Another reason I'm glad I did not attend UF

[flsportsfan83]

University of Florida security breach puts private student information online

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By KIMBERLY MILLER

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

University of Florida officials announced today that a security breach resulted in nearly 12,000 students' private information, including Social Security numbers, to be available online where it could have been accessed by the public.

The breach affects former and current students who attended the Gainesville school in the years 2003 through 2005. The information, including names and addresses, remained online until a recent audit of UF systems discovered it.

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What are these?

Thousands of students from Palm Beach County were enrolled in UF classes last fall.

Former student employees in the Office for Academic Support and Institutional Services created the online records so they could work with it from remote locations, but they did not install security measures to keep others from accessing it, said Joe Glover, interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

UF sent letters to about 11,300 students whose information was posted on line. Contact information for another 570 students could not be located, and university officials ask that students who believe their personal information was compromised call UF's Privacy Office hotline at 1-866-876-HIPA.

Students can access information regarding the breach at privacy.ufl.edu.

[Ricky the Bull]

I just talked to a buddy who's in the Architecture program at UF and doing very well, grade-wise.  He's interning for an architectural firm in town this summer and he indicated that the heavy consensus those at this company and others is that USF's is prepares you better and is superior than UF's.  He's seeing confirmation of that in what he has been learning vs. what the job entails.

He's transferring to USF this fall.

[flsportsfan83]

I just talked to a buddy who's in the Architecture program at UF and doing very well, grade-wise.  He's interning for an architectural firm in town this summer and he indicated that the heavy consensus those at this company and others is that USF's is prepares you better and is superior than UF's.  He's seeing confirmation of that in what he has been learning vs. what the job entails.

He's transferring to USF this fall.

smart kid. Welcome him to the family.

[Bulls 8_va]

If we're going this route...then let me add, their school of music blows and musicians at USF get much more work.  lol

GO BULLS!!!

[Orlando Bull]

It's a shame that name recognition does so much for public perception. I had engineering classes with people that had transferred from UF, and they said that classes at USF were much more challenging. I think they are like a top-20 engineering school, so it really makes me wonder how they are getting those rankings.

Having said all of that, I have had interns from Vandy and UF (2). One of my UF interns wasn't so great, but the other one and the Vandy intern were great, so I can't really say that UF isn't preparing students for the engineer field.

[RicanBull]

I had a friend who had a similar problem with architecture. He was at USF first and was transferring there a couple of summers ago but when he went through orientation he noticed how much better our program was and decided to stay here.

Sadly, it is all about name recognition.

[twillybull]

I had a friend who had a similar problem with architecture. He was at USF first and was transferring there a couple of summers ago but when he went through orientation he noticed how much better our program was and decided to stay here.

Sadly, it is all about name recognition.

Name recognition really has little bearing on quality of education.  You only can expect to recieve the level of education equal to the effort you put forth.   

My first 2 years of school were at USAFA in Co. Springs.  When a severe back injury lead me to leave that wonderful institution (another story entirely).  I had a decision to make of where to go to finish my Mechanical Engineering degree.  Name recognition had me seriously considering UF (and some other schools).  Doing research, I heard nothing but horror stories from UF engineering students about what a mess that place was... professors not being available, 200+ class sizes in senior design classes, TA's teaching high level classes,  outdated equipment, computers, etc...  It didn't help that I grew up about 40 minutes from G'Ville and I wasn't keen on the move back to the woods. 

After meeting with a USF engineering professor (Sami Al Arian of all people,) and talking to some USF engineering students, I was convinced their program was the right fit for me.  A visit to campus to see the facilities absolutely sealed the deal (come on, you can't beat the Tampa campus for "scenery").  At the time, the USF college of engineering led the nation in transfers from the nation's service academies (another interesting tidbit).  The other thing that piqued my interest was that USF really partnered well with local private industry.  Their mech labs use state of the art equipment and software (Labview), the professors teaching classes were all engineers with real world experinece (unlike UF which over-utilized TA's) and well, again with the scenery! 

I am now a firm believer that USF's engineering school is hands down the BEST in the state of Florida.  I believe I recieved a better education there, than what would have been possible had I stayed at USAFA (considered one of the premier tech schools in the world) or had chosen one of the other state schools...  But back to my original statement:  You only can expect to recieve the level of education equal to the effort you put forth.   

If I had to do it all over again, I'd have picked USF first... absolutely no doubt.  Every engineer my company has hired and retained since has been a USF alum.  We tried a couple of UF grad students on a part time / intern basis and found that Gainsesville does a poor job of preparing kids for the real world.  FSU doesn't really have an engineering school (at least they didn't 10 years ago unless you went to FAMU).  I've never met an engineer from UCF (unless he was the guy that delivered my pizza the other night).       

[fishinBULL]

thats awesome...

I knew we had a great engineering school...though you wouldn't think so if you had to ask one of the kids from mousetown...

[Matt]

can we move this to the Florida College board?  i am starting to feel like this is a UCF board with all this salt being thrown around.

we all know the gators suck...move on