Subsequently, the degrees of Systems Engineering (1974 Plan), Computer Engineering (1987 Plan) and Computer Engineering (1997 Plan) were created. The course has a duration of 450 credits, equivalent to five years for a full-time student and, like the previous plans, it awards the intermediate degree of Computer Analyst (270 credits, three years). The current curriculum is now 20 years old, which shows that it was defined flexibly enough to adapt to changing times; however, it must necessarily be revised for the training of computing professionals and researchers in the era of data analytics, distributed systems, ubiquity, and computation outside traditional systems, with code running on phones, cars, light bulbs and robots, among a myriad of other devices.
In recent years, a first trial of adaptation has been carried out with the Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science (Plan 2012), a 360-credit (four-year) degree course that already has its first graduates. This degree strongly incorporates training profiles, currently including Reliable Computing, Computer Networks, Operations Research, Information Systems, Software Engineering and Artificial Intelligence. This diversity reflects the needs of the labour market and the development of several areas of research in the computing teaching community, the result of a persistent activity of postgraduate training that began in 1988 with the Basic Sciences Development Programme (Pedeciba) and had its first graduates of the Master's Degree in Computer Science in 1992. Today, the Institute of Computer Science of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of the Republic (Udelar), a pillar of training in the area, has approximately 50 Masters and 40 PhDs in its teaching staff, that is, half of the staff (and with many more teachers in postgraduate training). The total number of graduates from Pedeciba Informática is 100 Masters and 25 PhDs, which shows that many teachers did their postgraduate studies abroad, mainly between 1985 and 2005.
An ecosystem
There is also a degree in Computer Technology, offered jointly by Udelar and UTU-Consejo de Educación Técnico Profesional, with branches in Maldonado, Montevideo, Paysandú and San José; graduates of this degree can continue their studies in Computer Engineering. And the Technological University offers a degree in Information Technology, which for the moment is not articulated with the rest of the degree programmes.
The panorama of degree courses in computing is completed by the Profesorado en Informática offered by the Consejo de Formación en Educación, with branches in Montevideo, Colonia, Maldonado and Salto.
We have, therefore, an ecosystem of training professionals made up of technologists, graduates and engineers, and, in parallel, specific teaching training. All these profiles have a place in the labour market, which includes public and private companies, research and teaching. Engineers, due to their higher education, are naturally those who take on greater responsibilities. Graduates bring specific technical skills (and some of them go on to research and/or teaching careers), while technologists and analysts form the technical basis of working teams. It is therefore to be expected that technologists will be the most numerous graduates, while the number of engineering graduates and bachelor graduates will be more moderate. It is important to note that there are career transition mechanisms, so that no graduate is "confined" to his or her degree and can aspire to continue his or her training.
At this point it is important to consider the role of postgraduates in this ecosystem. Master's degrees and professional specialisations have provided professional training at postgraduate level for engineers, and this is the fundamental function they will continue to fulfil. Academic master's degrees have a couple of differentiated cases: on the one hand, it is a requirement to start a teaching career, that is, to aspire to become an assistant professor (grade 3) at Udelar and, from the labour point of view, there seems to be no distinction between an engineer and a master's degree, since it is considered a "postgraduate in training". Indeed, in almost all cases the academic master's degree is a step towards doctoral training.
The role of doctors
Let us now consider the role of PhDs in the ecosystem. Until now, they have mainly played an academic-teaching role, as recognised researchers (in particular, members of Pedeciba Informática and the National System of Researchers) and trainers of researchers and teachers, working mainly in the academic environment, in particular at Udelar. The growth of the country and the incidence of computer science in the productive processes determines the need to generate systematic and innovative knowledge at a business level, and PhDs are ideal to lead this process. It is also necessary to generate innovative processes in state companies, and in this area doctors are also called upon to be a fundamental part of the process. So far, companies have been reluctant to hire PhDs, although in recent years various instruments of the National Agency for Research and Innovation are helping to encourage the hiring of qualified personnel at master's, doctoral and post-doctoral levels. These incentive policies, together with the real growth in the number of graduates from the Pedeciba Informática doctoral programme, foreshadow a scenario in which PhDs are not only destined for academia, but also become part of the ecosystem in companies.
In this area, their function is to lead R&D&I teams that work with engineering teams, looking for innovative solutions and prototypes that will eventually go into production. It is the role of PhDs to lead the formulation of research projects in the business field, and to formulate proposals for competitive funding. Likewise, the PhD is vital in the formation of a culture of innovation, in which the failure of many ideas must be admitted in order for some to reach fruition, without being directly tied to the classic business dynamics of cost-benefit.
The strength of the labour market
To complete the picture, it is necessary to refer to a controversial issue: the entry/exit ratio. In computer engineering, an average of 700 students enter each year, and 150 graduate. Unfortunately, half of those who enter the course drop out in the first two years, so we have to consider an effective intake of around 350 students. I will come back to these drop-outs, but in the meantime, where are the missing 200 students? The answer is that they are sporadically doing some career activity, and that they will eventually graduate. This is reflected in the fact that we have more than 4,000 active students and that there are cases of up to 19 years of study, with an average of about nine years. This "reservoir" of students can be explained by the fact that the vast majority enter the labour market at an early stage of their studies, given the software industry's need for human resources. This inevitably reduces the students' dedication to the course, which for most of the students has become a distance learning course, with face-to-face attendance reduced almost exclusively to assessment activities.
It is imperative to achieve incentives to delay the entry into the labour market, which promotes a more face-to-face curricular activity and substantially reduces the times and increases the graduation rate. Part of the answer is scholarships for undergraduate studies; Udelar promoted a significant increase in these, which unfortunately was rejected in the budget discussion. Other possible responses involve agreements with employers, and, as mentioned above, widening the base of the pyramid: technologist, graduate, engineer.
With regard to the problem of student drop-out, the reality is that the first years of a degree course are, for a large proportion of students, a very long entrance exam, which means that many drop out because they are unable to pass these first stages of training. Many proposals have been put forward to tackle this problem, including the incorporation of propaedeutic training (pre-university adaptation training) and reducing the technical content of degree courses to the first years, among others.
Growing
Going back to the beginning, during 2017 we have discussed the academic aspects of training, trying to take into account the common core of undergraduate training (bachelor's degree, engineering), with the aim of starting an approval process in 2018, and beginning the implementation in 2019-2020 of the new curriculum. It is clear that in addition to curricular evolution, the new curricula must take into account these other aspects, and that the country must rethink the allocation of resources for computer science education, bearing in mind that it is a growing industry with a constant demand for human resources.
Eduardo Grampín : Professor at the Institute of Computer Science of the Faculty of Engineering (Udelar), director of the Computer Science degree.
Source: La Diaria
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