To a first approximation, software developers don't have masters degrees. If you are thinking about changing how an industry does its work, focusing on graduate courses seems counterproductive.
I disagree. I have a Master's in Software Engineering and the way to change things is for those with the formal education to try and spread good practices as much as possible in the workplace. Sometimes the main benefit is just knowing that good practices exist so you can seek them out.
The biggest impact I've had at the places I've worked have been about procedures and methodology, not how to use UML or draw a dataflow diagram.
- Have a process around software releases. Doesn't matter what as much as it has to be repeatable.
- Review your designs, review your code, don't do things in isolation.
- Have a known location for documents and project information.
- Be consistent, don't do every project completely differently.
- Get data before you try to fix the problem.
- Learn from your mistakes and adjust your processes to that learning.
- And many more things that sound like common sense (and they are) but you'd be amazed at how even in 2023 many companies are developing software in complete chaos, with no discernible process.
What I'm saying is that if your goal is to introduce more engineering rigor and your plan is for for the tiny percentage of graduate school graduates to percolate these ideas through the industry, it's probably a bad plan and likely to fail.
This was a thread about why software developers don't do engineering like other disciplines. One partial answer is that those other disciplines take it much more seriously at the undergraduate level, at least on average.
Probably the more compelling answer is that the industry doesn't' really want them to for the most part.
