Current State of Software Engineering Master s Degree Programs In the United States

Transcription

1 Current State of Software Engineering Master s Degree Programs In the United States Donald J. Bagert and Xiaoyan Mu Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute IN Don.Bagert@rose-hulman.edu, Xiaoyan.Mu@rose-hulman.edu Abstract - To date, most graduate software engineering degree programs in the United States have used the model of a professional degree similar to that of a Master of Business Administration; that is, a terminal degree where graduates are going into industry rather than academia. In particular, the software engineering Master s degrees have often focused on students who are already software developers in the workplace and also have either a bachelor's degree in another computing discipline or have completed sufficient undergraduate prerequisites in order to do the graduate coursework. This paper provides the most comprehensive list in recent years of those programs in the United States that offer a Master s degree with a major of Software Engineering, along with information concerning online education, capstone requirements, required background and courses offered. Index Terms - Curriculum issues, Graduate degree programs, Online education, Software engineering. INTRODUCTION The first software engineering (SE) degree programs in the United States (and probably the world) were developed in the late 1970 s at the Master s degree level. Traditionally, most of these programs have been targeted towards current software practitioners. In this way, those students have a greater appreciation and understanding of the material covered in the software engineering curriculum. Also, there are some in the software engineering community that believe that the best way to learn software engineering principles is to first receive an undergraduate degree in computer science or a related field, in order to gain the breadth of knowledge required. However, in recent years the literature has focused on the emergence of undergraduate programs in the United States, and one of the authors was in fact involved in a recent survey of those programs [3]. While the rate of growth of baccalaureate software engineering programs in the USA has slowed in the past few years [4], the need for software engineers has not. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) lists computer software engineer as one of the fastest growing job categories in the United States, over three times as fast as job growth in general expected for the period In fact, according to BLS data, there are currently more software engineers in the U.S. than any other engineering discipline, and by 2012 there will be three times as many software engineers (982,000) than the next largest engineering field [14]; furthermore, those software engineering jobs are in addition to nearly 1.4 million computer scientist positions [15]. With only about 30 software engineering Bachelor s degree programs in the U.S. as of 2004 [4], one reason to have a Master s degree program is to educate individuals that have received little or no software engineering training in their undergraduate education. Also, as will be discussed, some people feel that software engineering as an academic discipline is something best addressed at the Master s level. It is not uncommon for people with undergraduate degree in engineering and other disciplines to be assigned to tasks involving software development in the workplace, and this is one reason that the need for software engineering Master s degree programs will remain for the foreseeable future. Therefore, an overview of the current state of Master s degree programs in software engineering would be beneficial to many of the stakeholders in the software engineering community. This paper provides the first such comprehensive overview of such programs in over a decade. The following sections provide: Some background on the evolution of Master s degree programs in the U.S., A general profile of the U.S. Master s degree programs, and A discussion of the merits of undergraduate vs. graduate software engineering degrees. (Note that only Master s degrees with the precise major of Software Engineering will be discussed initially as opposed to, say, Master of Science in Computer Science with a Software Engineering Option or Master of Software Design and Development ; a later section of the paper talks about some of these other programs.) BACKGROUND The impetus for the creation of the first software engineering Master s programs in the late 1970 s was primarily due to pressure from local industry. The first three U.S. programs were developed at Seattle University, Texas Christian University (in the Dallas-Fort Worth area) and the nowdefunct Wang Institute of Graduate Studies in Boston. Of these three programs, only the one at Seattle still exists today. By the mid-1980's, these three programs had similar curricula; the core courses at these institutions focused on various stages of the life cycle such as analysis, design, implementation, and testing, while each of the programs had a capstone project course lasting one or more terms [12]. F1G-1

2 The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University played a leading role in the development of U.S. graduate software engineering programs and curricula during the ten years of existence of its Education Program (January 1985-December 1994). Among other things, members of the SEI Education Program developed the Master of Software Engineering () degree at Carnegie Mellon, published a graduate curriculum model [1] and tracked the growth of Master s degree programs ([7] and [8]). The SEI curriculum model, which to this day is the standard for graduate curricula, was largely developed by Mark Ardis, who had previously been on the Wang Institute software engineering faculty. Thus the SEI model provides a bridge from the earliest software engineering degree programs to the ones today. The SEI model curriculum was basically broken into four parts: undergraduate prerequisites, core curriculum, the project experience component, and electives. The minimal undergraduate prerequisites were discrete mathematics, programming, data structures, assembly language, algorithm analysis, communication skills, and some calculus. Laboratory sciences were not required. The six core curriculum courses were: Specification of Software Systems Software Verification and Validation Software Generation and Maintenance Principles and Applications of Software Design Software Systems Engineering Management So, a series of core courses focusing on process culminating in a capstone project experience was defined in detail, to be later found in most undergraduate and graduate software engineering curricula. Even today, several of the programs covered in this survey have courses with the exact same names as the ones shown above. In 1979, there were only three graduate software engineering programs in the United States; by 1991 the SEI counted nine such programs [7], and in 1996 (the last year the SEI tracked programs) they listed 18 U.S. Master s degree programs in software engineering [8]. Bagert [2] noted that two subsequent attempts to compile Master s degree programs in software engineering ([9] and [11]) both depended on responses to survey requests for their lists, rather than compiling them through literature or web searches, and as such were incomplete. THE CURRENT LIST OF SE MASTER S DEGREE PROGRAMS The authors have used the World Wide Web (including college websites and online catalogs), the Peterson s online list of degree programs [16] and other sources to compile the list of programs with software engineering as the discipline area shown, along with additional information concerning these programs. Table I provides degree titles, delivery modes and capstone requirements for these schools. The 43 software engineering programs have named degrees of Master of Science in Software Engineering at 15 schools, Master of Science in Software Engineering () at 27 schools, and Master of Engineering in Software Engineering (MESE) at one school. Twenty-four of these schools deliver the programs only, three only online, and 16 provide for both or have a curriculum which has both and online courses. So although there are many possible choices for receiving a software engineering Master s degree online (which provides more flexibility for the working professional), the traditional classroom delivery is still the most prevalent. Fifteen of the 43 programs require a capstone software project, 18 other programs allows for the possibility of a capstone project, reflecting the continued professional orientation of many of the programs. A Master s thesis is required in only two programs, but 20 other programs provide the thesis as an option, and six allow for at least the possibility of a non-thesis research project. This indicates that research is an important component in some Master s programs, and is discussed more in the sections below on undergraduate and PhD programs. Table II provides information concerning program prerequisites. Slightly over half of the schools (23) did not specify any guidelines on work experience, while the rest either required or recommended anywhere from a summer internship to five years of software work experience, with the most common length of time being two years (10 programs) or one year (6). So, although prior experience is still an important factor in many Master s SE programs, entry to the program directly from a Bachelor s degree is possible at a majority of the schools. No school requires a Bachelor s degree in Software Engineering as a prerequisite, while only a handful of programs require a degree in a computing or engineering field. In most cases, the software engineering programs allow passage a set of core math and computer science courses (often similar to those enumerated in the SEI graduate curriculum model) as a sufficient prerequisite for admission. Thus, the possibility of entering a Master s degree program in software engineering with an unrelated Bachelor s degree is certainly still possible in most programs. In the previous section, the core areas of the SEI graduate curriculum model were presented. Since then, an IEEE Computer Society project entitled the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) has been developed and is now in its second edition [5]. The Guide divides software engineering into a series of ten knowledge areas (KAs): Requirements Design (including Architecture) Construction Testing Maintenance Configuration Management Engineering (Project) Management Process Tools and Methods Quality (including Verification and Validation) F1G-2

3 TABLE I MASTER S DEGREES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN THE UNITED STATES School Degree Delivery Mode Capstone Andrews University Auburn University California State University, Fullerton California State University, Sacramento Carroll College Carnegie Mellon University DePaul University Drexel University Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Florida) Fairfield University Florida Institute of Technology George Mason University International Technological University Kansas State University Mercer University Monmouth University National Technological University Naval Postgraduate School North Dakota State University Oakland University Oregon University System Penn State University-Great Valley San Jose State University Santa Clara University Seattle University Southern Methodist University Southern Polytechnic State University St. Mary's University at San Antonio Texas State University, San Marcos Texas Tech University University of Alabama-Huntsville University of Alaska at Fairbanks University of Colorado-Colorado Springs University of Houston-Clear Lake University of Maryland, University College University of Michigan-Dearborn University of Minnesota University of Scranton University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) University of South Carolina University of Texas-Arlington University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse West Virginia University MESE or online online mixed /online or online or online mixed /online or online or online online or online or online or online or online or online or online or online or online online Thesis or two s Thesis or Thesis or Research Project (Optional) Thesis or Comprehensive Exam None Thesis or (Optional) Thesis or or Report None Thesis or Thesis (Optional) Thesis Research Project and Comprehensive Exam Thesis (Optional) Research Project or Thesis or ; Thesis optional (optional) Thesis or Thesis, Comprehensive Exam or Research Project Thesis or and either Thesis or Comprehensive Exam Thesis or and Comprehensive Exam Thesis, or Research Project Thesis or Thesis or Research Project or Thesis (Optional) Comprehensive Exam Thesis or (Optional) Table III shows how those KAs are reflected in courses within the software engineering curricula of the 43 schools listed in the previous two tables. For this table, Tools and Methods was divided into Tools and Formal Methods ; also included are general (survey) software engineering courses (usually at the introductory level), and courses on human-computer interaction and measurement/metrics. No distinction is made here between required and elective courses (since some programs include a core set of courses, but others have individual tracks), and courses with titles involving two topics (such as Software Construction and Maintenance ) were counted in both categories. As would be expected from an engineering degree program, almost every program contains at least one design course, while three of the other core areas in the SEI model curriculum (requirements, management and quality assurance) also rank in the top five. The fact that a formal methods course exists in almost half of the SE Master s programs is also probably due to the influence of the SEI model. Construction courses are in only eight curricula, but this does not take into account the 18 programs with object-oriented development courses, many of which have a strong implementation component. Also of interest are the 27 programs with at least one general software engineering course. Although such courses are commonplace in undergraduate curricula, the SEI (and Carnegie Mellon) did not include one since such a class - which would cover the entire software lifecycle - would have to be taken alongside more specific courses such as requirements specification. Instead, many curricula have chosen to take a depth-first approach to the various software engineering KAs instead of the breadth-first paradigm of having one or more general survey courses. Finally, almost all of the 43 programs have courses which focus on one or more application domains. The most frequently listed domain was real-time embedded systems; networks, safety and wireless communication were also listed in a number of programs. F1G-3

4 TABLE II PREREQUISITES FOR MASTER S DEGREES IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN THE UNITED STATES School Work Experience Course/Degree Prerequisites Andrews University Auburn University California State University, Fullerton California State University, Sacramento Carroll College Carnegie Mellon University DePaul University Drexel University Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ. (Florida) Fairfield University Florida Institute of Technology George Mason University International Technological University Kansas State University Mercer University Monmouth University National Technological University Naval Postgraduate School North Dakota State University Oakland University Oregon University System Penn State University-Great Valley San Jose State University Santa Clara University Seattle University Southern Methodist University Southern Polytechnic State University St. Mary's University at San Antonio Texas State University, San Marcos Texas Tech University University of Alabama-Huntsville University of Alaska at Fairbanks University of Colorado-Colorado Springs University of Houston-Clear Lake University of Maryland, University College University of Michigan-Dearborn University of Minnesota University of Scranton University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) University of South Carolina University of Texas-Arlington University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse West Virginia University One year of software experience or equivalent Two years of software work experience At least a summer internship is recommended Some software engineering experience Two years of software development or maintenance Two years of software experience Two years of software development experience (optional) Two years of software development experience Two years exp. in software development or maintenance One year in software development and/or maintenance. One year of software work experience (or co-op) Five or more years of related work experience Two years of software development or equivalent Two years of software development or equivalent One year of experience in software design (optional) One year of full-time experience in software development Two years of relevant work experience (optional) One year of software work experience Two years of software work experience recommended Three years of relevant work experience Undergraduate degree in CS or some CS courses Software engineering course/equivalent knowledge Programming knowledge Some Computer Science courses Relevant experience or Math/CS course work Relevant experience or Math/CS course work Relevant experience or Math/CS course work Six hours of a high-level language Bachelor's in related area Some Computer Science courses Bachelor's in related area Some CS and SE courses BS in CS/CPE or leveling courses Programming, soft. design & computer architecture BS in related field or some Math/CS courses BS in CS/CPE or leveling courses BS in CS/CPE or leveling courses BS in CS or related field, including calculus BS in CS, CPE or SE or a related advanced degree Some Math and CS courses for non-cs undergrads Several Math and Computer Science courses Pretest in theory, systems and general study ABET/EAC or CAC Bachelor s degree BS in CS (if no experience) plus leveling courses BS in CS/CPE or equivalent Some Math and CS courses or equivalent IS certificate (if no work experience) Internship course (if no work experience) Some Computer Science courses BS in CS/CPE/SE or leveling courses TABLE III FREQUENCY OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSES IN CORE AREAS Subject Area Number of Programs With Courses in That Area Architecture & Design Project Management General Software Engineering Requirements Quality Assurance/V&V Measurement/Metrics Process Testing Formal Methods Human-Computer Interaction Maintenance Construction Tools Configuration Management RELATED PROGRAMS The authors decision to include in the tables only those programs with the precise title of software engineering as the degree discipline name has the effect of making it easy to classify which programs should be included; however, there are several schools which have different degree titles but are essentially programs, including the Master of Science in Software Development at Pace University and the Master of Science in Software Engineering Science at Florida A&M University. Gannon University offers a Master of Science in Engineering with a concentration on Embedded Software Engineering, thus focusing on a particular application domain. Many schools offer Master s degree in computer science or some other computing field with an emphasis on software engineering. In all, the Peterson s online guide [16] contains 91 degree programs with some relation to software engineering however, in some cases that may be as little as F1G-4

5 having a faculty member with a research interest in software engineering. There are also graduate certificate programs in software engineering. Such programs usually consist of five to six core software engineering courses; such certificates allow the student to complete a post-undergraduate program in a shorter amount of time. COMPARISON TO UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS As of fall 2004, there were about 30 undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering (BSSE) programs in the United States [4], six of which have already been accredited by the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) in 2003 and 2004 [13], with several more expected in the next several years. Also, a joint committee of the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) recently released Software Engineering 2004 [10], specifying recommendations for undergraduate software engineering curricula. (This effort was part of the Computing Curricula project sponsored by the two organizations.) Most of the accredited undergraduate degree programs in software engineering have a set of core SE courses with topics very similar to those of graduate programs, which is understandable due to the fact that there have been common sources to draw from, such as the SEI graduate curriculum guidelines and SWEBOK. There is often a difference in how the courses are taught, however, since 1) graduate courses should in general be more rigorous and 2) the graduate courses are usually geared towards professionals, while the undergraduate classes are not. Some people believe that software engineering as an academic discipline is best addressed at the Master s level. For instance, Dennis J. Frailey, Principal Fellow at the Raytheon Company in Dallas and long-time adjunct professor of computer science and software engineering at Southern Methodist University, comments: Yes, I believe [a software engineering degree] is more effective at the Master's level. I believe that being an effective software engineer requires several things including: A solid undergraduate program covering the fundamentals of computer science and/or computer engineering. Significant amounts of experience in doing commercial software engineering. Considerable depth and breadth in topics that are best learned after one has had the abovementioned experience (because the experience gives you a much deeper appreciation of why the topics are important). Furthermore, this degree of depth and breadth cannot be covered in an undergraduate program unless it shortchanges the students in their fundamentals. Continuing education as the field matures and evolves throughout one's career. An MS degree can provide the last two items. A bachelor's degree provides the first. The second is best learned on real jobs, not in canned exercises in a university, although there are benefits to having students obtain project experience during their undergraduate program This is not to say that an undergraduate SE degree is not appropriate. However it is insufficient for providing the depth and breadth and continuing education needed. Even the best undergraduate SE program needs to be complemented by MS level instruction to provide further depth and breadth and continuing education Another forum which discussed the breadth vs. depth issue is a panel entitled Software Engineering Undergraduate Education Pro and Con held at the 25 th International Conference on Software Engineering (the panel abstract is at One issue which was addressed both there at ICSE and elsewhere is the issue of the effect of a 10-week quarter system where a typical course is 4 credit hours (40 contact hours) as opposed to a 15-week semester system where the typical course is 3 credit hours (45 contact hours). Although the ratio of quarter to semester credit hours is 10:15 (or 2:3), the ratio of courses is usually 3:4. So for instance, in the case of the software engineering Bachelor s degree at Rose-Hulman (which is on the quarter system), this means there is an additional one-twelfth of the curriculum (three-fourths minus two-thirds) available for more courses. At Rose-Hulman this translates to four courses, which allows the software engineering undergraduate curriculum to have the virtually the same amount of computer science breadth that a computer major has, while allowing for core software engineering classes as well. Finally, in February 2005, Rose-Hulman conducted two focus groups of software industry leaders in Indianapolis to gage interest in a possible professional-based program located there [6]. Many of the software developers at these companies have received engineering or computer science degrees at top institutions. However, the focus group participants still felt that an would address a need for their software developers to have a broad understanding of software engineering, especially software process and quality assurance. COMPARISON TO PHD PROGRAMS There are only about three doctoral degree programs in software engineering in United States, although there are a number of dissertations in the area of software engineering generated by computer science PhD students each year. (ICSE has an annual doctoral symposium which showcases such research from around the world.) Certainly software engineering research is needed to help expand the body of knowledge of the discipline; however, at this time it is unclear whether there is currently sufficient breadth in software engineering to justify the number of courses that would be required in a PhD program. F1G-5

6 CONCLUSIONS Currently, education in the software engineering discipline in United States is still primarily focused at Master s level. There are 43 Master s programs specifically with the software engineering title, along with many other programs with related names and similar objectives. These programs are still primarily oriented towards working professionals (often who do not have an undergraduate degree in a computing discipline), with over half of the programs requiring or recommending prior software development work experience and over 75% requiring or having the option of a capstone software project. Over 60% of the programs are delivered solely through the traditional classroom experience; however, 16 of the schools do have an online component or degree option, which allows more flexibility for the working professional. A majority of the programs have courses in the core knowledge areas of requirements, architecture and design, project management and quality assurance. Courses are available in a number of application domain areas, most significantly real-time embedded systems. Although undergraduate software engineering degrees in the United States have emerged over the past decade, many in the industry still feel software engineering education at the graduate level provides a better balance of breadth and depth in the various computing subjects needed for effective software development. It appears that Master s degrees in software engineering will continue to be viable in foreseeable future. However, the directions in which such programs evolve may well depend upon how quickly the number of undergraduate programs expand, as well as how much the research and knowledge bases of the discipline expand to allow for more PhD-level software engineering programs. ACKNOWLEDGMENT [5] Bourque, Pierre and Dupuis, Robert (ed.), Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge, 2004 edition, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, California, USA, [6] Clements, Shannon, Focus Groups Summary, Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, 15 February 2005, 10 pp. [7] Ford, Gary A., 1991 SEI Report on Graduate Software Engineering Education, CMU/SEI-91-TR-2, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, [8] Ford, Gary A. and Gibbs, Norman E., A Mature Profession of Software Engineering, Technical Report CMU/SEI-96-TR-004, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, [9] Knoke, Peter J., "Graduate SE Program Survey Results And Evaluation", Forum for Advancing Software engineering Education (FASE), Vol. 8, No. 9, (September 1998). (electronic newsletter) < [10] Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula, Software Engineering 2004: Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Software Engineering, IEEE Computer Society and Association for Computing Machinery, 23 August [11] Modesitt, Kenneth L., Bagert, Donald J., Werth, Laurie and Knoke, Peter J., "Annual Survey of International Software Engineering Academic Programs - Progress Report Number 2," Forum for Advancing Software engineering Education (FASE), Vol. 10, No. 11 (November 2000). (electronic newsletter) < [12] Tomayko, James E., Forging a Discipline: An Outline History of Software Engineering Education, Annals of Software Engineering, Vol. 6, pp. 3-18, [13] Website - (Search by Discipline Software ). [14] Website - [15] Website - [16] Website - The authors wish to thank Dennis Frailey for his invaluable comments concerning the value of software engineering Master s degrees, and how they compare to their undergraduate counterparts. REFERENCES [1] Ardis, Mark A. and Ford, Gary A., 1989 SEI Report on Graduate Software Engineering Education, Carnegie Mellon TR CMU/SEI-89- TR-21, June [2] Bagert, Donald J., Education and Training in Software Engineering, Encyclopedia of Software Engineering, Second Edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2002, pp [3] Bagert, Donald J. and Ardis, Mark A, Software Engineering Baccalaureate Programs in The United States: An Overview, Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education Conference, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 5-8 November 2003, pp. S3C-1 to S3C-6. [4] Bagert, Donald J. and Chenoweth, Stephen V., Future Growth of Software Engineering Baccalaureate Programs in the United States, Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference, June 2005, Portland, Oregon, USA. F1G-6