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Comment by k8si | Hacker News Reader

I attend University of Massachusetts "Anheuser-Busch". Should I be worried? They DO seem to be spending a lot, what with the enormous new lab science and academic classroom buildings, swank honors dorms, and library updates. Are they spending too much on us? Are we going to go bottom up next time the market crashes?

Also: For what it's worth, I'm not here to party, I'm here to learn. There are plenty more like me (and we would all make more than adequate additions to your development team...). And another thing: no one calls it UMass "Anheuser-Busch". It's "Zoo"mass. Sigh.

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I wouldn't worry too much. UMass' Computer Science program is ranked very highly - comparable to Ivy League institutions. It's also the flagship public university in a state where higher ed is very, very important. Talking to Boston-area CS profs, I've heard that UMass is better than, say, Harvard for PhD students because the support provided to students is better.

In a financial crunch things can get uncomfortable, but UMass Amherst probably qualifies as too big to fail. And administrators are less likely to damage nationally-ranked departments then weaker parts of the university. For instance, after Katrina, Tulane killed off its CS and engineering departments (including civil engineering!) but kept areas where it was nationally ranked.

I also go to UMass Amherst, unfortunately, I partied too much for a comp sci major and might have failed out but I'm not worried I invested more time into javascript than java, it is nice to see a fellow classmate on HN!

Being only familiar with UMass Amherst via its not-insubstantial contributions to ML (specifically the work of McCallum & co), I was surprised to see it given such short shrift in this article.

"what with the enormous new lab science and academic classroom buildings, swank honors dorms"

That infrastructure investment is to make the school attractive to future students (you already are a student). Same as Starbucks will periodically renovate or a company might provide employee perks.

Many improvements are also done for parents on college visits to make the school seem attractive to them.

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