Programming Contest: Good News, Bad News

Yesterday's note about the results of the 2006 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest which pitted against each other more than 5600 teams representing 1733 universities from 84 countries is a classic good news/ bad news story. The good news is that MIT placed 7th in the competition. The bad news is that, you guessed it, MIT placed 7th in the competition. Moreover, MIT was the only U.S. university to finish in the top 20. Princeton University came in at 28th and DePaul University at 29th.

How does the ACM feel about this? In a statement released in response to the results, ACM president David Patterson pointed to the urgent need to attract talented students to the IT field, and to prepare them for the growing demand for IT jobs in the U.S. He cited improvements in the computer science curriculum and teacher preparation, as well as increased investment in basic research and development if the U.S. hopes to keep its technological edge in the global economy.

“On the 30 th anniversary of ACM’s association with this international competition, the results show that educational policy and R&D investment are more important than ever for countries to stay competitive,” said Patterson, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and founding director of the recently announced Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems Laboratory (RAD Lab) at Berkeley.

Patterson also noted that despite a significant increase in offshoring over the past five years, more IT jobs are available today in the U.S. than at the height of the dot com boom. In addition, he said the growing demand for computer skills makes it imperative that the U.S. attract the best and the brightest to the computing field.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 08:17 AM  Permalink