NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/comp/edu/1212

Text File | 1992-07-30 | 3.4 KB | 69 lines

Newsgroups: comp.edu
Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rpi!sarah!newserve!bingsuns!waltp
From: [e-mail] (waltp)
Subject: Re: Colleges Need to Fix the Bugs in Computer-Science Courses
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Mr News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: bingsuns.cc.binghamton.edu
Organization: State University of New York at Binghamton
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 23:56:42 GMT
Lines: 56

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Ken Collier) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (waltp) writes:
>>In engineering, there is a separation between engineering degrees
>
>While you may have a convincing argument  for  playing  down  the
>theoretical  education  that  CS  majors  get and emphasizing the
>practical, we have observed some serious problems with  this  ap-
>proach.   I am in the computer science department at Northern Ar-
>izona University which is housed in the  College  of  Engineering
>and  Technology.   Except  for  CS  all  of the other engineering
>departments in our college (EE,ME,CE) have had tech  alternatives
>for  the  past 15 years or so.  Feedback from alumni have told us
>that people with tech degrees  have  greater  difficulty  getting
>jobs and  command lower salaries with far fewer opportunities for
>advancement.  As a result of this, the tech enrollments have been
>on a steady decline until this past Spring when the tech programs
>were finally given a proper burial.   So,  my  position  is  that
>although,  "...there  is a separation between engineering degrees
>and engineering technology degrees."  This is not a very good ap-
>proach  to  engineering (or computer science) education.  If stu-
>dents are well grounded in the theoretical underpinnings of  com-
>puter science the rest is a cakewalk (e.g., learning systems pro-
>gramming, database management, etc.)

Our program is also housed in an engineering school and we have
also recently buried our engineering technology degrees - probably
for other reasons than the ones at your school.

There are two issues that motivated my comment.

One is the future of a CS major employed doing largely "applications"
work (in whatever - business programming, aircraft engineering..).
It's always seemed that there is greater opportunity for advancement
in such a company if the individual is equipped to understand the
business as well as the programming.  By advancement, I mean the
traditional management route.

The other is underemployment.  I beleive that a lot of CS majors
become "coders" (maybe this is related to the above?) because the
jobs that they find don't give them an opportunity to make
use of what they do learn in a CS program.  But, since there
are so many CS majors, companies can demand a CS degree.
Perhaps a "less prestigious" major would provide a self selection
route.  People who don't want to learn CS theory (you must have them in
your classes too) can get a different degree and be happily employed
by the companies that don't have a real use for CS majors.


Walt


--
--- Walter G. Piotrowski        [e-mail]
--- Computer Science Department - Binghamton University
--- Binghamton, NY 13902-6000     [phone]
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