Sir, While we lament the shortage of computer graduates, we might do well to cast a brief eye at the short but rather chequered history of the development of computing (aka information technology, software engineering) as an academic discipline within Irish universities.
Innovative academic disciplines traditionally go through a rather painful birth process.potential competitor for under-graduates and funding is detected. An instinctive reaction is to throttle the youngster at birth, either by taking it over and subsuming it to the role of sub-discipline within an existing faculty, or by subdividing it among many departments. So it was with computing, and department names such as Maths and Computing, Business Studies and Computing, Engineering and Computing, Science and Computing began to spring up, often more than one within a single university or college. As a junior partner in such relationships, and often hopelessly divided, computing found it difficult to prosper.
Even here in DCU, which may be perceived externally as a computing- friendly university, tremendous battles had to be fought in the early days to establish a relatively independent School of Computer Applications.
Computer graduates might be regarded as the fodder that feeds the Celtic Tiger. However only if computing is given the status and autonomy it deserves within the university system can be hope to continue feeding this voracious beast. - Yours, etc.,
Senior Lecturer,
School of Computer Applications,
Dublin City University.