Industrial software training opportunities for computer professionals

• Authors: Nancy Martin
• Venue: ACM '81 Proceedings of the ACM '81 conference
• Year: 1981

Industrial software training is becoming big business. The magnitude of the problem of producing a sufficient number of well-trained software engineers has led to a proliferation of internal corporate training divisions and programs in software education. Such programs are becoming an added incentive in the hiring and retention of software professionals. Industry is no longer limiting its efforts to developing and teaching specific skill-related courses. Individual corporations are offering a software education the equivalent of a bachelor and/or master's degree, sometimes with university credit. While many of these programs involve cooperation between industry and university, others are obvious attempts to provide education felt lacking in the university setting. Each decade finds new contributions to the computer science education literature on the gap between university education and industrial needs for trained software producers [1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10]. A capitulation statement on the part of one educator recently appeared in the Open Channel forum of the IEEE Computer: &ldquoUniversities should expose students to modern technologies but leave training in the use of these technologies to industry, which should expect to provide months of training to new employees.”[12] Not all corporations can afford such intensive training programs. In view of our collective software personnel needs, the lack of personnel qualified to develop, package and lead training programs, and the economic investment such programs require, a collective effort should be established. Minimally, we need a vehicle for inter-corporate sharing of training products and direct incentives for universities and colleges to educate productive software engineers.