Re: [seul-edu] Linux in Universities

[Jan Hlavacek <jhlavacek@sf.edu>]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 09:12:11AM +0100, Scott Wheeler wrote:
> 
> Quoting Dan Kegel <dank@kegel.com>: 
>  
> > Eventually I hope to make this a useful resource for anyone 
> > trying to convince their local university that Linux should be  
> > (a) supported by their IT staff,  
>  
> Few Universities do this, which honestly, I think is fine so long as they do 
> not actively oppose Linux or require proprietary software to access certain 
> resources.  Fortunately most universities have LUGs to help people along. 

Actually, there is a huge number od small 4 years colleges that
completely sold their souls to Microsoft.  They usually don't even have
CS departments, or if they do, they view CS as "business", their CS
curriculum consists of PowerPoint and Visual Basic, and ASP if they are
feeling creative. 

What should concern us is the fact that these colleges usually have a
lot of education majors, and produce a lot of local teachers.  Those
students graduate from college and go to teach thinking that Microsoft
is all there is.  I think there is a huge potential here, if we can
somehow educate the teachers even before they become teachers.  The
problem is that there is a huge resistance.  One of the problems is that
business or "CS" departments at these schools mostly consist of a bunch
of MSCE's who are affraid of Linux, and since they often managed to
convince the rest of the school that they are the true computer experts,
everyone listens to them.  Often the only Linux users at such school are
couple of math profs, and, if you are lucky, some of the IT stuff, who
have Linux boxes at home.

> > (b) used for infrastructure, 
>  
> I've worked for two university IT departments -- both of which used Linux 
> extensively.  I think you'll find that this is more of the standard than the 
> exception. 

Again, a lot of the small colleges signed up for some sort of Microsoft
Campus Agreement and use Windoze exclusively.  Their intranets and
administrative software are only accerrible from windoze boxes (that's i
have two computers on my desk). 

> > (c) used as part of the undergraduate cirriculum,  
>  
> Again, *nix has typically dominated computer science departments, well, 
> forever.  Linux has become a much cheaper replacement to proprietary systems 
> and as such is again, becoming the standard. 

Again, you are talking about large schools that actually have real CS
departments and faculty that knows something about computing.

> At any rate I think the reason that you probably haven't found many studies on 
> this is that Linux is more popular in the "university" subculture than 
> anywhere else.  Typically advocacy stems *from* uni students rather than to 
> them.  ;-) 

Again, at most small colleges and universities, you would probably have
hard time finding a Linux user among the student population.  Maybe few
geeks here or there, but that's it.

> I would even guess that universities that do not do at least half of the above 
> are in the minority rather than majority. 

These days every stupid small community college calls itself university,
and what's important, they do produce a lot of teachers.  In some parts
of the country, small local schools like that produce majority of them.
People who manage to get to a bigger better school often don't come
back.

-- 
Jan Hlavacek                                            (219) 434-7566
Department of Mathematics                             Jhlavacek@sf.edu
University of Saint Francis               http://www.sf.edu/jhlavacek/