Originally Posted by
LordFoo
I thought that the purpose of the undergrad CS program at UofT was to make money/fund research and graduate programs
*tongue in cheek* *maybe not so kidding*.
I'm feeling a bit disillusioned at this point in my career -- I quite enjoy the teaching part of my job, and am considering staying the academic route as a career choice. Unfortunately, the money & grants don't come for teaching, but only for research. As a result, the university doesn't place much of a priority on educating professors in pedagogy -- so you end up with many "smart" profs who can't teach worth a damn. There are of course always a few exceptions - those who care to put the effort in learning how to teach effectively -- but this has to be done fairly selflessly as there isn't much recognition (financially or career-wise) for teaching. *end rant*
Oh yeah - from what I've seen at talks/presentations, a Masters in CS does seem to be more theoretical.. you could, in theory, use whatever programming language you like to implement your ideas, so knowing specific J2EE extensions isn't going to make or break your application. Unless you're working in the field of developing programming languages.
EDIT: just reread -- you're using J2EE for 4th year projects.. keep working hard
Kergin -- where do you go to school?
EDIT AGAIN: CPUsed at Bathurst/Dupont is gone -- it's now BeamEcho and is on Cumberland in the Yorkvilleish area.
I go to University of Guelph-Humber for Distributed Computing w/Wireless, which is why I got a theory/practical-mix curriculum. The CS & math profs come from Guelph and our wireless/network people come from Humber; make no mistake on the Humber profs, though. A good number of them have their PHDs, and seriously step up their game when teaching university-level courses. However, the duality of my program also yields a student body which is visibly divided along wireless or CS study paths, where the school cannot reasonably accommodate, given the number of students enrolled in our program. As a result, they are re-structuring the program to better meet the needs of prospective students. I really think they need to ditch the wireless & networking component (Humber).
Some of the Guelph profs do wireless research; however, most of their research is limited to layer 4 and higher. The Humber instructors took us as low as HDLC (Layer 2) and some layer 1.
Edit: I should add that I'm on a co-op right now, which ends in May. I'll graduate in December '08.