Computing Education from an Ex-Academic perspective

It is almost a year since I left academia and became part of the "real-world".  

This is effectively an rant starting from when the university management decided that the department of Computing should be part of the Business faculty and concluding with current state of computing education here.

When the number of students studying computing dropped (which was a world-wide phenomenon), the senior management at our university decided that the faculty of business was a natural home for computing. The arguments for this forced shift were highly dubious even then (e.g., business is more reliant on IT so IT graduates need to know business) and all academics argued against the shift.  The then chancellor, vice-chancellor and dean of business argued that the restructuring will attract more students and we will be an economically viable entity. They never provided any hard evidence for this -- only engineers and scientists demand hard evidence. Mangers, especially senior managers, at universities, avoid looking for evidence, lest it not support their decisions. The real reason for the restructuring was for the dean of business to grow his empire.

In our case the student numbers did not improve and after a few years, what started out as a small but capable department has almost disappeared. The three managers, have moved on and have not had to face the consequences of their action.

The view that computing students should do more business subjects was not unique to our university. Many other universities adopted this slogan and changed their curriculum appropriately.

In the real-world, I am now trying to recruit students for our projects. While there are some excellent students, most students who come from joint Bus/(IT, Computing) programs are totally useless. They can talk about technology but cannot actually do anything with it. Their technical foundations are non-existent; they cannot solve any technical problem (whether they can solve business problems remains to be seen).

Computing programs should give undergraduate students a solid technical foundation and leave all the "flaky/weak specialisations" to a masters programme.  Students need good programming skills combined with a knowledge of theoretical concepts such as automata theory, discrete mathematics and computational complexity.  Students also a good background in software engineering principles.

  

If universities cannot produce such graduates, companies are more likely to hire people from overseas leaving local graduates with very few options. Some universities are already doing this -- and going back to the "old-school" fundamentals. But universities that still produce graduates with weak foundations will find that the outcomes for their students is bleak.

My Summary on the Book What Are Universities For by Stefan Collini

I just finished reading the book What Are Universities For? by Stefan Collini. While it is UK centric and focusses on the Humanities, the general observations
are valid for much of academia. I think it should be a must read for
all administrators, academics as well as PhD students who wish to become
academics.

My attempt at summarising the key points is not going to do justice to the
book. However, I will include a few "quotes" from the book. These are not
verbatim quotes but hopefully captures the spirit of what is intended.
Perhaps this could inspire others who have not read the book to read it.

Undergraduate education is about exposing students to the experience of
enquiry  just for improving the understanding of the subject matter (Page 56).

In sports it is assumed that top level teams/athletes receive government
support in exchange for high standards of performance. The rigorous
selection process for these athletes is assumed to be fair (and not viewed as
being "superior"). Universities do not have such advantages (Page 93).

Assurance of curriculum "delivery"  being compared to delivering pizza. Student
engagement is as inert as handing over something at the doorstep of their
minds (Page 107).

"Be original - but in the right way" (Page 110)  and "Be creative - otherwise I
will beat the hell out of you" (Page 136) which represents the conflict
between expecting innovation but being governed by various
government/management regulations.

"We do not measure it. We judge it" (Page 122) on the obsession of quantitative
evaluations.

The fallacious argument that just because universities have some common
characteristics with a business entity, e.g., a budget,
universities need to be like a business (Page 134).

How university researchers collaborate (e.g., giving ideas to other
researchers) but are treated like a "firm" which protect their ideas (Page 140).

On the focus on improving ones "star ratings"   being compared to
hotel/restaurant ratings (Page 160).

Students being told by someone who knows what a particular line of study is
worth pursuing whether at the time they want to or not (Page 186).

The failure student "knows" model where they will pay to study a topic if
there is return on their investment especially in STEM where government gives
various incentives. (Page 186).


If you got this far, I can only emphasise the importance of reading the
book -- there are many more gems there.

Online materials disrupting Universities

The recent announcement of Coursera Coursera has raised the question of the role of online teaching materials and whether the range of the universities we have currently will continue to exist. This is, of course, related to the question of the role of a university.

Any university that sees its role as providing only information transfer (similar to the Nuremberg Funnel) will not survive. After all the material on Coursera is likely to be superior than the material produced at such a university. A side question is how did this university survive in this mode.

Universities are about providing experience. That is the students needs to be part of the experience. While studying online material is an experience, university education is much more than that. Sociologists have talked about the cohort effect in education. At the moment online courses do not offer such experiences.

The second is the role of a university as a certifying entity. Universities make student jump through various hoops before they can get their degree. Potential employers (including postgraduate programs, academic recruitment at universities) rely on this process to decide who they wish to hire. Universities use selection processes to attract talented students who can then
be asked to jump through higher hoops. This ultimately leads to an increase in the reputation of a university. I do not see on-line teaching entities playing this role.

This is not to say that universities cannot use the material from online providers such as Coursera. Such material can add to the experience as well as the certifying process. But universities need to address these issues and not focus only on one-way information (or is it data?) transfer from lecturers to students.


As Daphne Koller
indicates watching passively is not education! This view is reiterated by UPenn's president "Right now I have zero confidence that we could replicate a Penn education online."

So no good university will be disrupted by the presence of such online materials.

Football manager or Symphony Director

University administrators should be "football managers"
not "symphony orchestra conductors".

Processes and procedures at Universities are becoming more prescriptive.
Reasons given include accreditation, uniform services to students, and adoption
of best practices. At the moment such standarisation is limited to various
forms (e.g, course descriptions), exam formats etc. But there are moves to
standardise course delivery (e.g., given a curriculum the way it will be taught
will be standardised). Academics are viewed as members of symphony orchestra
where there are given a music sheet and all of them have to follow it.

A symphony orchestra can produce fantastic music provided everyone practised
and stuck to the the score.
But academia is about encouraging free thought, experimentation, innovation.
Hence most people resent being given sheet music that they have to stick to.

University administration should be like managing a football team. There are
some general tactics discussed; but once on the pitch the players can
demonstrate flair, creativity etc. Yes, people will make mistakes but that is
part of the game. Academics view themselves to be like football players
although not all of them are in the same class as Messi.

Role of Academic Senate

There are numerous examples where universities have an academic senate in
theory. But in practice the decisions made by the senate have been bypassed by
senior management (including vice-chancellors, directors, presidents).
The usual reason is that the senate only give advice and that
its decision is not binding. The university council typically sides with the
senior management. The vice-chancellor, president, director of the university
is viewed as the CEO and hence has the right to override academic senate.
Unless the academic senate has statutory powers, they have are viewed as
a quarrelsome bunch who do not understand the running of the university.

The academic senate is responsible for maintaining academic standards
and processes. While universities are not the most agile of organisations, this
is not necessarily bad. Universities should not follow (or even set)
fashionable that change every few years.
Decisions should be taken after due deliberation where the benefits of change
are demonstrated.

It is therefore important that senior management should be forced to
justify why they are over riding academic senate. That is, the decision
taken by the academic senate has to be shown be incorrect for it to be
overturned and not just because senior management disagree with it.

The proposed changes to the entrance exam (JEE) to the IITs is an example where the above situation has arisen. I hope that the directors do not override the recommendation of their academic senates without appropriate debate.

IIT Entrance and Coaching

Recently I was reading various articles on how coaching classes are adversely affecting the type of students who are admitted into the IITs. Given the limited number of available seats, potential students will always try to get the best training to get admission. It is like trying to win gold at the Olympics -- you need a good coach, equipment, training etc. So it is best if the IITs accept the fact that potential students along with the various coaching classes will try to game any admission test. The only way is to define explicitly the profile they wish the incoming students to have. So by seteting the goal posts to the type of students they wish to admit, they can ensure that the coaching is helping the IITs select the best prepared students. Of course, in the long run the number of seats in the IITs has to increase or other reputable education institutions should be started to stop this insane competition.

Measuring Value Add of Universities

There is constant debate about the quality of Universities. Some people measure it solely by how well the graduates perform while others argue that one must measure the value added by the University. This debate applies to all educational organisations including schools (especially when it comes to ranking schools). But the difficulty is in measuring the value added.

To measure the value add, one has to try to identify how a person would have performed if they had not obtained a qualification from the University and compare it with the person’s performance after they had obtained a qualification from the University. A scientific way to address this question is to conduct an experiment with a control group. One could have two groups of school leavers who have been identified to have the same ability. One group will attend the University A and the other group will attend University B. One then measures the graduate outcomes for the two groups. This is clearly very difficult to conduct in real life.

If University A has very high admission standards (say they accept only 1% of the applicants), one needs a group of students who would have qualified for University A but choose not to attend University A and opt for University B. Given that University A is likely to have a solid reputation, the number of students willing to give up the opportunity to attend University A will be vanishingly small. So it will be hard to conclude that the group of students admitted have similar ability. Here ability is not just academic knowledge – it could be the drive to work hard, personality traits such as resilience when faced with adversity etc.

Furthermore there is no agreement on what is meant by graduate outcomes. A lot would depend on the career goals of the students. These goals could change as the student progresses through their studies and get exposed to different options. So more students from University A might show an entrepreneurial flair than from University B because University A while more students from University B might undertake a research career.

Given the difficulty (or impossibility) of conducting a control experiment, one has to rely on other techniques. But perhaps that is a topic for another blog.

Personally I feel trying to measure the reputation of a University by its value add is not going
to work. The only acceptable measure is what others say about the graduates from the University.