Software engineering education from a UK academic´s perspective

Within the UK, as for the rest of the world, there is an acknowledged shortage of highly skilled software engineers. In UK academia, there is a chronic shortage of able candidates to fill posts at all levels, from research students (through research fellows and lecturers) to professors. It is clear from salaries being offered in industry that it is a “seller´s market”. However, since thousands of students graduate each year in the UK with computing degrees, questions must be asked about the extent to which software engineering is addressed within these courses. It is impossible to consider software engineering curricula without giving acknowledgement to the impact of human factors, organisational issues and cultural norms. Therefore, in looking at software engineering education, I believe we need to devise syllabuses that not only address technical issues (such as the object-oriented paradigm, metrics or metaCASE technology) but also the “sociotechnical” concerns (such as the usability of systems and the requirement to engineer systems to situationally specific work practices). Identifying what should be taught is only part of the problem; the other part is how. Experience has demonstrated the need to consider unconventional study patterns if we are to attract students to our courses, particularly those in industry who wish to re-skill or extend their professional development