[PLUG] Graduate CS programs in Philly area

[Bill Patterson <patterson@computer.org>]

I took the Drexel masters program in computer science from 1991-5.  From
my perspective as a consultant looking to give my career a midlife
kicker, it had some good points and bad points.  

Among the good points:
	o	I gained a good feel for algorithm and data structure efficiency
through use of rearrangements of data, rearrangement of execution order,
and parallelism.
	o	There was good exposure to operating systems through a 2-course
sequence.  The teacher was good (but they did not give him tenure and he
left.)
	o	I had a good exposure to object orientation

Among the bad points:
	o	There was inflexibility when I asked for a special course -- I lined
up the professor and set up a syllabus, then I received a terse and
unreasonable answer about why it was not good enough, with no avenue of
appeal (or even asking intelligent questions).
	o	There was inflexibility when I wanted to program in C instead of
Pascal in the first course that I took (1991).  The instructor didn't
want to hear about how C had marketability and Pascal did not:  he
insisted on Pascal.
	o	There was nothing in the area of databases that was offered.  The
closest I got was in a paper I did for a distributed operating systems
course, where I examined operating system support for shared-nothing
parallel database management systems.
	o	There was one opportunity to write a paper that could be published. 
I was able to publish the one paper I wrote, which was the one mentioned
above.  This was less than I should have been able to expect.

I feel that I really gained from the program, and if I had to make the
decision again knowing what I know now, I would only look for a program
that would not have the bad points listed above (and I don't know if one
would), and if I didn't find it, I would still take the Drexel program.

If I were you now, I'd look for a program that allowed me more control
of the subject matter, allowed me to infuse more marketable skill
development, and allowed me to write papers that could ultimately be
published.

Bill Patterson
Drexel MSCS 1996
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