During his final State of the Nation as the US President in January 2016, Barrack Obama regarded the need for a computer science education. The White House released an official update about this matter.
Due to the advancement of modern technologies, technology-related jobs are in demand in the United States. However, almost all of these jobs require basic to advanced computer science knowledge or coding skills. Though, the employees will benefit from the 50 percent higher salary compared to the salary rate of the private-sector companies.
In the United States, computer science is entirely out of the K-12 education syllabus. There are only a few schools that offer this course and only 32 states consider it as an important requirement for high school graduation.
Meanwhile, The White House released a statement regarding the accomplishments of the "Computer Science for All" in the country. The fact sheet provided some lists and information, digits, and new action plans encompassing the matter.
It was stated that federal agencies plan to establish National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). These two will support the advancement of the "Computer Science for All". They also indicated that $20 million funds will be allotted to the NSF.
President Obama addressed this issue since the importance of computer science today is overwhelming. With about $4 billion budget, this is said to be the largest proposal capital of the federal government. It is mainly purposed for the promotion of the computer science subject in the schools.
However, according to The Verge, the allocated fund requested by President Obama was never apportioned by the Congress. In a statement, Hadi Partovi, the founder of Code.org, revealed that the Congress has still to regard the president's proposal. Though it was not directly hinted, it was speculated that the $4 billion funds have gone nowhere.
"The president's proposals for funding really are requests to Congress, and as we all know in the last few years, Congress hasn't really been reacting very well to what the president requests," Partovi said.
Meanwhile, the AP computer science course is making good progress in the state and local levels. According to the letter sent by Kumar Garg, White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy assistant director, to the same source, there are "more than 500 organizations" that received President Obama's proposition.
President Obama's computer science education proposal gained different positive views from the nation. Since computer science is a becoming relevant to the modern industry, various organizations hope that the succeeding administration will still support this cause.
President Barack Obama's main goal is also to let the local organizers benefit from this, not only the big-scale industries. What do you think happened to the $4 billion funds for the computer science education?
