A crisis in computer science education at liberal arts colleges
Greg W Scrugg · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 1987
A crisis now pervades computer science education at small liberal arts colleges: too many programs are not able to boot strap their programs into existence at a level where they can sustain themselves. The costs, not necessarily in dollars, have far exceeded the original expectations of the colleges, resulting in inappropriate environments, inadequate educational goals, broken faculty careers and unrealistic research expectations, and ultimately failure of the programs as bonafide computer science. In what follows, I take as a given that computer science is not only an appropriate, but a central and important discipline for liberal arts colleges. This has been argued elsewhere and will not be addressed here, as my primary concern is with the institutions which have (at least officially) accepted this premise.I will first attempt to describe the major symptoms and then the causes of some of the problems encountered by many small liberal arts colleges. Finally, I will offer a preliminary set of suggestions for possible solution.