[Edu-sig] College CS courses

Fri, 13 Apr 2001 10:45:21 -0400

Many of the Harvard Extension School CS course syllabi are online
http://www.extension.harvard.edu/2000-01/courses/csci.shtml
Level of those courses is from introductory/college to graduate level.

Hans

"Alan Gauld" <agauld@crosswinds.net>@python.org on 04/12/2001 09:01:48 PM

Please respond to agauld@crosswinds.net

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Subject:  [Edu-sig] College CS courses

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...

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