Computer education in the 1980s, a somber view

The discipline of computer science is a child of the 1970s. Its growth in infancy has been impressive, statistically, but so it is with infants. As we enter the decade of the 1980s, the discipline and all of us engaged in computer science education face some difficult choices. It is becoming abundantly clear that in the 1980s computer education cannot be provided for our students in the variety and quality which they demand. It will fall to us, personally, to decide what kind of computer education will be made available. In this next decade we will suffer a national deficiency of computer expertise equivalent to our national deficiency in oil. The cost of this expertise is already inflating at an alarming rate, and we have yet to begin to mobilize programs which in the long-term will stabilize the market. It is therefore inevitable that the 1980s will witness a frantic shift to alternative sources of expertise and a consequent dilution in the quality of computer professionals and computer products. The academic profession must make program decisions now which will serve to minimize the cost which our society will pay as it struggles to fully enter the computer age.