The ETS adopted C++ after a very authoritarian selection process, and has refused to listen to dissent. The facts are somewhat less salutatory for C++:

• Many colleges have not embraced C++:
  • They don't use C++ in their introductory courses
  • Some don't even accept AP credit (or if they do, they still force students to re-take the introductory course)
• C++ is an unsafe language which is repeatedly blamed by researchers for causing memory leaks, security holes and other serious problems in software
• C++ has an outdated teaching methodology that has been essentially unchanged in a quarter of a century; it has seen only superficial changes, lots of new buzzwords, and new textbooks and problems, but no significant pedagogic improvements
• Languages like Java are the way of the future, and Java is far closer to Scheme that it is to C++ (apart from a superficial syntactic similarity which confuses many people into believing C++ and Java are related)
• Progressive high schools are ignoring the ETS and using languages like Scheme in their curricula

Shriram Krishnamurthi and Kathi Fisler conducted an informal survey to determine the actual languages used in introductory courses. The survey started with the list of top-ranked schools from the 1998 rankings published by US News & World Report, then visited each of these schools' Web pages, and determined what their courses teach. (We have since added the category ``Computer Science'', which uses the 25 top-ranked universities for computer science research, as ranked by the National Research Council.)

Institution Type	Scheme-like	C++	Older
National Liberal Arts	13 1/2	4	7 1/2
National University	12	5	7
Undergraduate Engineering	17	10 1/3	11 2/3
Computer Science	12	2	10

``Scheme-like'' includes Java (though in most cases, it refers specifically to Scheme). ``Older'' refers to languages like Pascal, Fortran and C, which we expect will soon be phased out. Notably, we know of schools that have shifted from traditional languages to languages like Scheme, but not the other way around.

In Texas, Scheme is used as the introductory language at leading universities such as UT Austin, Trinity University and Rice University. Scheme is also used at over forty high schools, including some in Texas, with a growing number of users.

Last modified at 11:44:56 CST on Tuesday, March 03, 1998