著名大学的MSE教育(美,英,加,澳,新,爱),CMU对MSE的明确定义及ME中外比较

llljj

University of the West of England, Bristol http://info.uwe.ac.uk/courses/viewcourse.asp?URN=13547&stream=

Introduction
Software Engineering involves the application of specialised knowledge and skills to develop different kinds of large, complex software systems. There is continuous demand for software engineers both nationally and internationally.

This programme is intended for those who would like to develop their knowledge and skills in Software Engineering. The major objectives are to provide students with the professional, technical, theoretical and management knowledge required to make an effective contribution to teams building software systems; the skills required for effective project management; and the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out research in Software Engineering.





MSc in Software Engineering at University of Limerick,Irland
Introduction
Software Engineering involves the application of specialised knowledge and skills to develop different kinds of large, complex software systems. There is continuous demand for software engineers both internationally and nationally. This award will provide an opportunity for students, to gain up-to-date knowledge and skills in software engineering. For this reason, the award is designed to attract both full and part-time students. The part-time mode facilitates students currently in employment. It is a block-release course
over four academic terms, spanning two years. In full-time mode the course spans a single academic year, and requires full-time attendance on campus. Both versions have the same academic content. The course consists of both a taught component and a project.

Objectives
To equip graduates with a detailed knowledge of the theories, processes, methods and techniques of building high-quality software in a cost-effective manner.

To increase the awareness of the opportunities offered by current research in Software Engineering and its application to current practice.

To meet industries needs for graduates having the above qualities.

To enhance graduates exiting educational base and employment prospects


Master of Science in Software Engineering at Athlone Institute of Technology,Irland

Full-time and Part-time/ACCS Mode

The aim of this programme is to provide an opportunity for computer professionals and engineers to enhance their knowledge and expertise in areas of current active research and development in software engineering. The participants will also gain exposure to the various techniques for performing academic research. The course also aims to provide an environment in which the participant is exposed to new technological developments, to ethical and social issues affecting the computer industry, and to the requirement to uphold general professional standards.

Minimum Entry Requirements
Honours (Grade 2.2) degree in an appropriate Engineering, Computing or cognate discipline, or an equivalent qualification.
Appropriate experience (or appropriate qualifier) may also be required depending upon the degree qualifications.

Course Subjects
Software Design and Programming, Advanced Database Technology, Operating Systems and Concurrency, Computer Networks and Telecommunications, Software Engineering Project
plus 4 subjects from
Software Engineering Management and Practice, Program Language Translation, Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Based Systems, Neural Networks, Digital Signal Processing, Internet and Multi-media Systems, Distributed Systems and Web Technology.

Career Opportunities
There is a high demand for skilled software engineering graduates resulting from the expansion of the software industry in Ireland and overseas.

[ 本帖最后由 llljj 于 2006-7-9 02:31 编辑 ]

llljj

Current State of Software Engineering Master’s Degree Programs In the United States
  Donald J.  B agert and Xiaoyan Mu
  Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute IN 47803
  Don.Bagert@rose-hulman.edu, Xiaoyan.Mu@rose-hulman.edu


Abstract - To date, most graduate software engineering
degree programs in the United States have used the model
of a professional degree similar to that of a Master of
Business Administration; that is, a terminal degree where
graduates are going into industry rather than academia.
In particular, the software engineering Master’s degrees
have often focused on students who are already software
developers in the workplace and also have either a
bachelor's degree in another computing discipline or have
completed sufficient undergraduate prerequisites in order
to do the graduate coursework. This paper provides the
most comprehensive list in recent years of those programs
in the United States that offer a Master’s degree with a
major of Software Engineering, along with information
concerning online education, capstone requirements,
required background and courses offered.
Index Terms -- Curriculum issues, Graduate degree programs,
The first software engineering (SE) degree programs in the
United States (and probably the world) were developed in the
late 1970’s at the Master’s degree level. Traditionally, most
of these programs have been targeted towards current software
practitioners. In this way, those students have a greater
appreciation and understanding of the material covered in the
software engineering curriculum. Also, there are some in the
software engineering community that believe that the best way
to learn software engineering principles is to first receive an
undergraduate degree in computer science or a related field, in
order to gain the breadth of knowledge required.
However, in recent years the literature has focused on the
emergence of undergraduate programs in the United States,
and one of the authors was in fact involved in a recent survey
of those programs [3]. While the rate of growth of
baccalaureate software engineering programs in the USA has
slowed in the past few years [4], the need for software
engineers has not. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) lists “computer software engineer” as one of the fastest
growing job categories in the United States, over three times
as fast as job growth in general expected for the period 2002-
2012. In fact, according to BLS data, there are currently more
software engineers in the U.S. than any other engineering
discipline, and by 2012 there will be three times as many
software engineers (982,000) than the next largest engineering

[ 本帖最后由 llljj 于 2007-1-26 21:04 编辑 ]

llljj

field [14]; furthermore, those software engineering jobs are in
addition to nearly 1.4 million “computer scientist” positions
[15]. With only about 30 software engineering Bachelor’s
degree programs in the U.S. as of 2004 [4], one reason to have
a Master’s degree program is to educate individuals that have
received little or no software engineering training in their
undergraduate education. Also, as will be discussed, some
people feel that software engineering as an academic
discipline is something best addressed at the Master’s level.
It is not uncommon for people with undergraduate degree
in engineering and other disciplines to be assigned to tasks
involving software development in the workplace, and this is
one reason that the need for software engineering Master’s
degree programs will remain for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, an overview of the current state of Master’s degree
programs in software engineering would be beneficial to many
of the stakeholders in the software engineering community.
This paper provides the first such comprehensive overview of
such programs in over a decade. The following sections
provide:
• Some background on the evolution of Master’s degree
programs in the U.S.,
• A general profile of the U.S. Master’s degree programs,
and
• A discussion of the merits of undergraduate vs. graduate
software engineering degrees.
(Note that only Master’s degrees with the precise major of
“Software Engineering” will be discussed initially as opposed
to, say, “Master of Science in Computer Science with a
Software Engineering Option” or “Master of Software Design
and Development”; a later section of the paper talks

[ 本帖最后由 llljj 于 2006-6-8 15:35 编辑 ]

llljj

BACKGROUND
The impetus for the creation of the first software engineering
Master’s programs in the late 1970’s was primarily due to
pressure from local industry. The first three U.S. programs
were developed at Seattle University, Texas Christian
University (in the Dallas-Fort Worth area) and the nowdefunct
Wang Institute of Graduate Studies in Boston. Of
these three programs, only the one at Seattle still exists today.
By the mid-1980's, these three programs had similar curricula;
the core courses at these institutions focused on various stages
of the life cycle such as analysis, design, implementation, and
testing, while each of the programs had a capstone project
course lasting one or more terms [12].
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie
Mellon University played a leading role in the development of
U.S. graduate software engineering programs and curricula
during the ten years of existence of its Education Program
(January 1985-December 1994). Among other things,
members of the SEI Education Program developed the Master
of Software Engineering (MSE) degree at Carnegie Mellon,
published a graduate curriculum model [1] and tracked the
growth of Master’s degree programs ([7] and [8]).
The SEI curriculum model, which to this day is the
standard for graduate curricula, was largely developed by
Mark Ardis, who had previously been on the Wang Institute
software engineering faculty. Thus the SEI model provides a
bridge from the earliest software engineering degree programs
to the ones today.
The SEI model curriculum was basically broken into four
parts: undergraduate prerequisites, core curriculum, the project
experience component, and electives. The minimal
undergraduate prerequisites were discrete mathematics,
programming, data structures, assembly language, algorithm
analysis, communication skills, and some calculus.
Laboratory sciences were not required. The six core
curriculum courses were:
• Specification of Software Systems
• Software Verification and Validation
•Software Generation and Maintenance
• Principles and Applications of Software Design
• Software Systems Engineering
• Software Project Management
So, a series of core courses focusing on process culminating in
a capstone project experience was defined in detail, to be later
found in most undergraduate and graduate software
engineering curricula. Even today, several of the programs
covered in this survey have courses with the exact same names
as the ones shown above.
In 1979, there were only three graduate software
engineering programs in the United States; by 1991 the SEI
counted nine such programs [7], and in 1996 (the last year the
SEI tracked programs) they listed 18 U.S. Master’s degree
programs in software engineering [8]. Bagert [2] noted that
two subsequent attempts to compile Master’s degree programs
in software engineering ([9] and [11]) both depended on
responses to survey requests for their lists, rather than
compiling them through literature or web searches, and as
such were incomplete.

llljj

THE CURRENT LIST OF SE MASTER’S DEGREE PROGRAMS
The authors have used the World Wide Web (including
college websites and online catalogs), the Peterson’s online
list of degree programs [16] and other sources to compile the
list of programs with “software engineering” as the discipline
area shown, along with additional information concerning
these programs. Table I provides degree titles, delivery modes
and capstone requirements for these schools. The 43 software
engineering programs have named degrees of Master of
Science in Software Engineering at 15 schools, Master of
Science in Software Engineering (MSSE) at 27 schools, and
Master of Engineering in Software Engineering (MESE) at
Twenty-four of these schools deliver the programs only
face-to-face, three only online, and 16 provide for both or
have a curriculum which has both face-to-face and online
courses. So although there are many possible choices for
receiving a software engineering Master’s degree online
(which provides more flexibility for the working professional),
the traditional classroom delivery is still the most prevalent.
Fifteen of the 43 programs require a capstone software
project, 18 other programs allows for the possibility of a
capstone project, reflecting the continued professional
orientation of many of the programs. A Master’s thesis is
required in only two programs, but 20 other programs provide
the thesis as an option, and six allow for at least the possibility
of a non-thesis research project. This indicates that research is
an important component in some Master’s programs, and is
discussed more in the sections below on undergraduate and
PhD programs.
Table II provides information concerning program
prerequisites. Slightly over half of the schools (23) did not
specify any guidelines on work experience, while the rest
either required or recommended anywhere from a summer
internship to five years of software work experience, with the
most common length of time being two years (10 programs) or
one year (6). So, although prior experience is still an
important factor in many Master’s SE programs, entry to the
program directly from a Bachelor’s degree is possible at a
majority of the schools.

llljj

No school requires a Bachelor’s degree in Software
Engineering as a prerequisite, while only a handful of
programs require a degree in a computing or engineering field.
In most cases, the software engineering programs allow
passage a set of core math and computer science courses
(often similar to those enumerated in the SEI graduate
curriculum model) as a sufficient prerequisite for admission.
Thus, the possibility of entering a Master’s degree program in
software engineering with an unrelated Bachelor’s degree is
certainly still possible in most programs.
In the previous section, the core areas of the SEI graduate
curriculum model were presented. Since then, an IEEE
Computer Society project entitled the Guide to the Software
Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) has been
developed and is now in its second edition [5]. The Guide
divides software engineering into a series of ten knowledge
areas (KAs):
• Requirements
• Design (including Architecture)
• Construction
• Testing
• Maintenance
• Configuration Management
• Engineering (Project) Management
• Process
• Tools and Methods
• Quality (including Verification and Validation)

llljj

Table III shows how those KAs are reflected in courses
within the software engineering curricula of the 43 schools
listed in the previous two tables. For this table, “Tools and
Methods” was divided into “Tools” and “Formal Methods”;
also included are “general” (survey) software engineering
courses (usually at the introductory level), and courses on
human-computer interaction and measurement/metrics. No
distinction is made here between required and elective courses
(since some programs include a core set of courses, but others
have individual tracks), and courses with titles involving two
topics (such as “Software Construction and Maintenance”)
were counted in both categories.
As would be expected from an engineering degree
program, almost every program contains at least one design
course, while three of the other core areas in the SEI model
curriculum (requirements, management and quality assurance)
also rank in the top five. The fact that a formal methods
course exists in almost half of the SE Master’s programs is
also probably due to the influence of the SEI model.
Construction courses are in only eight curricula, but this does
not take into account the 18 programs with object-oriented
development courses, many of which have a strong
implementation component.
Also of interest are the 27 programs with at least one
“general” software engineering course. Although such
courses are commonplace in undergraduate curricula, the SEI
(and Carnegie Mellon) did not include one since such a class -
which would cover the entire software lifecycle - would have
to be taken alongside more specific courses such as
requirements specification. Instead, many MSE curricula have
chosen to take a “depth-first” approach to the various software
engineering KAs instead of the breadth-first paradigm of
having one or more general survey courses.
Finally, almost all of the 43 programs have courses which
focus on one or more application domains. The most
frequently listed domain was real-time embedded systems;
networks, safety and wireless communication were also listed
in a number of programs.

llljj

RELATED PROGRAMS
The authors’ decision to include in the tables only those
programs with the precise title of “software engineering” as
the degree discipline name has the effect of making it easy to
classify which programs should be included; however, there
are several schools which have different degree titles but are
essentially MSE programs, including the Master of Science in
Software Development at Pace University and the Master of
Science in Software Engineering Science at Florida A&M
University. Gannon University offers a Master of Science in
Engineering with a concentration on Embedded Software
Engineering, thus focusing on a particular application domain.
Many schools offer Master’s degree in computer science
or some other computing field with an emphasis on software
engineering. In all, the Peterson’s online guide [16] contains
91 degree programs with some relation to software
engineering – however, in some cases that may be as little as
having a faculty member with a research interest in software
engineering.
There are also graduate certificate programs in software
engineering. Such programs usually consist of five to six core
software engineering courses; such certificates allow the
student to complete a post-undergraduate program in a shorter
amount of time.

llljj

COMPARISON TO UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS
As of fall 2004, there were about 30 undergraduate Bachelor
of Science in Software Engineering (BSSE) programs in the
United States [4], six of which have already been accredited
by the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC)
in 2003 and 2004 [13], with several more expected in the next
several years. Also, a joint committee of the IEEE Computer
Society (IEEE-CS) and the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM) recently released Software Engineering
2004 [10], specifying recommendations for undergraduate
software engineering curricula. (This effort was part of the
Computing Curricula project sponsored by the two
organizations.)
Most of the accredited undergraduate degree programs in
software engineering have a set of core SE courses with topics
very similar to those of graduate programs, which is
understandable due to the fact that there have been common
sources to draw from, such as the SEI graduate curriculum
guidelines and SWEBOK. There is often a difference in how
the courses are taught, however, since 1) graduate courses
should in general be more rigorous and 2) the graduate courses
are usually geared towards professionals, while the
undergraduate classes are not.
Some people believe that software engineering as an
academic discipline is best addressed at the Master’s level.
For instance, Dennis J. Frailey, Principal Fellow at the
Raytheon Company in Dallas and long-time adjunct professor
of computer science and software engineering at Southern
Methodist University, comments:
“Yes, I believe [a software engineering degree] is more
effective at the Master's level. I believe that being an effective
software engineer requires several things including:
• A solid undergraduate program covering the fundamentals
of computer science and/or computer engineering.
• Significant amounts of experience in doing commercial
software engineering.
• Considerable depth and breadth in topics that are best
learned after one has had the abovementioned experience
(because the experience gives you a much deeper
appreciation of why the topics are important).
Furthermore, this degree of depth and breadth cannot be
covered in an undergraduate program unless it
shortchanges the students in their fundamentals.
• Continuing education as the field matures and evolves
throughout one's career.

llljj

An MS degree can provide the last two items. A bachelor's
degree provides the first. The second is best learned on real
jobs, not in canned exercises in a university, although there are
benefits to having students obtain project experience during
“This is not to say that an undergraduate SE degree is not
appropriate. However it is insufficient for providing the depth
and breadth and continuing education needed. Even the best
undergraduate SE program needs to be complemented by MS
level instruction to provide further depth and breadth and
continuing education…”
Another forum which discussed the “breadth vs. depth”
issue is a panel entitled “Software Engineering Undergraduate
Education – Pro and Con” held at the 25th International
Conference on Software Engineering (the panel abstract is at
http://www.icse-conferences.org/2003/events/panel.html). One
issue which was addressed both there at ICSE and elsewhere
is the issue of the effect of a 10-week quarter system where a
typical course is 4 credit hours (40 contact hours) as opposed
to a 15-week semester system where the typical course is 3
credit hours (45 contact hours). Although the ratio of quarter
to semester credit hours is 10:15 (or 2:3), the ratio of courses
is usually 3:4.
So for instance, in the case of the software engineering
Bachelor’s degree at Rose-Hulman (which is on the quarter
system), this means there is an additional one-twelfth of the
curriculum (three-fourths minus two-thirds) available for more
courses. At Rose-Hulman this translates to four courses,
which allows the software engineering undergraduate
curriculum to have the virtually the same amount of computer
science breadth that a computer major has, while allowing for
core software engineering classes as well.
Finally, in February 2005, Rose-Hulman conducted two
focus groups of software industry leaders in Indianapolis to
gage interest in a possible professional-based MSE program
located there [6]. Many of the software developers at these
companies have received engineering or computer science
degrees at top institutions. However, the focus group
participants still felt that an MSE would address a need for
their software developers to have a broad understanding of
software engineering, especially software process and quality
assurance.
COMPARISON TO PHD PROGRAMS
There are only about three doctoral degree programs in
software engineering in United States, although there are a
number of dissertations in the area of software engineering
generated by computer science PhD students each year.
(ICSE has an annual doctoral symposium which showcases
such research from around the world.) Certainly software
engineering research is needed to help expand the body of
knowledge of the discipline; however, at this time it is unclear
whether there is currently sufficient breadth in software
engineering to justify the number of courses that would be
required in a PhD program.