From: hcc@cs.olemiss.edu (Conrad Cunningham)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Colleges Need to Fix the Bugs in Computer-Science Courses
Date: 29 Jul 92 17:48:12 GMT
Organization: University of Mississippi, Dept. of Computer Science

In article <155tflINNlnk@agate.berkeley.edu> bh@anarres.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Harvey) writes:
>I am not convinced that students are well served by any undergraduate
>engineering degree, including the CS degree.  I think undergraduates
>should have a liberal education.  That means they should major in
>something real, like maybe math or physics, and should take plenty of
>literature and writing and history and philosophy and psychology on
>the side.  And on top of that, let them take a pre-engineering program
>similar in spirit to pre-med or pre-law.
>

In general, I think the elimination of all undergraduate "professional"
programs (CS, engineering, business, teaching) and replacing them
by postgraduate professional programs could have positive effects.
Undergraduates could then concentrate on getting a well-rounded
liberal education---probably better for the student and society in the
long run.  In this framework, the postgraduate professional programs
could also be more intensive, assume a higher level of general
educational background, and include more extensive "internship" experiences.

However, the proposal has at least one "big negative" that has been
pointed to me in the past.  It is somewhat "elitist".  Students from
affluent family backgrounds might be able to handle the 6 or 7 years
of college required to enter a profession.  But many students from
poor backgrounds struggle to finance the 4 to 4.5 years of college
currently required to complete an undergraduate professional degree.
The longer program might shut out more people from such professions.
In the long run, if our society is to "prosper", we need to encourage
more, not fewer, people to enter technologically oriented professions
such as engineering and computing.

This discussion also brings to mind an interesting argument I heard
from one of my professors (a mathematician teaching CS) back in the
late '70s.  His argument went something like this.  There should not be
undergraduate MATHEMATICS majors.  Mathematically oriented students should
study something "concrete" at the undergraduate level---e.g., physics,
engineering, or computing.  Once a student has some understanding of
the the types of practical problems that mathematics must deal, then 
he or she is ready for more "abstract" studies.  Until the late 1800s,
mathematics had developed hand-in-hand with physics and the practical
applications of physical principles (i.e., engineering).  The professor
argued that in the late 1800s mathematics separated itself somewhat
from the "real" problems that had provided the motivation and
inspiration for its development.  The result was that mathematics and
many mathematicians no longer had much appreciation for or received
much inspiration from real-world problems.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
H. Conrad Cunningham  | Dept. of Computer & Info. Sci., Univ. of Mississippi
Tel:  (601) 232-5358  | 302 Weir Hall, University, MS 38677  U.S.A.
Fax:  (601) 232-7010  | Email:  cunningham@cs.olemiss.edu 
Newsgroups: comp.edu