Having been the admissions tutor for my university department for many years, I can assure you that is not the case. In my subject (Computer Science) we were quite clear that a lower UCAS point score including useful subjects, like Matehmatics would get you a place, whereas a higher UCSAS score including useless subjects like "Information Technology" would not.Information Technology is, in principle, closely related to Computer Science. In practice, it isn't. It is a dumbed-down easy option that has little value.
Are schoolchildren made aware of this when they have to choose their subjects?
Here, it depends on which department offers the degree, but yes, many IT degrees are bogus.
ReplyDeleteComputer Science departments are plagued by applicants who claim to be interested in the subject; inquiry reveals that usually they mean that they like computer games.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing particularly new about this. I graduated in Computational Science in 1987 and I remember when we first arrived that our lecturers said that they preferred us not to have done any computing at A-Level because it would just waste time eliminating bad habits and misconceptions.
ReplyDeleteCS is still a very immature field, pure CS is probably closest to being a branch of Applied Mathematics. I think that everybody should be aware of Dijkstra's famous quote "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes".