Flawed Strategy

I am a Computer Science graduate of Oregon State University. I was lucky to get to go here and am luckier still to have a job promoting open source for the sake of the University and the world.

It was with great disbelief that a I recently learned the that the Computer Science program here at OSU was going to really focus on enhancing its research efforts by cutting the number of instructors they have and hiring more research, tenure track professors for the department.

The department has chosen a strategy that is as follows (bear in mind I’m hearing this second hand from one of the professors in that department so I’m sure some of the details I’m going to lay out are not exact): schools such as the SDSC and MIT have really been focusing on research in Computer Science for the past 40 years. Now they are the premier places for that research to occur; the faculty on staff, those they can attract and the prestige they get in the computer science community has grown immensely over the last 20 years. So, as OSU, we’re going to adopt the same strategy in hopes that in a few years (that’s read 20 years) we’ll be a world leader in computer science research. Prestige, money and people will then follow.

This strategy is flawed in several ways. For one, we’re starting way, way behind the curve; OSU is not even on the radar when it comes to research in this area. In addition, Portland State now has a huge advantage in terms of total faculty over OSU (19 to 35). This means research $$ and prestige will more likely land at PSU and not OSU in the short-term and more likely in the long-term as well.

Now, don’t get me wrong; I love my alma mater and more importantly, I want to see it do well. But decisions like this are not only frustrating they just don’t make any sense to me. If there is one thing I hate more than somebody who complains, its someone who does not offer a possible solution to the problem. So where do I think OSU’s Computer Science Department should focus its energies? I’ll give it to you in three words: take a risk.

40 years ago when these now-leaders-in-computer-science headed down that path, they were in essence taking a chance. They were taking a chance that computers were forever going to change the world they lived in. Fortunately for them, it paid off. The industry-of-research that has grown up around computer science is maturing; OSU is not even in the fold and to try to break into it would be like me trying to build a competitor to the iPod. It would be foolish because I’m too far behind and more importantly, the market is dominated by several well-known, and well-respected competitors.

The next “big thing” in Oregon (and the world for that matter) is open source. With the OSDL, the OTBC, IBM’s Linux Technology Center and now the Open Source Lab in Oregon already, there is no higher-education research, teaching and learning happening anywhere in the state. This is an opportunity. But how do we exploit it?

The Computer Science Department has a raft of interest from students that are wanting to be involved in and learning about open source. These students are motivated and brilliant; they are going to change the world and they want to use open source as their tool to make it happen. If only we had some faculty and more importantly full-time instructors to teach and interact with students on open source, we could attract some of the most talented students in the Northwest and the world.

I will be the first one to agree that the job of the University is to create knowledge; to that I’m not saying we need to stop doing research. However, times have changed. Research dollars are drying up and we need a new way to bring in money to the department.

If you’re going to take on a strategy that will take 20 years, try this one; focus on your students, connect them to the world of open source and then keep that connection back to your department when they move on. When they have changed the world they will remember that the seed was planted at OSU and they will give back.

We have the world at our finger-tips and all we have to do is execute.