Bill Thompson on Programmers
via The BBC
Universities have seen applications for computer science degrees fall off, schools do not encourage students to do computing at GCSE and A Level and primary school children are trained as users not as programmers.
I think Bill’s working on some old figures. According the admissions tutor for Computer Science at Southampton University:-
At the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science, we have just witnessed a major increase in computer science undergraduate numbers. In fact, our recent intake of 94 undergraduates, which is 20% higher than last year, is the biggest ever intake of computer science students since the dotcom crash
Simple supply and demand. You couldn’t move for people in 2002, when demand dropped and lots of people chasing riches arrived in the industry (many of whom dropped out later).
As for teaching programming at school, in my experience, the kids knew more than the teachers by the time they started.
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Tim
It would be nice if Southampton’s experience marked a new upwards trend, but according to the people at Cambridge I was talking to it doesn’t look good there. I’ll see if I can get some broader figures, though as there may be a lot of variation
Hi Bill,
The Computer Weekly article seems to be suggesting it’s a wider trend. Perhaps Cambridge is more specialised in the areas it covers and Southampton more general?
Could this perhaps be about fees? Do Cambridge charge more than the ex-Polytechnics, and for people going into more mainstream IT, they don’t consider it worth it?