A classroom in the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Sciences which can hold over 300 people was filled to capacity almost every day during the week-long holiday starting on May 1 as applicants prepared for the Master of Software Engineering entrance examination that was held in early June. The first group of "home-made" Masters of Software Engineering may emerge from among them in two or three years.

"Actually, the busy scene started in mid-April with an enrollment counseling conference," said Hu Zhiqiang, vice president of the graduate school of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "Although a Master of Software Engineering is known as the "golden crown" of the software industry, the number of people registering was still far beyond our expectations."

A Master of Software Engineering is a new degree in engineering that started at the end of 2001 with the approval of the Academic Degree Office of the State Council. Fifty-one universities and institutes including the graduate schools of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University were among the first batch of schools qualified to enroll students. All these schools have been flooded with inquiries; the number of people registered at Peking University topped 1,000.

In recent years, insiders have been discussing what has held back the development of the software industry in China. According to Hu Zhiqiang, the problem is a lack of qualified personnel and a lack of organization in the field.

"Compared with the software power of India, China has a very serious shortage of software professionals. While we have several thousand software enterprises in China, they employ only about 250,000 people. Enterprises with over 1,000 employees are rare. However, enterprises with over 1000 people can be seen everywhere in India," Hu said.

The problem is also related to the personnel structure surrounding the software field. According to Hu Zhiqiang, every software enterprise needs three types of skilled personnel: senior software executives accomplished in both technology and management; system analysts and designers, also called software engineers; and proficient programers, or software "blue collar" workers.

A reasonable organization of these three categories should take a pyramid shape, but in China the shape is more like that of an olive - with a lack of senior managers and basic programers. The imbalance has hindered the development of software industry in China.

According to a spokesperson of the preparatory office of the Software Institute of Peking University, the course of study for the Master of Software Engineering is different from that offered at most colleges in computers and software. The curriculum will follow an international model of software education in training senior software engineers. Courses will stress practical education and technical ability aimed at fulfilling the demands of software enterprises as well as fostering senior, practical, complex and international senior software talents and managers. People who hold the Software Engineering Master's Degree should be capable of designing and developing software as well as organizing and managing projects and have good command of foreign languages and the ability to face international competition.

How to forge the "golden crown" of the software industry? Every school has worked out its own plan.

Peking University offers multilevel, multi-direction and multi-field course offerings. Students can choose different research fields and directions according to their interests and specialties as long as they finish the basic courses related to their major. The school will tailor a study system to fit student needs. On graduating, some students will be proficient in software design, some good at software testing and quality control, and others in software program management. Enterprises can choose among them according to business needs.

Advocating "personalized management," the Chinese Academy of Sciences carries out a study plan under the banner: "Focused on students, directed by the needs of enterprises." Using advanced textbooks from abroad, the Chinese Academy of Sciences frequently invites senior technicians from major companies including Microsoft and Motorola to discuss curricular development.

Different schools also have proposed training programs geared to their own specialties. Peking University will incorporate the social sciences and frontier technologies in their training. The Appreciation of Chinese Culture and Arts will be included in the required curriculum, and senior professors from the Chinese, History and Philosophy Departments of Peking University will be invited to give lessons. This approach to help improve students' accomplishments in the humanities is based on the supposition that a software talent lacking in understanding of humanities will have difficulty in satisfying the future needs of more and more humanized software products.

The advantage of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is that it has gathered teachers from many different backgrounds. One-third of the faculty includes experts from IT-related research institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; another one-third includes technical supervisors from Microsoft, SUN and major domestic software enterprises; and the remaining one-third includes experts from large overseas IT businesses and research institutions and professors of well-known universities abroad who will give classes in English.

According to some experts, the emergence of software engineering education in China indicates the software education in China is following the international practice. About 10,000 Masters of Software Engineering will graduate in two or three years to help ease the shortage of senior software executives in China.

(中国青年报 [China Youth Daily], translated by Wang Qian for china.org.cn, June 5, 2002)