I just finished reading Confessions of an Engineering Washout as linked from Slashdot. It's an interesting commentary on why one student switched from chemical engineering to liberal arts. After reading his article an interesting idea clicked into place about the computer science department where I work.
One of our biggest concerns in engineering right now is the lack of women in engineering. Interestingly, the 60's, 70's, and early 80's saw considerably larger percentages of women in the engineering fields than we see today (as high as 40% compared today's less than 10%, if I recall correctly). Where did they go? The blame has been tossed in several directions (many of which must be partially valid) and the video games industry is often blamed in computer science as video games only appealed to boys until the last few years. However, I would like to suggest another reason: socialization.
My only experience is within my department. I got both degrees here and now I work here. Therefore, my explanation is really only truly applicable here, but I think that this explanation probably applies in a lot of engineering departments. I think a real reason for many of our social problems in this department is that we are very stuffy.
Our faculty are very interested in their pet projects, researches, papers, and grant proposals. This is why they got their Ph.D. They want to discover interesting and important facts of computer science. Kansas, in particular, pays faculty very little compared to what they could be earning elsewhere (though, we shouldn't forget the extremely affordable cost of living), so the faculty must feel like they should have a little more freedom to do things their own way as compensation.
As such, most of our classes end up taking second place in most faculty member's lives. When I was a student, this showed quite plainly in the fact that hand-outs often came stamped with dates 2, 3, or 5 years earlier with obvious copy and paste errors. Some of our courses have changed just slightly in the last 10 years! In a field whose entire focus shifts every 5 to 10 years, this seems incredible.
Finally, and worst, in my opinion, our faculty members tend to be little concerned with the students. How many students have had a real conversation with a faculty member? One that wasn't related to a course or advising session? Our department is trying to cope with this problem via a mentoring program and some other programs, but the attitudes of the faculty have not changed. The faculty members still rate their own pet projects as most important. They also have a tendency to treat them professionally rather than personally. It's easier to do so, but it also builds a barrier between student and professor and creates a sort of formal professor-student vibe. When getting this vibe, a student generally just thinks the professor's full of his own highly educated crap, rather than seeing him as a person interested in her as a fellow person.
Now, before any faculty member reads this and bristles too much, I will clarify and say that some faculty members do better than others. I will also say that, in general, the faculty does really care about the students, but they just don't make time for them. When two things are important to you, but one is much more important than the other, the second important thing will likely be neglected. My yard is important to me. It bothers me that it doesn't look better. Yet, I have no plan for addressing many of its issues because I have other things to do that are more important to me.
From this perspective, it's really no surprise that we have only a small percentage of women in our department. Women are much more openly social, at least in America (my experience), than men. Whether this is cultural or physiological, it doesn't matter. If we, in our department, do not place real socialization as a higher priority, we will not draw in individuals who are interested in both computing and having a social life. We'll just attract the introverts, like me, and the occassional extroverts that can exercise their extroverted-ness elsewhere.
Therefore, what we need is not more programs forcing faculty members to take time out of their busy schedule of research and writing. What our department needs is a change of heart. Faculty members need to loosen up, drink some beer, and take a real interest in students and getting to know them.
I think you're probably right
I think you're probably right on this... However, I'm not in that department so I don't know for sure. But I can say from my own experiences in just the geek community that geeks in general eat their own young and are not very inviting to outsiders or anyone really.
Further making my point!
I will grant you the tendency. I don't think it's so much a tendency to "eat their own young" so much as a tendency to hate stupidity, as defined by the geek himself. A stupid person can be a sort of sub-human (read "user") in a geek's eyes.
Yet, this bolsters my point! It's much harder to dehumanize a person you have a relationship with. If you work to genuinely build empathy with others it's much harder to label them "moron." My point is that we should be changing these very attitudes and working towards a more benevolent situation within the community.
Instead, I see window dressing to make it look like we're making a difference. I observe another set of rules to make us feel better that we know and are dealing with the problem. However, we've really just created another "legalism" (to borrow from Christian terminology) that makes us feel better while letting us remain selfish.