Software engineering education: a place in the sun?

Virtually every research specialisation in software engineering would be prepared to claim that its particular concern is the most important in the field. The author wishes to claim such a status for software engineering education, a specialisation barely regarded as respectable among the majority of researchers. What are the grounds for this claim? Virtually all the technologies which we believe hold promise of improving software development are dependent on professionally skilled and educated staff. Software engineering education remains our most powerful means of technology transfer and hence of narrowing the gap between what is known in the research community and what is applied in industry and commerce. Despite economic hiccups the skills shortage is still a critical component of the omnipresent software crisis. Industry is spending a large proportion of its software development budget on training and on recruitment to offset the costs of fundamental education problems