Advice from a Wise Old Computer

The typical junior college for 4,500 students requires 142 classrooms, but the junior college soon to be built in St. Louis will do the same job with 80.

The savings will be $3,000,000, and all the credit goes to a wise old computer.

Using techniques followed by aero space engineers to simulate the perform ance of the Gemini space capsule, technicians at St. Louis' McDonnell Automation Center fed an IBM 7094 computer a diet of data that included the col lege's projected curriculum, the expected line-up of courses for the students, the size of classrooms, labs, lecture halls and shops, the size of the faculty, and time patterns for classes. In less than 30 minutes, the computer produced a schedule that would keep the instructional areas in use for 80% of the college's 45-hour week--as compared with an average utilization rate of from 30% to 50%.

Following the computer's advice, 100,000 sq. ft. were lopped off the building plans for the new campus. Two additional colleges are planned, and by 1970 a student body of 16,000 is expected for the three superefficient campuses. Said a grateful taxpayer: "How do you give an honorary degree to a computer?"

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