Thats unfortunate Bob,
Don't give up on it though. People like myself count on your efforts..
I was stuck at a yawn-tastic software engineering job in defence
industry, and although I had job stability and decent pay, I was really
bored/unchallenged.
Luckily they recently started a postgrad course at a local college in
games technology.
The hours can be a pain with my job and I work long hours every night
and into weekends on course work, but it is totally worth it. My extra
studies have given me more opportunities to program every day,
something I didn't get at my old job which was paperwork heavy.
Without a course like yours, with assignments to do and classes to
attend, there is no way I would have just gotten off my ass at night and
learnt these things myself.
My studies helped me get a really exciting new job with mining
simulators / gfx development...
I haven't finished my course yet, but if I didn't start it, I would have
been doomed to a life of mediocrity, 9-5 cubicles, filled with overpaid,
under-skilled office monkeys overseen by an army of middle management
blobs that would make Dilbert quiver with fear.
I cant see why numbers would decline. Our game programming classes have
increased massively in size in the last 2 years and it now rivals
traditional computer science degrees for numbers. That said, many drop
out when they get a taste for the workload and decide they have other
priorities.
I don't know why people would not sign up. For the uneducated they might
expect it is a fad, or simply not a real degree? Anyone in my course
knows though, that it is 10x the work of other classes.. and really
serious stuff.
Maybe they are scared of the workload? or an industry seemingly bent on
destroying their souls / family time.
If your core students are experienced programmers.. maybe you are not
meeting their needs? perhaps they need night classes? Most of my
postgrad classes are held along with the undergrad units.. which means
they offer similar learning for both postgrad and undergrads in the same
class.. but postgrads are assessed differently and need to do more work.
There is no way my uni could run just the postgrad course by itself (2
postgrads vs 30 undergrads).
As for marketing, im sure there are alot of experienced programmers who
are itching to get out of their 9-5 shells and into something
challenging. But how to reach them?
Your welcome to move to Perth, Australia and teach at my uni :) We seem
to have more students than teachers.
All the best,
Josh
As many of you know I teach a class on game programming at Austin
Community College. There are even a few of you out their who have taken
it. For the first time I can remember it was canceled because not one
student signed up for the class. I have had classes canceled because
their weren't enough students, but I have never had zero students sign
up for a class. The next day I read a student game postmortem linked off
of slashdot that said that one of the problems they had was that they
couldn't get enough programmers to join the project. It seems there were
very few programmers in that school and the programmers were all busy
doing their own projects.
I checked at ACC and I see that all the art, design, and production
classes are full, or nearly full, and that the programming classes are
all empty, or nearly empty.
I asked Bob McGoldrick (my boss at ACC) about this and he says that yes, most of the students are in the design track. He has trouble getting students for the programming track and they don't stay around very long, they take one or a few programming classes and then they leave the program.
Now it could be that my class sucks and the word of mouth about it has
made people refuse to sign up for it. OTOH, my evaluations by the
students who take my classes mark me as one of the most highly rated
teacher in the program. Way above the ACC average.
So we have a pattern where there are lots of students learning game design and production and very few who can write the code, or even the scripts, needed for a modern game engine. Sounds like this is creating a great opportunity for game programmers. It also support the pattern I have seen in the past; there are lots of programmers who can do art and 3D modeling but very few artists who can do programming.
Oh well, I have two nights a week free that I wasn't expecting to have free.
Any comments?
Bob Pendleton
P.S.
Yeah, this is a person grumble about the state of the world. I really love teaching my classes at ACC and it disappoints me when they get canceled. Anyone in the Austin area interested in a game development study group?
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