[Edu-sig] College CS courses

Alan Gauld agauld@crosswinds.net
Fri, 13 Apr 2001 06:01:48 +0500


Not sure this is entirely appropriate for the list but 
is anyone involved in teaching CS at college/university 
level?

We have just been reviewing our graduate recruitment 
process for the current year and have been shocked, 
nay appalled, at the poor standard of the interviewees. 
I wondered if anyone, especially from the UK,  could
provide pointers to online syllabuses(sp?) for CS 
courses. 

We just want to know what's being taught, because so 
far as we can tell it isn't computing as we know it.
Most courses seem to only teach Java(*), don't cover much
on operating systems, software engineering or indeed 
anything to do with large scale computing.

Is this truly the current state of CS in academia or 
are we just attracting the wrong grads?

Alan g.

(*) Interview Questions included:
1) Contrast and compare two programming languages (if 
the grad hesitated we suggested Java and C or VB)
[Only about 10% of interviwees were able to do this.]

2) What are the differences between NT and Unix. 
When would you select one over the other?
[Universally the response was "NT has a GUI". One even suggested Unix was old
fashioned and prone to crashing...]

3) Describe the software lifecycle and the role of Configuration Management.

[ Blank looks, most have only programmed within 
a Visual IDE - usually Cafe or JBuilder...]

and so it went on...