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OCR for page 249
Appendix D
The Support of Computer Use in Higher
Educations
A Statemen/; by E. A. Feigenbaum, Director,
Stanford Computation Center
Automatic high-speed computing today Winter 1966] constitutes
one of the nation's most important scientific and economic resources.
Modern science and modern defense systems would be impossible
without computers. Computation differs from other areas of "big
science" in its immeasurably greater impact, now and in the future,
on our social, economic, and educational processes and institutions.
In the context of East-West competition, especially on national
defense considerations, the state of computer science and technology
was assessed at the White House level under President Kennedy.
Universities have played a major role in the development of this
resource. Their ability to continue to do so is threatened by the
application of certain auditing and accounting standards that in
ordinary circumstances would be considered routine. At present
~ The two memoranda included in this appendix were written at Stanford Uni-
versity in January or February 1966, in an attempt to explain a problem posed
by a government auditing policy which greatly restricted the access of Stanford
students to the Computation Center for instructional work. As of October 1967
the problem appears temporarily to be solved at Stanford University on an ex-
perimental basis. However, because the problem still has no permanent solution
at most of our nation's universities, the memoranda are reproduced here as a
statement of the problem. Some possible solutions are discussed elsewhere from
a different point of view (see reference 38 of the main text).
249
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250
A Spend ices
there is no national policy toward computer education. No federal
government program supports instructional uses of computers at
universities. The standard auditing procedures (as relevant to the
operation of a peanut factory as to a university computer center)
have filled this policy vacuum. The result has been to generate an
absurd situation in which an expensive computer facility sits idle
and cannot be used to compute instructional jobs. The money to
"buy time" to do these jobs is not available, even though the mar-
ginal cost of running the student jobs is virtually zero. To run these
jobs would, literally speaking, not cost anybody anything. The fa-
cility is at present fully funded (primarily by recharges to federal
government grants and contracts). It is the "logical" method of ac-
counting for the time used that produces the absurd result.
What is the story behind this situation? When any growth process
is geometric, the quantities involved grow very large very fast. Com-
puter technologists have been observing and warning for years that
the growth in demand for information processing done with com-
puters has been a geometric growth. The general rule of thumb has
been a doubling every two years. This average growth rate has been
observed at all levels, from the federal government taken as a whole,
down to the level of the small college or small business. Recently the
pace has quickened somewhat, so that the period is now about 16
months. Even the world's largest manufacturer of computers has not
been able to boost its production fast enough to keep up with the
growth of demand. Policy makers and planners find it hard to keep
pace with a geometric growth process, since normally the parameters
of the management process grow slowly and are obviously under con-
trol. Thus the crisis caused by geometric growth sneaks up swiftly.
In computing this has happened to the universities and to the
government.
Consider the Stanford case. In 1953, a small Computation Facility
was established, with a small budget. As demand for computing
grew, the size of the facility grew to meet it, until in 1962 (and none
too early) a Computation Center of the first magnitude was estab-
lished and funded. A vigorous academic Computer Science program
was begun, culminating in the establishment of a Computer Science
Department in 1965 that now had 111 graduate students at the
Master's and PhD degree levels. Vigorous educational efforts by the
Computer Science faculty, and by the faculty of many other depart-
ments, were carried out. The result has been astonishing. It is esti
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A ppend ices
251
mated that currently one fourth of the Stanford community (faculty
and students) are active computer users. The computer is used in
virtually every phase of the university's work, in virtually every
department and administrative function. In the Fall 1965 academic
quarter over 1,000 students in 44 different courses used the computer
in some part of their assigned homework. From September 1, 1965,
to December 15, 1965, $150,000 worth of time for "unsponsored"
graduate student and faculty research was allocated. The demand
for "unsponsored" use during the 1965-1966 academic year has
doubled since the 1964-1965 year a factor of two in one year in-
stead of the usual two. These numbers are the measure of Stanford's
success in computer education and computer science. But the success
has brought on a crisis, since under the present audit guidelines all
the "unsponsored" use must be paid for at the supportable rate. The
university's budget, with its slow growth from year to year, cannot
absorb the impact of a geometric growth process, at least not imme-
diately, because of a natural inertia in the budget. The crises in
university computing, like a man's death, came "unexpected."
When computing was "small business" at universities, it received
little attention from U.S. Government auditors. Because computing
came to involve very large sums of money, and because of actual
or presumed "irregularities" on the Dart of universities. the audit
agencies reacted (some would say overreacted) by issuing tightly
drawn audit guidelines, the effect of which will be to inhibit severely
the future growth of computer education. A short statement on the
audit policy lay Courtney S. Jones, Assistant to the Controller, Stan-
ford University, is appended.
Mr. Jones suggested one way out of the crisis a change in the
cost-accounting policy being applied. Another possibility is a direct
congressional attack on the problem by enacting legislation estab-
lishing a policy toward, and appropriations for, educational uses of
computers.
The absurdity of the present situation is hard to communicate
in a short statement like this. It is best understood in the computer
room at a major university like Stanford on a Sunday afternoon,
after the run of jobs has been finished, and the computer and its
operator sit idle. To use it for the students' jobs would cost nothing
to anyone. The seconds, minutes, hours being wasted (translated
into computer activity at 250,000 operations per second) are ir-
recoverable.
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252
A Statement by Courtney S. Jon es,
Assistant to the Controller, Stanford
University
Appendixes
Currently at Stanford for many hours a month the major computers
are idle, and yet students and faculty who are eager to use these
hours are turned away. It is reasonable to assume that a similar sit-
uation to a greater or lesser extent exists at most universities. The
situation is the result of a shortage of funds for nonsponsored use
of the computers in combination with the effect of the costing prin-
ciples required by the government for allocating computer costs.
The costing principles are set forth in the Bureau of the Budget
Circular Ant, paragraph J37. It is difficult, if not impossible, to
attack the cost-accounting logic of the referenced paragraph that the
government pay only that percentage of the costs which is its share
based on hours of use. However, the result is that while the uni
· · · . -
versltles are providing computer services to government-sponsored
research at rates significantly less than commercial rates, they are
unable because of the costing mechanism to utilize without charge
residual idle time for training students. Stanford, which is presently
providing approximately $250,000 annually for nonsponsored users
of the computers, cannot afford to increase the amount of these funds
rapidly enough to meet the tremendous demand. Thus, computers
are forced to be wastefully idle while this student and faculty de-
mand for computer time goes unsatiated. An idle computer benefits
no one, and when one considers that computers are probably idle to
some extent in nearly all the universities in the nation, the amount
of waste is immense. Clearly this waste is not in the national interest.
It is also clear that a relatively simple remedy is at hand. The
wastage could be eliminated by a government policy overruling the
basic cost-accounting principle being applied, to the effect that the
idle time could be used by otherwise unsponsored students and
faculty. Such a policy properly implemented would result in no addi-
tional cost to the government. It would result in greater instruc-
tional and research benefits to the nation as the academic com-
munity utilized more fully the universities' computers.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
computer education
