The software engineering academy joins industry: results of the first annual international survey and a future portrait

According to data from an international survey, sponsored jointly by ACM/IEEE-CS, almost 8000 students are enrolled in software engineering degree programs in 11 countries, as of February, 2002. A total of 116 academic programs in software engineering is in place at 75 universities with 480 full-time faculty teaching hundreds of undergraduate and graduate courses in the discipline. Over 7000 people have obtained degrees in software engineering. These figures probably represent 40-50% of the total programs. The web-accessible report covers: history, audience, initial survey, initial results available, and "lessons learned". The sabbatical involved the initial development of an "International Software Engineering University Consortium" (ISEUC). The consortium is composed of a subset of 35 survey responders who use asynchronous distributed learning, and is slated to begin initial operations in September, 2002, based on the results of personal visits to Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. The primary markets are corporations that employ professionals trying to develop reliable, robust, and useful software products in a timely and efficient fashion, but who do not currently have state-of-the-art knowledge or skill.