A Quantitative Study of Faculty Views on the Goals of an Undergraduate CS Program and Preparing Students for Industry

Abstract

Although elements of the academia-industry gap have been studied extensively, these studies have mostly ignored the primary stakeholder for changing academia: faculty. Building on a recent qualitative study that revealed a wide range of faculty views on the gap, this study quantitatively examines faculty views through a survey on the goals of CS education, how CS programs should address the academia-industry gap, and which barriers prevent adoption of remedies. Analysis of the 249 responses reveals that a majority of faculty share common goals in supporting student preparation for a career in industry. Moreover, faculty strongly view their own institutions as the prime party responsible for student preparation for careers in both academia and industry. We also find that whereas faculty are generally in agreement on what could be improved to provide students with better industry preparation, some reported far greater barriers to implementing those improvements than others. © 2020 Owner/Author.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Computer Science education survey academia-industry gap faculty views

Index Keywords

Students Computer programming quantitative study Qualitative study Computer science CS education Student preparation

Author Affiliations

University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States

Funding & Acknowledgements

National Science Foundation, NSF

Grant: DUE-1712508, DGE-1650112, DUE-1712508

The authors thank the participating faculty for making time in their busy schedules to fill out our survey as well as the reviewers and the faculty who responded to our email for their thoughtful suggestions. This work was supported in part by NSF award DUE-1712508. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE-1650112. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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A Quantitative Study of Faculty Views on the Goals of an Undergraduate CS Program and Preparing Students for Industry

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