A bachelor’s degree in computer science prepares you for a career designing, creating, managing, or implementing new software and systems. You’ll be at the cutting edge of technological advancements.
Computer science is revolutionising industries from within and is at the core of innovation, efficiency, and improvement of our daily lives. From the way we live to the way we work, communicate and travel, computer science is enabling brand-new concepts to be realised.
As society expects more and more information at our fingertips and communication in an instant, computer science specialists are in high demand. With our practical approach to learning, you’ll earn a competitive advantage in the job market as a graduate, mastering both technical and soft skills that companies look for in potential candidates.
Professional qualifications after finishing the degree
The required skills and qualifications for working as a Computer or Software Engineer comprise a large number of theoretical aspects within the areas of Computer Science and Electronics. The following list shows a classification according to the professional profiles that are currently demanded:[4]
- Knowledge of, at least, one programming language (currently in use) or a specific technology in depth.
Being able to read English, since most of the documents relating to the areas of work as a computer engineer are written in this language. - Handling of version control systems. Although this is not mandatory, most companies employing computer engineers make use of version control systems.
- Knowledge related to Information Theory and Telecommunications, enabling optimised and legally-compliant designs and facilitating self-control and audits if required.
- Computability Theory to calculate the viability of the problem to be solved.
Efficiency awareness for industrial mechanization of information (scalability, reliability, etc …). - Automata Theory and Algorithm Design Theory to design suitable automation solutions in information processing.
- Software Engineering understanding to evaluate the best techniques of design, development and maintenance of software, subject to calculations of quality constraints, time, cost, etc..
- Artificial Intelligence or Knowledge Engineering such as pattern recognition or neural networks to calculate and design knowledge production systems as an industrial competitive advantage in information management.
- Electronics to calculate and design communication and control interfaces between computers and various mechanical and electrical devices, such as data acquisition systems.
- Industrial and business organization understanding needed for planning, management and control of computer projects and, management of ICT departments.
- Hardware knowledge to analyze and design solutions in the field of microprocessor architecture.
Typical requirements
Because computer science is a wide field, courses required to earn a bachelor of computer science degree vary. A typical list of course requirements includes topics such as:[2]
- Computer programming
- Programming paradigms
- Algorithms
- Data structures
- Logic & Computation
- Computer architecture
Some schools may place more emphasis on mathematics and require additional courses such as:
- Linear algebra
- Calculus
- Probability theory and statistics
- Combinatorics and discrete mathematics
- Differential calculus and mathematics
Beyond the basic set of computer science courses, students can typically choose additional courses from a variety of different fields, such as:
- Theory of computation
- Operating systems
- Numerical computation
- Compilers, compiler design
- Real-time computing
- Distributed systems
- Computer networking
- Data communication
- Computer graphics
- Artificial intelligence
- Human-computer interaction
- Information theory
- Software testing
