Herbert Wulf, President, National Academy of Engineering (USA), emphasizes
the importance of communication skills for all engineering graduates
Between 1996 and 2000, I organized over 12 panels of computing professionals
from industry to tell high school teachers required skills for employees
Every panelist identified the same top-2 skills (although they differed
regarding which was first)
communication skills
ability to work in teams
Many curricular guidelines for computing programs highlight
the need for students to be able to read and write well
(Examples: ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula 2001
Computing Science Accreditation Board (USA))
Faculty often mention the need for their students to be able
to communicate effectively
Practice Often Quite Different
Few job ads (at least in the US) mention communication skills
Few computing courses highlight writing and speaking
(Example: are points deducted from computing assignments for poor grammar?)
Technical faculty often complain writing is not their problem;
Communication skills left to another department
Computing programs often have weak requirements regarding
communication skills
Aside
My colleague, John Stone, comments that, while there is much
discussion about English as a second language, many computer
scientists have no first language
