PhDs from Mississippi, in the Heart of Silicon Valley

Today’s San Jose Mercury News (the Merc) carries an article about the engineering PhD program at San Jose State University (SJSU). What I didn’t know is that California’s “master plan” for higher education restricts PhD programs to the University of California system and excludes state schools such as SJSU. Note that SJSU has 5000 students in its BS and MS engineering programs and is the single largest provider of newly minted engineers to Silicon Valley tech companies.

So the powers that be at SJSU got inventive. No, they didn’t lobby the legislature. Instead, they contacted Mississippi State University (MSU) and jointly created the “MSU/SJSU Engineering PhD Gateway Program,” which the Merc describes as “a cross between a correspondence school and foreign exchange program.” The gateway program was announced at festivities yesterday.

Students at both universities will get access to classes from the other campus via the Web. So SJSU engineering students can now enter MSU’s PhD program, pay about half of what they pay a University of California institution, and get their degrees from MSU without leaving California. Although it appears to be a good program and an effective end run around the University of California’s PhD monopoly, you have to wonder why we so often make things so hard on ourselves.