[Linux-aus] Interview with Mark Lloyd from ACS on compulsory accreditation

[Glen Turner]

Brenda Aynsley wrote:

> universities are offered the opportunity to submit their courses for 
> accreditation with ACS (its a no/low cost exercise from ACS' perspective 
> but a lot of work for the University, just like becoming an ISO9000 
> compliant company is).  Those courses that students do which are 
> accredited make it a no-brainer to be elegible for membership of ACS. 
> Perhaps you might ask the university if their course that your partner 
> did was accredited, if not, why not?

Hi Brenda,

Honours year and other research-oriented degrees cannot have
ACS accreditation. The ACS accreditation is for degrees by
coursework. The ACS wants to see coverage of particular
curriculum items in an accredited degree; such coverage can't
occur in a degree by research since those degrees necessarily
have a narrow but intense focus upon one item.

This leads to an issue where someone holds a degree by coursework
in a field other than computing with later degrees by research
in computing.  This is a longstanding problem: I first heard about
this in 1985 when exploring if my BA with majors in Computing/Math/
Economics met the ACS criteria.

Cheers,
Glen