Chapter Eighteen. Hard Knocks

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.

FRANCIS BACON

As I've hinted earlier, most software developers obtain their occupational education from the school of hard knocks. Experience can be a good teacher, but it is also a slow and expensive one.

A common lament among experienced software developers is that colleges don't teach students the skills they need to perform effectively on the job. An examination of current demographics in software developer education and training seems to bear this out. I argued in Chapter 4 that North American universities are providing computer-science rather than software-engineering educations. I left many of the implications of that distinction unexplored, and I would like to explore those implications here.

Industry has become less and less satisfied with university output. Capers Jones points out that, since the mid-1980s, large corporations in the United States have had more in-house instructors teaching software engineering topics than all universities combined.^[1] Many of those corporations offer more comprehensive software engineering course catalogs than virtually any university catalog.

The Boeing Company studied the computer science curricula of more than 200 universities in the United States.^[2] It wanted to identify programs that were producing graduates with the skills needed to perform satisfactorily at Boeing. It found that only about half the programs were accredited by the Computer Science Accreditation Board (CSAB)^[*], and only about half of the accredited programs were producing graduates that met Boeing's requirements. Some of the programs are more practically oriented, but they become more practical by teaching software engineering under the guise of computer science, which diffuses their focus on true computer science.

^[*] At the time this observation was made, computer science programs were accredited by CSAB. Those programs are now accredited by ABET/CAC.

For engineering jobs, however, Boeing will accept applications from graduates of any program accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Boeing does not accept applications for engineering jobs from graduates of unaccredited schools. This suggests that computer science curriculum and accreditation standards are of questionable value to industry. A significant percentage of programs do not meet industry's needs. In contrast, the value of engineering curriculum and accreditation is so consistent that companies such as Boeing can hire from accredited engineering schools without doing any university-program screening themselves.

The questionable relevance of computer science education to industry provides one explanation for the decline and stagnation in undergraduate computer science degrees that students earned from 1985 through 1997. As Figure 18-1 shows, the number of undergraduate computer science degrees declined from a high of about 42,000 annually in 1985 to a low of about 24,000 in 1990 to 1997.

Figure 18-1. The number of undergraduate computer science degrees awarded has varied in recent years.

Source: National Center for Education Statistics^[4]

In recent years (1998 to 2000), we've seen a significant uptick in computer science students. I think both the decline and the uptick deserve examination.

The conventional explanation for the long decline was that students found computer science dull.^[3] I don't find computer science dull, and I don't find the conventional wisdom persuasive. The real answer had been staring us in the face for many years: The number of students obtaining computer science degrees declined because education in computer science had become increasingly irrelevant to job-market requirements. Students knew they could get jobs without computer science degrees, and employers didn't universally value them. The old educational system wasn't working, and so it needed to be changed.

In the period from 1998 to 2000, two changes began to take place. First, the Internet caused a surge of excitement among undergraduate students. Gold Rush Fever kicked in, and more students began preparing for jobs in the software industry. Second, demands from the dot com economy of the late 1990s rippled into the university system, and universities began making computer science curriculums relevant again after several years of declining enrollments.