I find a lot of programs don't actually take the time to explain what it is, and instead go for more of an "applied" look at the field saying "With CS, you can do this" like an Applied CS program that would focus on programming instead of any CS. I mean, a CS graduate should be able to tell me a little about Computer Science, what is the core of the field, and how we do things in CS, and if it is applied research, how it impacts their research (if that is the case). As somebody who has been on both ends of student and teacher, I have found this trend is getting worse (even in a span of, say even 5 years but this has been happening for a while). I find as industry ever populates the needs of many CS programs, the meaningfulness of CS is slowly being saturated and becoming less formal and more applied without a formal backbone, thus reducing the quality of the science being taught in exchange for more "now" results instead of "for the future" results. I find this may put a lot of the integrity of programs in jeopardy in exchange for the "almighty" dollar.
I am wondering what are other researcher's thought on this possible trend in CS education? Any drawbacks of doing this (some are obvious if one wants sound scientific/mathematical research), or are there benefits to reducing the quality of the knowledge a CS student should have in order to trade off for misunderstanding of computation in exchange for focus on implementation and programming instead? Is this happening in your region, or has your region been not too much affected by this trend?
My concern that this is already in effect in many places, and will maybe continue to perpetuate. A simple core example of this is when one uses programming as a synonym for "Computer Science" which is not only frustrating, but not even accurate and diminishes the quality of how society perceives Computer Scientists. What's next, are we going to call Biology, "Microscopes"? It seems lots of programs are not as interested in producing computer scientists/mathematicians, but instead only programmers.
What are your thoughts on this, as a whole?
I don't claim to have the insight to do justice to the scientific substance of CS. Nevertheless let me, a computational physicist, decribe how 'deep CS wisdom' sometimes looks in the light (or darkness?) of practice: We are told that no Turing machine can be built which is able to find out for each program whether it will finally 'halt'. What an insight! Are not all programmers permanently struggling for structure which allows them to say with certainty that their loops will find an end? The idea that a program could assure this, not only for the loops at hand, but for a general program appears ridiculous to any practical person. And what, if the 'halting property' could be decided automatically, what about the semantic correctness of the results?
Hi Daniel,
In many...possibly most...disciplines, the masters level degree indicates an acceptable level of understanding for advanced application of the tools, techniques, and approaches. Doctoral students are capable of advancing the knowledge frontiers and guiding a discipline into the future. In many respects the philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of a discipline are maintained by subject matter experts with doctorate level degrees. Practitiioners and masters level professionals are exposed to the philosophical stances that are most common, while also learning to apply present-day standards. So to my mind, a masters degree indicates understanding and the ability to apply within a domain - not truly an ability, willingness, or requisite understanding of the philosophy that motivates the discipline...this is a 'nice to have', but not a necessary status.
Certainly, each discipline will set a unique set of standards...the CS community is evolving....I've found the perspective that I describe above to be helpful when I try to establish for myself, and my research group, what constitutes masters level (e.g. applied) versus doctoral (e.g. true academic level) work.
I fully agree with your views. It is irony that most students do not know what Computer Science is all about and as a result they are not pursuing their engineering with true spirit. The subjects of Computer Science are studied in isolation and there is a total disconnect and the students fail to learn design of software systems, application of modeling techniques to design, application of testing and generating test cases and validation etc.. A proper training and guidance may address this problem with the involvement of teachers and the students.
Dear Daniel Page, Your question "Increasing number of CS students not understanding what CS is" has relevance. My answer to your your question is as below:
Some of the disciplines are constantly being reshaped and computer science is one of them. New ideas, embedding, interfacing, thoughts, approaches and technologies continue to expand our understanding of what scientists of that discipline can and need to know. Therefore, engaging the large classes of computer science must be handled very carefully so that the students should gain the knowledge and move forward on path of continuing learning process. Some of the basic courses of CS are extremely important like programming, programming languages, .. and teaching of these courses need extra precautions so that students of CS should get involved with keen interest.
It is quite simple thing because they are not joining any academic discipline by their choices but the scope of it for there future(job). In India, in past 2-3 years the scene has been change and now the guys and girls are joining Civil and Mechanical in engineering and before that the CS was on boom. That was a time when MBA was the choice of everybody who want to go in business administration; even people used to go there after engineering but now it is a FLOP SHOW.
So, this is all about the selfishness because we as human don't want to take risk.
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