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When I was finishing up my A-levels and deciding what to study at degree level, the standard advice was that if you thought you might one day want to work with

When I was finishing up my A-levels and deciding what to study at degree level, the standard advice was that if you thought you might one day want to work with computers, to not take a computing degree (because at the time they were regarded as lower-quality than more traditional subjects), but to take something like maths instead. I don't know if that advice continues to be given, and I can't think of an obvious reason why women would pay more attention to it than men, but maybe someone else can?

mortice 16y ago
I think you pick up on an interesting point - the focus on Computer Science qualifications above GCSE level. The drop-offs the article points to are between A-Levels and degrees and, to a lesser extent, between GCSEs and A-Levels. But those drop-offs can only be said to explain the gender disparity among professional developers if you accept that the vast majority of software developers working professionally today studied Computer Science at degree level. I'm not sure that's true, and I'm equally unsure that it should be true. Given that there's a software developer shortage overall and that software development jobs don't tend to require CS degrees, wouldn't it be more prudent to make the professional end more attractive rather than concentrating on outreach for degree programmes?
- ig1 16y ago
  Certainly among graduate employers CS degrees are the dominant source of developers (although you do get a number of Maths/Physics/Engineers as well). Unfortunately I don't think there's any good data on it. I wrote to the minister for universities a few weeks back trying to persuade him that HESA should be collecting this data, but I haven't heard back. The problem for companies taking people without programming experience is that it's very high-risk. If you hire someone and after training find they can't program it's very hard to fire them.

mortice 16y ago

I think you pick up on an interesting point - the focus on Computer Science qualifications above GCSE level. The drop-offs the article points to are between A-Levels and degrees and, to a lesser extent, between GCSEs and A-Levels. But those drop-offs can only be said to explain the gender disparity among professional developers if you accept that the vast majority of software developers working professionally today studied Computer Science at degree level. I'm not sure that's true, and I'm equally unsure that it should be true. Given that there's a software developer shortage overall and that software development jobs don't tend to require CS degrees, wouldn't it be more prudent to make the professional end more attractive rather than concentrating on outreach for degree programmes?

ig1 16y ago
Certainly among graduate employers CS degrees are the dominant source of developers (although you do get a number of Maths/Physics/Engineers as well). Unfortunately I don't think there's any good data on it. I wrote to the minister for universities a few weeks back trying to persuade him that HESA should be collecting this data, but I haven't heard back. The problem for companies taking people without programming experience is that it's very high-risk. If you hire someone and after training find they can't program it's very hard to fire them.