Almost all the top American computer science programs fail to prepare their students for a cyber security attack, according to a recent study released by Cloud Passage.
The study measured the computer science and engineering programs at 121 American institutions, including all 50 of the top ranked computer science schools in the 2015 edition of The U.S. News and World Report. The results found a lack of student options for training that the authors argue is playing a significant role in the continually increasing cyber security risks nationwide.
The analysis found that not a single one of the top 10 schools required any cyber security education from their graduates. Not only was cyber security training not required, but sometimes it wasn’t even an option, as three of the top ten programs do not even offer electives in cyber security, perhaps creating some doubt about whether those schools truly deserve their prestigious ranking.
The researchers also measured their results against the Business Insider’s list of top 50 U.S. computer science programs, and found that among their top 50 schools, only three required any form of cyber security training. Of the three schools on the Business Insider’s list, only the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, which was ranked 11, was in the top 45. The other two, Brigham Young University and Colorado State University, ranked 48 and 49 respectively.
Of the 121 universities studied, only five – Rochester Institute of Technology (10 security electives), Tuskegee University (10), DePaul University (9), University of Maryland (8) and University of Houston (7) – offer at least seven different cyber security elective courses. Of the five listed above, only one – Rochester Institute of Technology – is listed on Business Insider’s top 50 list.
Of all the universities studied, the one that best prepared its students was the University of Alabama, which surprisingly wasn’t ranked in either list. Alabama was the only one of the institutions studied to require three or more cyber security classes from all graduates, and even required a fourth class from its computer science majors.
[ image courtesy of criminalatt / FreeDigitalPhotos.net ]
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