British Computer Society Is Officially At Civil War

An anonymous reader writes "A vote of no confidence against the current board of directors has erupted in what is possibly the first nerd war, raging throughout the British Computer Society. More financial- and spreadsheet-related fixations and less computer science have made a few members cross; plus they don't like the new name 'The Chartered Institute of IT.' Here are more specific details on the extraordinary emergency general meeting on July 1, where members will vote to decide the fate of the board of directors."

Comments

Brilliant!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had to meet with a bunch of BCS reps when my course was re-accredited, and the experience matches up with what the summary says. They were obsessing over whether the mathematics of CS were too difficult and all kinds of bogus concerns

I think their problem is that higher level courses are (inherently) not an "everyone's invited" thing. Because not everyone will succeed. And that's how it should be. They're difficult if they're done right, because they include a lot hard-line theory behind the soft 'Let's do Java' exterior. The BCS just can't seem to accept this though. They want to pervert the courses to make them easier, basically

More people on courses = more power to them? Or maybe they get extra money for getting a certain % of the population onto courses? I have no idea of their motives but whatever they are, they're going about them the wrong way

Re:Brilliant!

[amw]

The (previous) government's brilliant solution to this issue? Add an A* grade at A-Level and carry on as normal.

Much as I enjoy kicking them now they're down, to be fair the main reason for that was the range of marks an 'A' grade covered. 'B' could, in theory, cover 60 to 69%, whilst 'A' covered 70% all the way up to 100%. 'A*' simply made it possible to differentiate between the increasingly common (for other, more fundamental reasons) 'A'-grades.

The danger is that in the future, people will forget exacrly when A*s were introduced, and judge 'old' A grades as being inferior.

Re:Brilliant!

[jayegirl]

what's the point of giving uber-hard math, where kids just drop off and don't give a shit anymore, and doesn't stop them from getting their diploma in the end anyway? I went to maybe 3 math classes in my last year, and still got my diploma with flying colours. It's not about making it easier, it's about making it useful.

Perhaps some of the point is, for once in the cess-pool that is the modern, utility and mediocrity obsessed tertiary education system, to attempt to provide broad-ranging bases of abstract knowledge to the students who actually want to learn, and are capable of doing so. That way we'll at least get some people who can work at the coal face of knowledge creation as opposed to just another batch of clueless, money-grabbing code monkeys?

The sort of useful you're talking about is concerned with places where all the interesting, hard problems have already been solved. Sounds dull as dishwater if you've got a brain in your head.

Re:Brilliant!

[petermgreen]

Indeed A is 80% and above

A* is more complicated and varies by subject (it's NOT just another higher threshold on the overall mark for the subject). IIRC in maths it's an average of 90% on C3 and C4 but i'm not positive on that.

Re:I was asked to join this ..

[malkavian]

Under the "old way", the benefits were lots of lectures that you got to go to on various subjects, plus the chance to network with other professionals. Useful stuff really; some of those lectures were great.

Under the 'new way', they've altered the way the "chartered" membership works; as it was in the old days, you could become a chartered IT professional without having to prove anything other than you'd stayed in the IT sector for 5 years. Now there are a series of exams to pass and frequent re-evaluation to maintain it (more in line with chartered engineer status from the engineering professions).

Really, I think a lot of the new changes are to make the BCS more relevant to what commerce wants to know, rather than being a comp sci enclave. The thrust has changed direction, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Re:Civil war?

[Captain Hook]

It wants to be an important professional organization, but I hardly know anyone who actually is a member or employers who ask for accredited training courses from them.

Re:I was asked to join this ..

[beelsebob]

It represents bragging rights when applying for new jobs –a CV with "I have BCS level 9 qualifications" on it helps at some companies.

Re:I was asked to join this ..

[PeterBrett]

• CEng: Chartered Engineer (awarded by a chartered engineering body, probably the IET in this case)
• CSci: Chartered Scientist (awarded by a chartered scientific body; it isn't clear which)
• FBCS: Fellow of the British Computing Society
• CITP: Chartered IT Professional (awarded by the BCS)
• CMC: Certified Management Consultant (haven't heard of this one before)
• FORS: ????
• MIET: Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (so am I!)
• FRSA: Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

Re:I was asked to join this ..

[AHuxley]

FORS could be Fellow of the Operational Research Society

Re:I was asked to join this ..

[GIL_Dude]

I agree with that, but I would point out that they probably try to represent this to folks outside their organization as being one scale instead of separate programmer and manager scale. Which would tend to show a manager at level 7 as more experienced than a programmer at level 6.

Re:Civil war?

[xaxa]

That's rather shortsighted. You leave yourself wide-open to a McMurdoch attack, without an escape route, and at the wrong end of the High Barnet branch.

I call Hoxton -- and I don't think I've seen this move before, the Livingstone Orbital (Phase II) rules only came into play last month.