Does a 2:1 in computing mean you can write a simple computer program?

As a business person and academic I have two positions of interest in graduates and their capability. At JMU we are always thinking about trying to balance what employers want, what students want to do and what we are able to teach. These things are not always in line of course. As an employer in Software Development I am looking for people with a demonstrable aptitude and broader long term promise.

At Village Software we recently advertised for a graduate trainee for £15k. We had about 50 applicants, of these we spoke to about a dozen, invited 6 to interview, of whom 4 attended. Two things to note here I’ll here consider the most shocking which is the question can you acquire a computing related 2:1 from XYZ University without being able to write a simple computer program, perhaps elsewhere I’ll consider the CV’s that don’t get you a phone call.

We set the interviewees the common and much discussed Fizz Buzz test. There was a frenzy sometime about 2007 about the fact that people applying for programming jobs couldn’t program. The thought was that this was some kind of zombie attack of qualified people without basic competence who were flooding the industry, we needed some way to tell the zombie programmers from the real thing. This coalesced about the fizz buzz test. A simple programming exercise along the lines of:-

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print "Fizz" instead of the number and for the multiples of five print "Buzz". For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print "FizzBuzz".

Graduates failures to pass this test is much discussed for example "why cant programmers program", there are whole blog posts on how to write answers to this "Geek School Fizz Buzz". Making it surprising that none of our four candidates had heard of the problem.

We set a slight variant on the theme fearing, unnecessarily, that candidates might have heard of the problem and learnt a solution.

We asked other questions and had a whole stack of other things but this question was decisive. As an employer I look at peoples degree grade and subject and wonder what they tell me. There is a general question of whether a 2:1 from in a software subject is a guarantee that the student can write a simple computer program. I’m afraid the answer is that it isn’t, although 2 of our candidate did very well, so it is perhaps an indication of an at least 50/50 chance that a graduate can write a computer program.

This is bad for universities. The pressure from potential and actual students is to increase our ‘value add’ and enable them to get a 2:1 otherwise they might buy elsewhere and we’ll be out of business. But the business stakeholders want to see that degree awards represent some measure of useful competence in the chosen subject. A university that lets out a computer student with a 2:1 while unable to complete a simple program in any language of their choice is devaluing their credibility. Our evidence is anecdotal and certainly every student on a computer course certainly has the facility to learn to achieve this level of competence, so they only have themselves to blame.

Unless of course they didn’t have the aptitude in the first place in which case the University has failed to select suitable students for its course. Perhaps they should be doing this test on the way in. In fact why would someone unable to write a brief program such as this even start on a three or four year course of study in this field.

Later today I am trying out this test on some final year Liverpool University students (not represented in our interviews) looking to do a final year project with us, we shall see how they do. Hats off to Liverpool Hope by the way their candidate swept through the technical tests and is now sitting tapping away 10 yards away, saving the day for the home team we also had one John Moores candidate who pulled it off but alas there is evidence that you can get a 2:1 from John Moores without being able to do so.