that will attract more graduate students to the discipline.

The provincial ministries of education must provide a consistent and relevant curriculum to primary and secondary schools, recognize CS as a teachable academic subject in all 10 provinces, and promote and support the continued development of CS teachers in an area that is always changing.

The federal and provincial governments must also help communicate and promote the number and diversity of employment opportunities in the ICT sector, providing incentives for students to study the discipline as a cornerstone of the national and international knowledge economy.

Universities. Universities must adapt their curricula to engage and retain new students and provide multidisciplinary programs that are attractive to students and industry alike. Moreover, they must create an environment and teaching style that is more appealing to women, introducing new notions of creativity into their programs, and improve retention rates through better engagement of students.

The very structure of university CS programs must also change. Foundation CS courses in the first and second years must capture the breadth of CS; meanwhile, specializations (in both university programs and industry) rely on only a subset of the core, branding the unreferenced material irrelevant. Also, many first-year CS programs assume that students lack a worthwhile computing background on which to build. Universities must rethink what they expect from their core courses and simplify advanced placement in their programs.

Universities are positioned to provide role models (including students, teachers, and practitioners) at the leading edge of technology. They must be excited about the discipline and find ways to convey to their audience the exciting directions in which it is heading. They must also be able to connect their audience with how work in the ICT sector affects the social and economic aspects of daily life.

Universities must also adapt their own regulations to recognize the importance of CS in the competitive global economy by, say, including a beginning course in all university programs,

transfer credits or advanced placement into CS programs based on high-school CS courses, and basic CS concepts in all degree requirements, even the humanities. They must therefore revise their si-lo-based organization to facilitate and encourage multidisciplinary education and programs.

High schools. The high school partners across the Canadian educational system preparing students to consider ICT as a possible career path could now take several new directions: First, they could offer CS courses that introduce students to computing concepts beyond the applications in the students’ own studies (some already do this) but must provide consistency and continual updates. Delivery of the material, as well as the resources for teaching it, must engage the students. The high schools, and likely the primary schools, must also find ways to keep women connected with all the sciences as they reach grade 12.

conclusion

The products and services of the ICT sector represent a cornerstone of the developing global knowledge society. ICT is one factor increasing the productivity of the Canadian work force; ICT must continue to strengthen this productivity if Canadian businesses are to remain competitive. Sustained success in the ICT sector, essential to Canada’s national interest and prosperity, requires that all participants—public, private, and educational—continually adapt to changes in technology and its applications. This requires a Canadian national work force that is dedicated, informed, sophisticated, and agile.

For the sake of the overall Canadian economy, it is imperative that the country’s public, private, and educational sectors all play a role in increasing the numbers of students studying CS in high school and university in order to sustain the required ICT work force. All must focus on changing the public’s perception of the industry and its employment opportunities and adapt the CS curricula to remain engaging and relevant for all Canadian students.

All must invest time and money in solving the current crisis of falling Canadian CS enrollment. Failure to do less than what we propose here would harm future generations. That investment

must include stable, long-term financial support for CS education initiatives that recognize the time commitment required of the leaders in all sectors.

acknowledgments

We would like to thank the people who helped us prepare this article:

˲ The chairs of Canadian university CS departments for their participation, openness, and feedback in discussing and quantifying the issues facing the Canadian ICT sector;

˲ The industry partners who met with us for our on-site interviews concerning their perspective on the direction of the discipline;

˲Paul Swinwood of the Information and Communications Technology Council ( www.ictc-ctic.ca/) for helping sponsor our work;

˲ Business Objects, an SAP company, IBM, and Research In Motion for providing additional industrial contacts; and

˲ The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (www. nserc.gc.ca/index.htm).

 

References

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2. Dobson, I.R. The I T Education Bubble: An Analysis of University Student Statistics 2002–2005. Australian Council of Deans of Science, Australia, 2007; www. educationalpolicy.org/pdf/DeansOfSci-IT- 2_9-07.pdf .

3. Slonim, J., Scully, S., and McAllister, M. Outlook on Enrollments in Computer Science in Canadian Universities. Information and Communication Technology Council, 2008; www.ictc-ctic-ca/ uploadedFiles/Labour_Market_Intelligence/Outlook_ on_enrolments.pdf.

4. Statistics Canada. Enhanced Student Information System. 2006; stds.statcan.ca/English/cip/cip_4digit. asp?code= 11.

5. Van Leeuwen, J. and Tanca, L. Student Enrollment and Image of the Informatics Discipline. Utrecht University, Technical Report No. UU-CS-2007-024. Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2007; www.cs.uu.nl/ research/techreps/repo/CS-2007/2007-024.pdf.

6. Vegso, J. Enrollments and Degree Production at U. S. CS Departments Drop Further in 2006–2007. Computing Research Association, Washington, D.C., 2008; www.cra.org/CRN/articles/march08/jvegso_ enrollments.html.

7. Vegso, J. Low Interest in CS and CE Among Incoming Freshmen. Computing Research Association, Washington, D. C., 2007; www.cra.org/wp/index. php?p= 104.

Jacob Slonim ( [e-mail]) is a professor in the Faculty of Computer Science of Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Sam Scully ( [e-mail]) is the former Vice-President Academic and Provost and Professor of Classics in Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Michael McAllister ( [e-mail]) is an associate professor in the Faculty of Computer Science of Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

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