The New Program Dedicated to Keeping Mississippi at the Forefront of Technology

The path toward enhanced opportunities and economic growth in Mississippi’s private sector begins in secondary and elementary education, then continues through the workforce training abilities of the state’s astounding community college system and on to the Research and Development (R&D) prowess of the higher education system.

Taking advantage of this clear opportunity, Mississippi’s state education officials and C Spire executives launched a brand new program on October 17th, 2018. This new program, called the C Spire Software Development Pathway is a public-private partnership formed by C Spire and the Mississippi State University Research and Curriculum Unit’s (RCU) new Center for Cyber Education.

The movement will aid in Mississippi’s aggressive goal of creating and delivering a standardized computer science programme for approximately 500,000 scholars from grade K-12, and also place trained computer science professors in all of the state’s 850+ middle, elementary, and high schools by 2024.

State education officials and C Spire estimated that C Spire Software Development Pathway will deliver approximately 90 percent more Mississippi graduates who are qualified for entry-level software development positions compared to all other existing programs. This will further help narrow down the skills gap for this profession in Mississippi and the United States in general.

Currently, there is a shortage of computer science experts, both nationwide and in-state. According to Code.org, Mississippi had more than 900 open jobs with only around 140 computer science graduates in the state per year. Across the country, there are currently more than 500,000 open jobs, and a recent study indicated that the shortage of software developers will grow to more than 1 million by 2020.

It is our hope that this new innovative partnership will grow to become an educational template for the workforce and education system as Mississippi’s private and public sectors build a stronger alliance to forge a sturdier economic environment for this generation of workers and students as well as those who will follow them.

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