Planning for Software Engineering Studies at ETF – Sarajevo

1. Novica Nosovic (ETF-Sarajevo) novica.nosovic@etf.unsa.ba Planning for Software Engineering Studies at ETF – Sarajevo

2. Outline • Motivation – SE studies at ETF – Belgrade with favorable outcomes (educational and financial) • Students protests earlier this year in Zagreb • Educational “services” and Bologna process • Yet another curricula at ETF-Sarajevo – in SE... • ... and why it was born crippled • Some conclusions

3. “Stop the lessons in order to learn something!”

4. State financed studies in recent years are expensive and stupid! Tranzition in BH (and former Yugoslavia)

5. Students want: • Studies - free of charge, from the first semester till PhD degree • (the truth is that the state does not have enough to provide free education)

6. “University is dangerous and needs to be eliminated as energetic enemy... ...Studying is not a way of social and political control! It should be clear to students, universities and the state.” Dean of the Faculty of Law in Zagreb warned:

7. ...leads to absurd situations in which British lords take their children out of Oxford and Cambridge so they would not study with sons of Russian mafia bosses... ...who have no problem with money... Introduction of Americanized System of Commercial/self-financed Universities...

8. ...turned everything into a bitter joke: „koliko para, toliko muzike” ...and BH is small and poor state/society! (108th on the World Bank list... 0.01% of the world IT market...) „Knowledge Societies” and Absurd of „Bologna declaration”...

9. Students do Not Want that Story! • Knowledge they acquire is in obvious disproportion with money they pay for it! • Example: graduate studies – fees are too high (!!!), and lessons often below undergraduate level! • Professors teach at secondary school level, because PhD degrees, no matter the proficiency are acquired by those who can afford to pay!

10. High Education for Money??? • HE is free of charge in 14 EU countries, from Greece, Sweden to Check Republic and Slovenia! • France has participation, but 50% of ours, with (rather) higher standards. • Swiss – scholarship for PhD studies is 1300SFR per year!!! • Slovenia – studies are free of charge – the state pays 60% of the expenses for graduate studies!!!

11. Where is Common Sense? • When somebody with simple sound logic draws a line – what he (or she) paid for, and what got in return... • ...can see that something is wrong there!

12. What is the Purpose of Reform!? • Reform that serves only for itself is EVEL and leads to endless reform reformation! • Austrians now plan to reform Bologna reform because it does not perform as planned!!! (Clever people new that beforehand, but, of course, it does not help now)

13. The Misery of EHEA Has Its Name: Bologna • Niche said: Education is extremely requiring and, above all, individual effort that can not be translated into some general, planned and controlled “program”. Real knowledge societies should be those of easy living and freedom, and not those of practicalities, pressures and enforcements.

14. „Theory of Non-education” • „Bologna ideology” is cold-bloodied liquidation of university basic reasons of existence. • “IKEA-education”

15. Paradox of “Bolognization” of EHEA • It becomes obvious that the differences between universities, countries, curricula, research and teaching quality are growing, not diminishing! • Students mobility is decreasing - “Bologna” forces them to study as quickly as possible and leave universities.

16. “Economization” of Knowledge! Treating knowledge as a product or raw material is ultimate utilitarianism with unforeseeable social, political, philosophical consequences.

17. Entropy • Time is wasted lately on meetings, minutes, reports, creation of new data and regulations – the results became useless due to a new reform. Primary role of universities is not to be permanently measured, evaluated and reformed!

18. Quantifying “Science” Supporting only those sciences that create directly economically measurable outcomes, would be the end of real science! „Freedom” must be the basic prerequisite of every science, and usability should be of secondary importance.

19. Hopes and Believes There is a hope that University and education are European ideas, that will on the long run survive and prevail in the melting pot of “knowledge society”. After the Catholic church, universities are the oldest European institutions that already survived animosities of rulers and different ideologies, and will survive attempts to be supervised by economy.

20. SE Studies at ETF - Sarajevo • Idea has been around for a number of years • Plans ruined by “Bologna” and current (not only) financial crisis • Mostly “individual” effort (due to “conceptual consistency”)

21. How Computing Might Appear to Prospective Students (IEEE/ACM CC2005)

22. CS vs SE

23. Chronology of SE Study Plan • Initial paperwork – 5 years ago • HOD approval of the idea – January 2009 • Updated business model and curricula/syllabus construction – March 2009 • Team-work failed, communication with Dean and Ministry proved worthless • ... • Planned launch in September 2009 - “postponed”

24. Conclusions • Bologna was “dead on arrival” - started by high EU policy makers, no resources devoted to the transition, turned into dirty politics at the Ministry, University and (mostly) the Faculty level. • Students and learning process improvements were clearly out of the scope. • Bologna + Crisis = No “place” for SE studies at ETF – Sarajevo (for some time)