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Editorial: Emphasize coding
Op-Ed · January 21, 2016


Would you be interested in a computer programming degree if you knew you could make about $43,000 a year?
Possibly?

What if we told you that is what the bottom 10 percent make? The average salary is about $76,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The top 10 percent make about $123,000.

We would encourage West Branch and Iowa to shift more attention to teaching computer code.

Back in December, West Branch Community Schools participated in the Hour of Code, promoted by the Governor’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) Advisory Council. Pupils spent an hour trying some simple coding, giving them a taste of a job with very high demand.

There are about 4,500 computing jobs open in Iowa right now, but only about 350 computer science graduates qualified to fill those spots.

Gov. Terry Branstad proposed in last week’s Condition of the State to require high schools to offer “at least one high-quality computer science course by 2018-19, and for middle school students to have the opportunity to take an exploratory unit on coding.” President Obama also last week in his State of the Union address proposed “helping students learn to write computer code.”

Demand exists and the jobs pay well, but Iowa is one of 27 states where even the students who get the opportunity to learn coding cannot apply it toward their high school graduation requirements. With the number of computers in each and every home, from laptops to smartphones to modern appliances, coding is running them all. We need to catch up to the other 23 states ahead of us.

We would encourage the state legislature to seriously consider the value of coding in the school curriculum and following Branstad’s proposal. Money is tight for West Branch right now, so we would encourage school representatives to ask Kirkwood Community College, through its Regional Center, to look into offering a coding course for dual credits should the legislature take such action.