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VPCS20092013

2.1 Undergraduate Education

A common problem for the whole Department is the decreasing number of students in the BSc programme. One solution natural from the CS point of view is to broaden the target group to students with different interests and backgrounds (biology, linguistics). This would also lead to a better distribution of sexes and to a better quality of students. The Impact project is expected to help students with weaker mathematical background. The Programming for Science course, currently given for Biotechnologists, represents a kind of course that would be a natural direction of expansion of CS teaching.

The FoCAL MSc programme got 24 students in its first year, 2007. The number of international applicants was smaller than expected.

Within Biotechnology, the specialization to Bioinformatics has decreasing numbers: from the top years’ 30 to current 15.

The GU programme had 40 students, more or less as expected.

Since the Bologna process has now been implemented in many countries, we should be able to attract MSc students from Europe. This would need an emphasis on areas that are strong, both in teaching and as entry points to graduate studies and research. Another consequence of the Bologna process is that it opens the way to less teacher-intensive, more research-oriented courses on the MSc level. It is unclear whether any funding can be expected for this.