Computing in All Education Programs

Alan Noble, Engineering Director, Google Australia has asked how to get more students into computer science in a posting  "CS + X: What's your X?" (13 June 2014). He has a point that the term "Computer Science" is intimidating and could put off students. But the computing discipline has tried a few terms, such as ADP, Information Technology, Information and Communications Technology, Information Science and my favourite the French "Informatique", but none have stuck.

More useful is Alan's suggestion to team CS with another discipline the student is interested in, emphasising that computers are are just a tool to achieve something. This requires those designing higher education courses to allow some flexibility ion their programs, and not just by double degrees and allowing a few electives. Students should be able to have a large computing  component in their course and do something else. This need not just be the traditional areas, such as engineering, but can be any field of humanities or science, where computing is applied.