Considering that every company is becoming a software company, there will be an ongoing demand for qualified software engineers. However, there seems to be a supply shortage of graduates in Computer Science or Software Engineering from the traditional university education. It has been observed for decades that a considerable number of developers in the software industry do not have computer science degrees and basic software engineering educations. On the other hand, such a phenomenon may have revealed the reality and trend that the software industry will continue the intake of career-shift employees and graduates from non-computer science disciplines. Therefore, we argue software engineering conversion programmes to be a strategic and long-term approach to fostering qualified software engineers. The conversion programmes will substantially supplement the classic university programmes and address the disadvantage of unconventional entry points (e.g., bootcamp training and selflearning). We have conducted critical reflection on our first-hand educational practice together with extensive literature review to justify our argument.

Zheng Li received his Ph.D. degree and M.Phil degree from the Australian National University (ANU) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) respectively. During the same time, he was a graduate researcher with the Software Systems Research Group (SSRG) at National ICT Australia (NICTA). He is now a lecturer at the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Previously, he was a tenured assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Concepción, Chile. Before that, he was a postdoc researcher with the Cloud Control group at Lund University, Sweden. He was also a visiting research fellow with Software Institute at Nanjing University, China. Before studying abroad, he had around four-year industrial experience in China after receiving his M.Sc.Eng. degree from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology and the B.Eng. degree from the Zhengzhou University. His research interests include big data analytics, edge/cloud computing, empirical software engineering, and performance engineering.