Abstract

Several significant events during the past few years in the field of object-oriented technology have reshaped the industry. Among these are the rapid increase in the use and interest of Java, and the adoption of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) by the Object Management Group (OMG) in November 1997. These, and other, events continue to change the pattern of OO use in industry and course offerings in academia. This study specifically looks at the changes in academia. As OO continues its growth in industry, institutions of higher education will be expected to prepare their students for the OO development environment. In an effort to evaluate academia’s ability to produce OO developers, information has been collected from higher education (IS departments) in 1992, 1996, and most recently, in 1998 regarding OO topic offerings. This paper reports the results of the most recent findings as compared to the 1992 and 1996 data. Specifically, changes in OO programming languages, OO methods, and OO tools are presented. The trends exhibited during this time frame should provide guidance for both academia and industry as to the commitment of IS degree programs in providing a significant share of the talent pool to support the shift to OO development.

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