Software engineering education: where's the appliance of science?

Classically, the focus of degree courses in engineering has been primarily on the teaching of applied science, but there has been much less emphasis on this for software engineering. This paper therefore examines the relationships between courses in software engineering and other branches of engineering, and particularly the balance within them between science and its applications. It discusses the extent to which the content and teaching methods of software engineering degree courses need to change in order to correct this balance, so as to bring them more into line with educational practice in other branches of engineering. The guiding principle is proposed that both the scientific content and the teaching methods need to reflect the importance of the modelling process in the application of formal methods within software engineering. The discussion is mainly oriented towards undergraduate courses, but the principles are applicable to postgraduate courses as well.