There are over 400 graduate students here in the CISE department at UF. With the cuts to all TA funding plus half the research faculty instantly being forced to stop research in addition to those faculty who do not wish to remain as teaching only faculty there will be 200+ of us graduate students leaving. At over $10,000 a year in tuition, the loss of these 200+ graduate students tuition is far in excess to what the college of engineering as a whole stands to save by consolidating and gutting the department. Next year instead of a $1.3M deficit to plug they will have an additional 2M+ less in tuition revenue alone. I would love to see where the dean decides to turn to next to "consolidate." This is not a sustainable approach to a budget deficit because she is greatly devaluing the degree in the eyes of the current students and we are going to transfer elsewhere to finish our degree programs. She can honestly apply the 5% budget cuts across the board to all departments and let everyone take a small hit or irrevocably damage computer engineering at UF and still have a budget issue.
