Universities are rethinking computer science curriculum in response to AI tools
A colleague was kind enough to send me an article:
Universities are rethinking computer science curriculum in response to AI tools
I considered what this might mean for our evolving curriculum in CS and EE at Catholic University. Here are my thoughts.
The article is essentially correct and gauges the impact and the rate of disruption caused by the introduction of AI assisted software development accurately. All at once and with the effect of revolutionary change, traditional curricula have become outdated and focused on the wrong skills and approaches.
And we don’t have the luxury of a transition period—it took 100 years for the printing press to become ubiquitous; back in the day that was blindingly fast change.
For me as a senior software developer, using Claude to drive out the initial version of a minimal viable product (MVP) has become a commonplace. Traditional planning estimates of how long a development effort will take are totally out the window. As an example, my erstwhile guitar jam partner and mentor didn’t have a website to sell his online instruction and music books (what a Luddite!). A couple days ago, I created the alpha MVP for his business with a single prompt! That’s impressive. Now, to get to commercial viability with security bells and whistles and payment processing will take a few days with some hand coding by me. But the point is, it will be way less than even 5 years ago.
For us at CUA, I think what it means is that we advocate a hybrid curriculum, with less push for our students to become master level professionals in a specific programming language and more on how to shape AI assistants. Additionally, and as Dr. Ko has argued, the focus on the intersection of society (ethics, social responsibility, business practices, proper uses of this new set of principles and capabilities) becomes even more cogent.
I am looking forward to even more revolutionary developments—for example, currently the Claude/Anthropic assistant will not run the code it generates, at least not yet, but when it does, it will start to resemble agentic AI in the way pur Department Head, Dr. Ko envisions it.