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In this essay, the
discussion is primarily about the broad spectrum of computing degree as to
where a diploma in computing can take one with the wide array of career
opportunities it offers. Further, due to the increasing demands of
computing professionals, the discussion on the response of the major
schools and universities will be tackled. Lastly, discussion will
include an exploration of the existence of seemingly computer culture for
the purposes to give an overview in the context of what to expect in
computing industry granting an accomplishment in computing degree will be
achieved.
A degree in
computing course can take one to move in great heights in the industry,
whether it will be in the field of marketing, engineering, economics,
social science, communications and so on. The computing degree scheme
constitutes the degrees in the various areas such as computer science,
with a choice of specialized field to master in, like in information
system, multimedia technology or software engineering and in the area of
computing itself. Most graduates from a computing degree courses, gets to
have a chance to work in the leading companies worldwide like in Microsoft
or the IBM are just few of the prestigious companies that a computing
major can aspire to be a part of. The several common positions of a
computing degree graduate include being a programmer, sales manager,
database administrator, systems analyst, technician, lecturer and so many
more. Needless to say, computing majors becomes the organization
leaders rather than a follower and a valuable and integrated part to any
company or an organization.
With the increasing
demand of professionals that has adequate computing background and
knowledge, it is no wonder that major schools and universities all over
the world caters to the impending demand of computing professionals in the
business world. As part of the great demand, schools and universities
continually challenged themselves to produce superb and high-caliber
computing professionals and offers students with innovative facilities and
as much as possible provide par excellence teaching to better equipped
their students with sufficient knowledge and average expertise to be
developed as they face the challenge in the real world of computing
industry. An emphasis in the computing degree for some schools is vital
just like for example, in Lincoln University Studies Program in New
Zealand which offers a specific computing degree course for students to
fully concentrate on the applications of computing.
The Bachelor of Applied Computing being offered
in the said school is said to be a malleable interdisciplinary studies
which opens doors for a career in the fields of computer system
management, systems engineering, system development, and the related
fields. Moreover, even some schools encourages the non-computing degree
graduates to enroll in the short-term computing degree courses where
non-computing degree graduates will be taught the basics of computing
skills and all the pertinent computing applications that would be useful
and can be a contributing factor for career advancement as a means in
which to be adaptive with the changing world of business in general
wherein the integration of the applications of computing is pervasive to a
large extent. For example, an accounting graduate to be more successful
should come to terms in the use of a computer database, without any
background of computing applications it would be stressful for the
accountant to do his or her job readily if one only depends on the manual
applications of accounting. Nowadays and in the future, it is a fact that
computer literacy is a must prerequisite to be able to make it have a
career in the chosen industry. Having had adequate knowledge in computing
applications would prove to be an edge a professional can have in the
pursuance of advancement of career.
Presumably, that computing per se is
undeniably a heck of a good thing that needs to be deployed to users with
the right packages. Is a computing degree works better for men and not so
for the women? To account this pressing issue of gender stereotyping in
the computing degree course, according to Higher Education Statistical
Agency or HESA (1994) statistics, revealed that women are said to be
underrepresented in computing accounted only to more or less 22 percent of
those who earned an undergraduate having a computing degree in the UK. The
tendency of undermining the representation of women in computing degree,
tends to be evident in the United States as well, wherein, the percentage
of women taking computer science classes in the more illustrious
institutions approaches only half the national average. For instance for
the year 1986 and 1996, it is said that only 14 percent female students
attends computer science classes in Harvard (Gutek and Larwood 1987)
Becker and Geer's (1990) suggests that for a
social space to constitute a specific culture it requires a somewhat
different set of common understandings around which action is organized,
and these differences will find expression in a language whose nuances are
peculiar to those and fully understood only by its members. Simply stated,
in relation to Becker and Geer’s (1990) suggestion, the internal social
environment of computing should be distinct in key ways. With this in
mind, a reasonable ground of evidence supports the existence of computer
culture. A research by Sprout et al. (1984), found that university
students engaging fully with computing for the first time indicates that
such a social division is quickly established and thereafter maintained:
'a we–they distinction': the computationally competent and everyone else.
Moreover, Kling and Ianoco (1990) and Sproull et al. (1984)
argued, that the ideological kernel of computing culture transcends the
particulars of immediate time and space so that, although the particulars
might differ, its general features are identifiable and widely shared
across the diversity of computer settings. As oftentimes noticeable in the
computing industry is the high degree of competitive behavior
characterizing the technical interactions between experts and non-experts,
with the former group observed to regularly 'express considerable
contempt' (Keller 1990) and arrogance (Glastonbury 1992) towards the
latter.
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