Re:Darpa: US Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk
by tokenadult on Saturday June 25, 2011 @12:12AM
(#2694902)
The article reports, "The agency doesn’t offer specifics on what kinds of activities might boost computing’s appeal to teens, but they want programs to include career days, mentoring, lab tours and counseling."
Career days, mentoring, lab tours, and counseling are all surely good ideas. But building up desire to become a computer geek among teens will only go so far unless the teens have enough background coming out of high school to learn the actual skills of a computer geek.
Currently, the ACT college admission testing organization estimates that three-fourths of the young men and women entering colleges "were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses."
There are varying amounts of mathematical background strictly necessary for working in various kinds of programming jobs. It would be a rare programming job that wouldn't require at least as much solid skill in mathematics as implied by completing a second year of secondary school algebra. But a lot of high school graduates don't reach that level of math skill, even if they have taken an algebra II course.
so I won't belabor that point here. I'll simply point out that with students who have decent math skills in shortage already, moving math-able students into computer science or computer engineering but from physics or medicine or other forms of engineering still leaves the United States with a potential national security problem.
Career days, mentoring, lab tours, and counseling are all surely good ideas. But building up desire to become a computer geek among teens will only go so far unless the teens have enough background coming out of high school to learn the actual skills of a computer geek.
Currently, the ACT college admission testing organization estimates that three-fourths of the young men and women entering colleges "were not adequately prepared academically for first-year college courses."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230407010457639...
There are varying amounts of mathematical background strictly necessary for working in various kinds of programming jobs. It would be a rare programming job that wouldn't require at least as much solid skill in mathematics as implied by completing a second year of secondary school algebra. But a lot of high school graduates don't reach that level of math skill, even if they have taken an algebra II course.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/requiring-alg...
http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/cccr10/pdf/Conditio...
I've given more citations to studies of United States mathematics education in another HN post,
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2562743
so I won't belabor that point here. I'll simply point out that with students who have decent math skills in shortage already, moving math-able students into computer science or computer engineering but from physics or medicine or other forms of engineering still leaves the United States with a potential national security problem.