British Computer Society Is Officially At Civil War 275
An anonymous reader writes "A vote of no confidence against the current board of directors has erupted in what is possibly the first nerd war, raging throughout the British Computer Society. More financial- and spreadsheet-related fixations and less computer science have made a few members cross; plus they don't like the new name 'The Chartered Institute of IT.' Here are more specific details on the extraordinary emergency general meeting on July 1, where members will vote to decide the fate of the board of directors."
Brilliant! (Score:5, Informative)
I had to meet with a bunch of BCS reps when my course was re-accredited, and the experience matches up with what the summary says. They were obsessing over whether the mathematics of CS were too difficult and all kinds of bogus concerns
I think their problem is that higher level courses are (inherently) not an "everyone's invited" thing. Because not everyone will succeed. And that's how it should be. They're difficult if they're done right, because they include a lot hard-line theory behind the soft 'Let's do Java' exterior. The BCS just can't seem to accept this though. They want to pervert the courses to make them easier, basically
More people on courses = more power to them? Or maybe they get extra money for getting a certain % of the population onto courses? I have no idea of their motives but whatever they are, they're going about them the wrong way
Re:I was asked to join this .. (Score:4, Informative)
Under the "old way", the benefits were lots of lectures that you got to go to on various subjects, plus the chance to network with other professionals. Useful stuff really; some of those lectures were great.
Under the 'new way', they've altered the way the "chartered" membership works; as it was in the old days, you could become a chartered IT professional without having to prove anything other than you'd stayed in the IT sector for 5 years. Now there are a series of exams to pass and frequent re-evaluation to maintain it (more in line with chartered engineer status from the engineering professions).
Really, I think a lot of the new changes are to make the BCS more relevant to what commerce wants to know, rather than being a comp sci enclave. The thrust has changed direction, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Re:Civil war? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I was asked to join this .. (Score:3, Informative)
It represents bragging rights when applying for new jobs –a CV with "I have BCS level 9 qualifications" on it helps at some companies.
Re:I was asked to join this .. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I was asked to join this .. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I was asked to join this .. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:2, Informative)
The (previous) government's brilliant solution to this issue? Add an A* grade at A-Level and carry on as normal.
Much as I enjoy kicking them now they're down, to be fair the main reason for that was the range of marks an 'A' grade covered. 'B' could, in theory, cover 60 to 69%, whilst 'A' covered 70% all the way up to 100%. 'A*' simply made it possible to differentiate between the increasingly common (for other, more fundamental reasons) 'A'-grades.
The danger is that in the future, people will forget exacrly when A*s were introduced, and judge 'old' A grades as being inferior.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:4, Informative)
what's the point of giving uber-hard math, where kids just drop off and don't give a shit anymore, and doesn't stop them from getting their diploma in the end anyway? I went to maybe 3 math classes in my last year, and still got my diploma with flying colours. It's not about making it easier, it's about making it useful.
Perhaps some of the point is, for once in the cess-pool that is the modern, utility and mediocrity obsessed tertiary education system, to attempt to provide broad-ranging bases of abstract knowledge to the students who actually want to learn, and are capable of doing so. That way we'll at least get some people who can work at the coal face of knowledge creation as opposed to just another batch of clueless, money-grabbing code monkeys?
The sort of useful you're talking about is concerned with places where all the interesting, hard problems have already been solved. Sounds dull as dishwater if you've got a brain in your head.
Re:Civil war? (Score:3, Informative)
That's rather shortsighted. You leave yourself wide-open to a McMurdoch attack, without an escape route, and at the wrong end of the High Barnet branch.
I call Hoxton -- and I don't think I've seen this move before, the Livingstone Orbital (Phase II) rules only came into play last month.
Re:Brilliant! (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed A is 80% and above
A* is more complicated and varies by subject (it's NOT just another higher threshold on the overall mark for the subject). IIRC in maths it's an average of 90% on C3 and C4 but i'm not positive on that.
0.1% of the membership = vote of no confidence? (Score:1, Informative)
Posted anonymously as a simple google of my Slashdot username would turn up my webpage which would tell you who I am, and what I do for the society (and I'd rather speak cowardly but frankly here).
I'm a chartered member of the BCS (MBCS CITP - I will admit to having been grandfathered into the CITP as an "old" non-chartered but full MBCS when they changed the rules) and undertake some voluntary work for them (arguably I can be seen as "part of the problem" as it is for one of their "products"), trying to make things better from the inside. This post should be taken as my own personal views and not those of the Society etc. etc. yadda, yadda. I also abstained on all the motions, as - whilst I don't agree with the key motions raised by the petitioners - I do see some things happening within the Society that I am not keen on.
Yesterday I received the paperwork from the society putting both sides of the argument across. I don't understand quite why I should be written to twice on the matter (once of these was with a glossy cardboard leaflet despite the paperwork being about 4 pages of A4 or so - why was is in the interest of the Society?).
Whilst I'm not too happy with the upper echelons of the Society deciding the scope of their rebranding and the new focuses without decent consultation from the membership (and I was insulted to discover that the Society was calling itself the Chartered Institute for IT via a third party rather than having been informed by the society itself), I'm still of the opinion that the Society urgently needs to modernise itself.
There's too many fossils in the membership opposed to change of any kind (this isn't purely an aspect of age, it's one of outlook), and it is (perhaps rightly) perceived by non-members as being irrelevant in the modern world (and that's to those who even know what it is - typically there's more of the education sector involved in the Society than people from the Real World(tm)). Granted, some in the society view the Society as becoming too commercial, or putting the money-making areas of the Society ahead of other aspects - and they might have a point. I'm also not quite sure why the Society caters so much for middle management when it could easily cater for a much broader range of people in the Industry.
I do find it a bit bizarre that a vote of no confidence has been called by a petition of 52 members out of a professional membership of around 50,000, though.
Finally, with regards to course accreditation - what a strange beast that is! I have a bachelor's degree in what is now called Computer Science (but wasn't back in the day) from an institution listed in the top 4 in the Times Higher Education's 2008 world listings (for what that was worth) [timeshighe...tion.co.uk], and was informed when I applied that - because it was non-BCS-accredited - it was worth the same as any other degree (that has a fair bit of IT in the curriculum) from any old institution; i.e. the equivalent of 3 years experience towards the 10 years that was required at the time to qualify. Getting a third class honours on an accreditated course (e.g. BSc Computing from London South Bank University) would count for the equivalent of two additional year's experience.