Title: Editorial

Author: 

Date: 09 April 2004 22:53:48 +01:00 or Fri, 09 April 2004 22:53:48 +01:00

Summary: 

Rather than talk about programming or programming issues, the work of WG21 etc, I've decided to talk about something far closer to my heart; the state of computer programming courses in education at all levels.

Body: 

"Oh no, not another rant," I hear you say. Well, yes and no. Yes, it is - this sort of editorial usually ends up being such a thing. No it isn't, as instead of just complaining without any form or idea on solving the problem, I have attempted to do just that.

Combined with the fact that if something isn't done now, in ten years time we will be facing a potential disaster in terms of too many jobs available and not enough qualified programmers to fill them - a skills shortage that so far the computer industry has avoided by and large.

Recently, I undertook a small scale survey of colleges and universities in and around the North West of England as to how they perceived C Vu and what the ACCU actually represents. It came as a bit of a surprise how few organisations knew of us and moreover those who knew of us didn't really know what we did.

Then I started to think. Is it really that suprising?

Now what I'm going to say is not intended to be disrespectful and should not be thought of as a blanket for all.

Education and teaching of C and C++ in the UK is terrible. Some places are better than others, but from 4th year secondary school up to degree level, it is generally awful. Why is it awful though?

There are two reasons:

They don't look it, but they are both part and parcel of the same thing.

Question why lecturers don't keep up with the standards and rely on old, broken code. Is it because they're lazy or just that they no longer care after many years of being over-worked? Have they lost interest and have just started to go through the motions? Is it that the students coming through from schools are that poor that they have to aim their material at such a low level that all they have left is despair?

Who is to say. What is clear is that coming through the education system are students who have been failed by the system. The upshot of that is that those going into the workforce, while they may be good, are more likely not to be. If they're not up to the task, then they won't be in employment for long and we (as a country and profession) end up with a shortage. Not a good prospect by any length.

I'm not going to get into the political debate over who is at fault ultimately, but I will say this. Having spent just about all of my working life in education (and recently moved into teaching), I can honestly say that the number of academic staff is too low and the hardware not up to scratch.

On average, it takes upto 8 months to write a course, have it approved and obtain funding. Academic staff are far from lazy. I spent around 8 to 12 hours on preparing a 2 hour lecture on the STL which is delivered once a week. For one academic university semester (12 weeks teaching), that amounts to a rough average of 100 hours of preparation time for 24 hours of lecture time. This excludes all marking time.

Now let's do the maths on that. Say you have 4 lecturers and 4 courses. That's 200 hours per lecturer per course - plus exam preparation, assessment preparation, marking, exam boards, assessment boards and all of the other related events they have to attend. What about these extras? An exam (if set by the academic rather than an exam board) takes around 40 hours to write and be approved. To mark 30 exam papers takes about 30 minutes per paper - 15 hours in total. Two assessments to write, say 10 hours each and then to mark them, an hour a shot. Exam boards and the likes, add another 5 days in total.

We have around 400 hours per course per member of staff - and that is without any teaching! It is very rare that a lecturer has only one course. If they have 3, we're talking 1200 hours - to put it another way, about 35 weeks of the year! Universities only effectively teach for 30 weeks a year, colleges for about 40 weeks a year. It is little wonder that courses are not updated.

With money as tight as it is, it is not unsuprising that lecturers are run off their feet - the first thing to go when money becomes tight is the lecturer - never anyone higher up. The establishments will have the same number of students, but suddenly the four lecturers become three. There is no time for development and no time for repair.

Combine that with a lack of investment in hardware (I know of one college which has working machines for the first 3 weeks, but as soon as they are put under stress, the 2Gb hard drives which have been in there for well over 4 years start to fail, so the machine fails) and you have a recipe for disaster. It gives students a negative opinion of the course, the college and moreover the languages.

Okay, let's see what happens in the schools. Back in the 1980s (when I was at school) we had two BBC micros. Both worked. Why two though when state schools were only supposed to have one? The school entered into a contract with a local company. The company provided the BBC micro in return for the company logo being embossed on the hardware supplied. A small price to pay and both the students (and staff) benefited.

Machines are only part of the equation though; appropriate lessons are the second part. Just teaching how to use Excel or Word is not a computer studies course which will prepare the student for further or higher education. That said, neither would a teaching a student extreme programming. A balance has to be struck.

Okay, that's the problem. Overworked, underpaid and under-resourced. How best can this be turned around?

Well, unless you know someone high up in government, it's unlikely that you will get education policy changed!

What can be done though is to sponsor lecturers and courses. If (say) Microsoft or IBM were to approach a number of colleges or universities and say "Look, we're willing to fund three academics for five years, but you have to teach these specific subjects," then the college/university would change to accommodate this sponsorship. Even if a company is upgrading machines and are disposing of (say) P3-450MHz machines, schools would willingly take them and in all likelihood be willing to have the company name splashed on the machines. Quite a few colleges would probably jump at those machines!

There is plenty which can be done by industry to help. If we return to the 1200 hour model per lecturer and suddenly move to a situation of six academics instead of four, the 1200 hours remains the same, but it is distributed over a larger number of staff. This means that the lecture courses can be updated; there would be no excuse for using out of date materials and then education would be far more accountable.

While we are not at the stage yet whereby there is a massive shortage, the number of qualified people coming out is far less. In 5 years time, the situation will be worse and 5 years after that - you get the idea.