American computer science students used to be ahead of their counterparts from other countries. But in recent international competitions, East European and Asian programming students have outperformed them. The Association for Computing Machinery, an international organization for the advancement of computing as a science and profession, sponsors an annual contest for computer programming students all over the world. Teams of undergraduate students are given eight-to-ten programming problems. The winner is the team that correctly solves the most problems. From 1977 until 1989, the winner was always a U.S. college team. And American students were among the top finishers until the late 1990s. But since then, Asian and East European students have won most of the top prizes. This year, only one American college team was among the top twelve. Last year, there were none.
Some analysts say this poor showing by American computer science students should serve as a wake-up call for the U.S. government, industry and educators.
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