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Google Suggests Separating Students With 'Some CS Knowledge' From Novices
theodp writes To address the challenge of rapidly increasing CS enrollments and increasing diversity, reports the Computing Education Blog, Google in November put out an RFP to universities for its invite-only 3X in 3 Years: CS Capacity Award program, which aims "to support faculty in finding innovative ways to address the capacity problem in their CS courses." In the linked-to RFP document, Google suggests that "students that have some CS background" should not be allowed to attend in-person intro CS courses where they "may be more likely to create a non-welcoming environment," and recommends that they instead be relegated to online courses. According to a recent NSF press release, this recommendation would largely exclude Asian and White boys from classrooms, which seems to be consistent with a Google-CodeCademy award program that offers $1,000 bonuses to teachers who get 10 or more high school kids to take a JavaScript course, but only counts students from "groups traditionally underrepresented in computer science (girls, or boys who identify as African American, Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native)." The project suggested in the Google RFP — which could be worth $1.5 million over 3 years to a large CS department — seems to embrace-and-extend a practice implemented at Harvey Mudd College years ago under President Maria Klawe, which divided the intro CS offering into separate sections based upon prior programming experience to — as the NY Times put it — reduce the intimidation factor of young men, already seasoned programmers, who dominated the class. Google Director of Education and University Relations Maggie Johnson, whose name appears on the CS Capacity RFP, is also on the Board of Code.org (where Klawe is coincidentally an Advisory Board member), the K-12 learn-to-code nonprofit that has received $3+ million from Google and many millions more from other tech giants and their execs. Earlier this week, Code.org received the blessing of the White House and NSF to train 25,000 teachers to teach CS, stirring unease among some educators concerned about the growing influence of corporations in public schools.
Because they think they're hotshots and have the kinds of attitudes you see in the posts for this story.
"Here, give me the keyboard, why don't you write up the results or something."
This was played out already, albeit in a different scenario.
Over 25 years ago I was admitted into the SUNY Binghamton (NY) CS masters degree program. I had no CS training at all and did not qualify. However, their affirmative action program included something like extra entry points for veterans so I got in. I was required to take tough summer long CS course, along with many African American and female students. It brought us up to speed enough to compete next semester with those who were already knowledgeable . Otherwise we would not have made it.
Affirmative Action students spent their own money and their own time. The reward for America was a raising of the skills level for a lot more people, white (me) as well as black. I don't know if AA like this is still legal, but what Google is suggesting - the effective sequestering of unprepared individuals until they are ready - is a good idea.
PS: I finished 11th of an original 100 on the MS overall final
Having a CS degree and having 10+ years of professional experience in industry, it is clear that a significant amount of those taking CS (or related IT/programming-oriented programs) don't really have the qualifications for a CS-career, and even after years of employment are still struggling with rather basic programming tasks and are having problems handling just a few levels of abstraction, which is routinely required in any serious programming. Some of the skills required seem to be an "either you have it, or you don't thing" at least after a few years into a career. The saving grace for them is the good job market (for employees) and the ability to go into more management or PM-oriented roles, or at least very soft CS-roles. That, and the fact that many employers are not able (or make no effort) to truly compare the productivity between different employees, so that the weaker ones are somewhat shielded by the performance of the stronger ones.
With this in mind, it's concerning with this big ramp-up in number of CS-trained individuals. I feel we have been at the bottom of the barrel for some years already. Given that it has been well-known to everyone for many years that IT is one of the easiest areas to find employment in and that the salary is comparatively good, and the constant media focus on smartphones, apps and whatnot, it seems reasonable to assume that most people with just a faint interest and ability in IT would have pursued that path already. With this ramp-up, it seems there's a high risk that the market will be flooded by sub-par candidates and that it will be much more than what the market is already absorbing. The result will be massive unemployment among those newly trained CS-people, who were never meant to study CS to begin with.
Not quite. Race SHOULD BE irrelevant but it's most definitely not, particularly these days. Gender SHOULD BE irrelevant but it's most definitely not. What should be of the utmost importance is a person's ability. As a historical reference, look at how the chemical industry got started back in the Victorian era. A British research student discovered the world's first artificial dye. But his teachers were all German. Why? Because back then, the Germans were very good at opening universities and technical schools and letting anyone attend based on merit, never mind their family background. To the British, such behavior was very much lower-class so they blew a golden opportunity to capitalize on a totally new science which the Germans took to the bank.