UC Irvine has started offering a degree in Computer Sciences (Gaming)

As universities across North America struggle against increased tuition, cut funding, and floods of researchers abandoning academia for private sector jobs, at least one institute has found a way to maintain interest in its programmes.

The LA Times reports on UC Irvine and its undergraduate degree in Computer Sciences (Gaming). Universities have often taught courses in areas that people find of questionable “real world” application… for example, there are countless cases of courses in The Simpsons and just about every university on earth offers courses in Pop music or movies. These courses are almost notoriously “bird courses” (at my university, we used to refer to them as Basket Weaving courses… partly due to the fact McMaster actually had a course on Basket Weaving), with everyone expecting to do well because of a familiarity with the course material.

I suspect that it is more often the case that students tend to do well at these sorts of courses due to an interest in the subject material, rather than prior knowledge… but I digress.

Courses in video game design at a college level have been becoming increasingly popular… the video game industry is now larger than the movie industry in terms of raw dollars and cents, so it’s no surprise that students have been flocking to this harbour in tough economic times. But university courses, which tend to focus on more cerebral aspects of a subject (rather than raw applications), are still a relatively new thing.

I think it’s a great idea and sincerely wish that more universities followed this trend. There is a lot to be understood both about our culture and people by researching the kind of games we play and why.

And besides… if university students are all going to be spending countless hours playing Modern Warfare 2 anyway, shouldn’t they at least learn something from it?