In an Interdisciplinary World, Computer Science Education Must Adapt

Abstract

Steve Jobs once said that one of his goals as head of Apple was to "bring a liberal arts perspective... to what had traditionally been a very geeky technology and a very geeky audience"[11]. Jobs, of course, succeeded and made personal computers easy, and even fun, to use. A geeky tool went mainstream, and we all benefitted. Although Jobs and Apple changed computing forever, computer science education at many universities has struggled to overcome the stereotype as a home for geeky students more comfortable communicating through algorithms than through speech. Changing that stereotype and creating computer science education that speaks to the needs of today's society is a challenge for those who work to educate future computer scientists. When it comes to academic disciplines, computer science is still a youngster, first appearing at the university level in the 1950s and 1960s and continuing to evolve and expand through the age of personal computing, the internet and the cloud, the creation of massively parallel machines, and the rise of the interconnected Internet of Things, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).