unreasonable for U.S. high-tech firms to offer full scholarships to all comers. Still, every company that whines that they can't find enough U.S. engineering graduates could afford to pick up the extra special class fee. The couple of hundred dollars or so per class wouldn't be much for, say, Microsoft or Intel, but it would be a lot for financially strapped students. In other words, before going to Washington to complain about the scarcity of U.S. engineering grads so that you can hire H1-B workers at lower salaries, do more to encourage domestic students to achieve their career goals.
On another topic altogether: I have a fun project in mind, but I need help. You see, when it comes drawing, I have a hard time creating a circle. So, are you budding cartoonist? If so, drop me some e-mail at jerickson@ddj.com. Let's talk.
And again, don't forget about Dr. Dobb's Wide World of Programmers photo album project. Send in your photos to ddj.photos@gmail.com and get on the board.
Finally, if you haven't seen it, take a look at some of the new video stuff we're doing. When I say "we," I really mean Deirdre Blake and John Dorsey. They're doing some fun new stuff like the video news report on how supercomputers are being used to model and design Formula 1 racing cars (www.ddj.com/hpc-highperformance-computing/201201899).