Uh, Oh!

My youngest grandson (of 3) came to us from Saratov, Russia in late 2005. When I read that Saratov State University finished first in a recent international computer science programming competition, I was curious. As I read further, I sank into depression. The United States is a third-rate country among the best and brightest in the world of computer science. I am not exaggerating when I proclaim the U.S. a third-rate country. Thanks to Dub's anti-science administration, we have fallen behind in nearly every cutting-edge scientific field. Now, thanks to the xenophobic firestorm that Dub has ignited (and abetted for political gain), we will turn away international students by the droves. Our home-grown "talent" will not get the job done in the coming years. Dub runs around speechifyin' about being a wartime president. What an assh*le. FDR was commander-in-chief during WWII and approved the Manhattan Project at the same time. Oppenheimer and whiz kids like Richard Feynman created a weapon of mass destruction in 3 years. It's going to take the Iranians a decade to accomplish the same task. Of course, Dub prattles while Rome burns. We get the kind of leaders we deserve. May the Almighty have mercy upon our souls for putting Dub in charge for another three years. If this is (fair & balanced) tragedy, so be it.

[x CHE]
At Computing's Olympics, Russian Teams Take Gold and Silver — and MIT Finishes 7th
By Brock Read

Saratov State University, an institution of over 28,000 students nestled along Russia's Volga River, earned top honors Wednesday in an annual event that could fairly be called the Olympics of undergraduate computer science.

Teams from 83 colleges descended on San Antonio, Tex., this week for the event, the Association for Computing Machinery's 30th annual International Collegiate Programming Contest. The grueling competition asked three-student teams to solve 10 complex computing problems in just five hours.

For over a decade after its inception, the contest was dominated by teams from the United States. But students from around the world now match wits at the event, and American teams' fortunes have faded. Over the past 10 years, squads from Asia, Australia, and Eastern Europe have taken turns climbing to the top of the programming heap. Last year's competition, held in Shanghai, was won by the local favorites, a team from Shanghai Jiaotong University.

American colleges may have been hoping for a similar home-field advantage this year, but they had no such luck: A contingent from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which placed seventh, was the only American squad to finish among the top 20. The MIT group managed to solve four of the 10 problems.

Saratov State's team earned $10,000 scholarships, and bragging rights, by correctly answering five of the questions. It earned first place by solving five problems more quickly than Altai State Technical University, another Russian institution, which had to settle for second place despite also answering five questions. Several teams managed to answer four of the brainteasers, including the third-place finisher -- the University of Twente, from the Netherlands -- and the fourth-place squad -- last year's champions, Shanghai Jiaotong.

The event was a several-day affair that included workshops and smaller contests, but Wednesday's final competition was clearly the highlight. Students did their programming in a large, open assembly hall. When a team successfully answered a problem, contest officials announced the development in a decidedly low-tech manner: They let a colored balloon rise to the ceiling over that squad's table.

MIT's performance was the lone bright spot in an otherwise cheerless day for American teams. While the nation sent 16 squads to the world finals, only two other American institutions finished among the top half of the 83 competitors: Princeton University finished 28th, and DePaul University came in just one spot behind.

Several institutions with highly respected technology programs -- including the California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and Rice Universities -- all fell quickly from the leader board and placed in the bottom half of the final standings. Three Canadian institutions, the Universities of Alberta, Waterloo, and Toronto, secured top-20 finishes.

The declining fortunes of American colleges have caused a considerable amount of hand-wringing among some professors and technology analysts, who cite poor showings in the competition as evidence that the country's grip on technological dominance has slipped badly.

David Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, said the American squads may be struggling because talented students shun technology training. "Every high-school senior thinks every programming job has already gone to India," he said. "There's this assumption that computer science, as a profession, is completely over, even though the facts aren't nearly as dismal as the folklore."

Colleges in Asia and Eastern Europe, meanwhile, are "taking the competition more seriously than those in the United States," Mr. Patterson said.

But the American teams may just be the victims of much stiffer competition, said Martin Rinard, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science who coached MIT's team. About 5,600 teams, from 84 countries, attempted to qualify for this year's event. In 1997, the last time that an American team won the competition, only 1,100 teams participated -- and only 50 made it to the finals. "It's a big world, and a lot of people are getting access to computers," Mr. Rinard said. "You wouldn't necessarily expect us to have a dramatically larger share of the smartest students."

And the upstart institutions from nations like Poland, Russia, and Romania can stock themselves with students who have already become grizzled vets of the coding-competition circuit, according to Mr. Rinard. "I think in Eastern Europe, there's a culture of competing in programming contests from an early age," he said. "In my experience, to do well in these contests, you have to have been doing them for a long period of time."

Concerns about American colleges' slip in the standings should not obscure the accomplishments of students who make it to the finals, Mr. Rinard added. "This is a difficult, harsh competition," he said. "People need to take what these guys do seriously and give their work the respect that it deserves."

Click on this link for the competition results.

Brock Read writes on information technology for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google at Google Reader. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.