July 30, 2006

Failed Program for Cybersecurity Courses Is Profile in Academic Pork

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, colleges engaged in a mad scramble to get a piece of the billions of federal dollars that were suddenly to be spent on improving homeland security (The Chronicle, April 11, 2003). Campus programs were started, existing programs were renamed to seem more relevant to the fight against terrorism, and the champions of academic pork in Congress were called into action to make sure that colleges got their share of the domestic-security cornucopia. Those efforts largely worked. In 2003 Congress increased spending on academic earmarks related to homeland security by 68 percent (The Chronicle, September 26, 2003). Even then, some of the projects were open to question.

Today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette profiles such a project that spent $2-million but closed after accomplishing little among the participating colleges. The grant, from the Pentagon to Carnegie Mellon University and the Community College of Allegheny County, was supposed to support the creation of a cybersecurity curriculum that two-year institutions could use to supply staffers to American businesses seeking protection from computer attack. The grant was secured largely through Rep. John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and porkmeister extraordinaire (The Chronicle, November 2, 1994).

The program was designed to enroll 1,000 students, but only about 70 have shown interest and only 30 have completed it. When the federal funds ran out, the colleges pulled out.

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