Congress Needs To Implement A Policy For Computer Science Education

Our world is moving at an extremely fast pace where technology is concerned, especially in the United States. Generally, this is a good thing–it’s creating more conveniences, new technologies to improve quality of life, more jobs, and so on. But, we’re running into a small problem: we need more manpower.

Here in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (via ComputerWorld), there are more than 500,000 unfilled computing positions (keep in mind this is only in the US, worldwide is much more vast) in various specialties–software engineering, Information Technology, Electrical Engineering (specifically the creation of hardware), and more. It goes without saying, there’s a huge demand for jobs in this field, but there’s not enough people who know how to program, administer a database, create systems to fend off cyber attacks, and so on.

So, what do we do?

COMPUTER SCIENCE IN ONLINE COURSES

The overwhelming response to our lack of people skilled to take on computing jobs has been free education. And that’s the obvious response to a problem like this: offer free education for a specific field, and just maybe the people will come, learn, practice their skills, and ultimately, get a job in the computing field. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Computer Science education, except for maybe the fact that the computing education market doesn’t provide a clear path for a student and that we are lying to anyone who signs up.

First, the computing education market does not have a clear guideline to a job in computing. There are tons of free course and programs popping up everywhere, for free. You can find them at Khan Academy, Coursera, edX, CodeAcademy, Code School, Code.org, Udacity, Team Treehouse, FreeCodeCamp, The Odin Project, and so many more places. And while this provides ample opportunity for learning, there’s not much room for advancement – all of these places will teach you the basics of coding (excluding FreeCodeCamp and maybe Udacity), but won’t take you any farther than that.

There’s a lot of discouragement in this area. The market of getting people started in coding is so crowded, and there are not many resources for increasingly higher skill levels. And this is a good
thing: students should be able to hit the web, look up documentation and try to figure out a problem on their own. But, here’s the problem: many of these courses aren’t in the business of teaching problem solving. They hand-hold until the very end (excluding a few, of course) and then drop the student off in a territory where they are not familiar.

With that said, computing educators, particularly MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), need to shift gears. Syntax is important, it has its place. But teaching a student how to overcome problems within programming will last that student a lifetime, giving him or her the tools to constantly adapt with new technologies and frameworks coming out. Giving students the problem solving skills within programming will create quality programmers that can bring quality to work in the jobforce.

              WE NEED TO STOP LYING TO STUDENTS

Another aspect that’s discouraging students from getting into the computing industry is that we’re actually lying to them. As a culture, you wouldn’t believe how many times we bang into a student’s head that coding is easy. News flash: it’s not easy in the least.

I don’t know one person that has picked up programming and instantly got it with no trouble whatsoever. We’ve all been at the bottom of the bucket, banging our heads against the walls just trying to figure out how object-oriented programming works. And even though you may make it through courses, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an expert. Even Senior developers have problems with code. Even they spend a large part of their time staring at piece of code, wondering why it doesn’t work and then spend a significant chunk of time trying to get that piece of code to work. In a nutshell, that’s what programming is.

But, we tell new and upcoming students the exact opposite. “It’s not difficult,” we say. Many instructional videos, even from the aforementioned educators, will tell you that coding is as easy as walking. That’s why many will be interested in the idea of coding, get plugged into an online course, and then drop a week or two later after they decided that they just don’t get it.

We need to be upfront with students. Coding is difficult, but the path to learning how to do it is so rewarding. In two, three years, being able to create a website from the ground-up on your own is an experience like no other. But, the path to get there is difficult, just like anything in life.

If we were upfront with students like that, we might just start making a dent in those 500,000 unfilled positions.

But, it doesn’t stop there. No, we actually have to solve the problem of getting people interested in computing.

And that’s not a good place to be. At all.