Is software engineering graduate-level material?
Abstract Since the first software engineering degree programs began to appear in the late 1970's, the subject has largely been taught at the graduate level, with an increasing number of one- and two-term introductory courses offered for upperdivision undergraduate students. The last curriculum suggested by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1978 for undergraduate computer science degree programs designates such a course as an elective, and most degrees are granted to students who have not taken it. Therefore, many persons employed today as de facto software engineers gain knowledge of software engineering either through trial and error on the job, or use that “method” coupled with part-time graduate study if they are lucky enough to work near a university offering such a program. Since there are so few schools that explicitly structure their undergraduate courses to incorporate software engineering principles and techniques, the existence of software engineering at the graduate level is thus essentially by default, since such courses taken by post-bachelors need to be at the graduate level for them to receive “proper credit.”