Changing Times: The Status Of Computing Education In The United States

The past several decades have seen the emergence of the computer and its pervasive integration into the developed world. Computers have evolved dramatically, and now can be found in nearly everything electrical. The early 1990s saw the explosive growth in the use of the Internet. These dramatic technological changes in our society demanded knowledgeable professionals and associated academic disciplines to prepare them, which gave rise first to computer science and information systems programs, starting in the early 1960s. More recently, this continued integration of computing into the fabric of society has given rise to academic programs in computer engineering, software engineering, and information technology. Each of these disciplines has completed a formal curriculum definition and has also participated in a task force to define these five computing disciplines with respect to each other. This paper provides an overview of these efforts.