In my opinion, it is not the mission of universities to prepare students for jobs. Universities are research institutions that prepare students for research. That's why all professors have to do research. Vocational schools exist for the purpose of job training. Big companies can also train their own workers.
In Australia, we intentionally collapsed most of our vocational schools into our public universities a couple of decades ago. I guess that was fairly unique because it was such a conscious decision. Universities in the modern world _are_ in fact vocational schools for many professions. Class sizes and student numbers alone often show this.
And while big companies can train their own workers, many choose to off-load that competency to the universities as well. In Germany, many of the largest export employers have a symbiotic relationship with local (to the factory) Universities. The companies help determine the course structure and syllabus, and in return the graduates are offered good living wage jobs straight out of university with continued training and certification.
Australia is a long way off of the German model, so all I know is what I've read in the Economist and a couple of other publications, but there are certainly murmers of moving to such a model in Australia as well.
"University" just doesn't mean what it used to mean.
As I say elsewhere, just look at other disciplines taught by universities. This is a totally untrue view of what universities are.
They are learning and research institutions. They've never just been research institutions. And the vast majority of fields don't really bother teaching any R&D to under-grads, they just teach them the subject and practical application of it in the real, job, world.
In the UK we used to have vocational schools too, that all got changed to universities. It didn't mean no vocational training went on in universities.
In France it's not so clear cut, but there have been more and more “professional” studies set up in universities. Many studies are actually not clearly « pro » or « recherche » but in between, and give you insights into both worlds. My Master's degree is like that and I ended up doing an industrial PhD after being sure I wanted to work in a company. In that context the teachers do their best to give some training specific to software engineering but it has to be balanced.
That's the theory that hasn't been true in years. It ought to be as you describe, but it isn't - universities nowadays are glorified vocational schools with an extra option to go on a research sidetrack if you really don't like money. It's visible across the board - from the reason people choose to go to a university, to the focus universities have on attracting students and teaching, vs. supporting actual research.
The problem isn't with the universities, it's with the lack of vocational schools with any depth or rigour for intellectually-demanding fields like software engineering.
Sure, my local vocational school does offer a certificate and diploma of software development - a 2/3-semester program which teaches a couple of Java and C# courses and how to use a database. Which is to say, it teaches you the bare minimum you need to know to become the most junior level of applications developer in an enterprise IT department - vastly, vastly underqualified to go into many of the kinds of jobs that expect CS degrees.
The other problem is that, well, I actually liked the theoretical and conceptual side of doing a CS degree, learning from lecturers who were researchers in the field. I, and most of the good software engineers I know, would have regretted just going to a vocational school.
IMHO, there's a third option worth considering. Here in Australia, lawyers start off by obtaining a law degree (a Bachelor of Laws or a Juris Doctor) from a university. However, before they're admitted to practice, they have to obtain a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice - a 6-month course which focuses on the practical skills of being a lawyer.
I don't see why there couldn't be a similar type of program to teach practical software development workplace skills - obviously, not as some kind of mandatory licensing program, but as an optional extra.
> many of the kinds of jobs that expect CS degrees
... most of which don't actually need CS degrees, but in the absence of the rigorous vocational programs, it's a reasonable filter to get candidates who have a clue.
They are both research and training institutions, and quite obviously so if you look at another discipline.
The architects don't all learn abstract obscure theory, they spend a(crazy) amount of time doing drafts and models. The engineers don't all learn irrelevant and out of date techniques. The pharmacists spend half their time in labs. As do the chemists. The doctors have to do rounds on real wards.
So why in CS is your defence that a university is a research institution?
That's simply not true, and looking at any other discipline shows how wrong you are.
It used to be true for all subjects when universities as we know them today were founded. It is still true for the hard sciences. Physicists train to become researchers, no data scientists at hedge funds. Computer Science is not Software Engineering and shouldn't be forced to become that. Computer science is imho a branch of mathematics and the focus should lie on theory. To steal Dijkstra's words, I don't think it's any more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
I don't think it's a good idea to teach students whatever is currently en vogue in the industry. If you for some reason need to have an applied subject at a university instead of a vocational school you should call it Software Engineering or whatever.
You're focusing on the theoretical fields while conveniently ignoring the doctors, engineers, pharmacists, chemists, biologists, architects, etc.
All of whom spend all of their degree on practical, applied learning. And have done for decades/centuries.
If you then want to go into research in those fields you do a PhD. The vast majority of their graduates go into industry.
And of course, the vast majority of CS students go into industry, just woefully under-prepared, unlike other disciplines.
There's no reason for CS to stay theoretical only. The field of computer science/engineering/making/whatever you want to call it doesn't need loads of researchers, it needs loads of practical, professionally trained, programmers.
The ridiculous defence that it's computer science not engineering is so over and dead and that ship sailed decades ago. It's just a name. Just like a PhD, a Doctor of Philosophy, in History doesn't make you an expert in Philosophy, it's just a name.
I'm not against training loads of programmers, I just don't think that we should kill CS as a theoretical subject to do so. I believe vocational schools are better suited for the task.
