Universities Now Start Offering Mobile Application Development Courses
Mobile App Development Reaching Opening New Doors for Students
The mobile application industry has been picking up momentum in the past few years and it has grown so large that some colleges and universities are offering classes for student who want to major in mobile application development. This is a big step for the mobile application industry as now they have got to the point where the demand for mobile apps are so large, that different universities and schools are offering mobile app development as a major. Many mobile application developers and mobile application “experts” believe that the mobile application industry is following the same path that the World Wide Web did in the 90’s when there was such demand for websites, that schools and universities started offering web development courses for their students.
One such school which is taking advantage of the mobile application industry boom is Rasmussen College which has multiple campuses in Minnesota, North Dakota, Florida and many other states across the United States. Rasmussen College now offers full online courses on mobile app development and also has 21 campuses across the country where students can enroll for mobile application development classes. In fact, the demand for mobile applications in the university level has grown so large that students can now also receive an Associates Degree in Mobile Application Development once he/she completes the required courses.
While Rasmussen University is one of the pioneer schools to venture into mobile application development as an offering, it is not the only school. In fact, in 2010, Olin College located in Massachusetts experimented with offering a new course called Mobile Application Development. The purpose of the course was two-fold: First the students were “investigating the mobile landscape through the lenses of design, entrepreneurship, and engineering” and secondly, they were also creating “commercially variable” Android mobile applications as their final projects. The curriculum for Olin’s courses were inspired from MIT and Stanford which also offered similar courses titled “Building Mobile Applications” and “BS 193P iPhone Applications” in recent history.
All the universities mentioned (Rasmussen, Olin, MIT and Stanford) all plan to offer mobile application development courses in the future but only for registered students of the university. More and more universities are also planning on hopping aboard the mobile application bandwagon and plan to offer mobile application development courses in the near future. San Diego State University will add advanced certification in web and mobile applications development starting fall of 2011 and other universities are expected to follow a similar path. While a lot of these classes give a basic foundation on mobile application development and how to develop apps; many mobile application developers and “experts” believe that these classes will take a more narrowed approach in the future where there will be classes for: iPhone Mobile Application Development, Android Mobile Application Development, Windows 7 Mobile Application Development and so forth.
Many universities and schools see a bright future for their students who can venture into the mobile application industry and even though the average salary for mobile application developers is not as high as other salaries in the tech-industry, many mobile app developers feel that it will be only a matter of time before these future mobile app developers straight out of college can make a good living off mobile application development. The fact that universities now see a need to offer mobile application development courses clearly indicate that the mobile app industry is heading in the right direction and there is a bright future ahead for any individual that decides to venture into the world of mobile application development.