The Programme has its origins in the industrial courses presented by the Computing Laboratory—the computing science department of the University of Oxford—during the 1980s. These were one- or two-week intensive courses, given by leading researchers, on topics of interest to partner organisations.
In 1992, the Computing Laboratory joined with the Department for Continuing Education—the University's department for external studies—to make these courses available to a wider audience, and to develop a range of postgraduate qualifications in software engineering. With support from the EPSRC and IBM, the new programme was launched in January 1993.
The discipline of software engineering has changed considerably since the early 90s: although the principles remain the same, the context in which they are applied is evolving. As a result, the Programme is in a state of constant development, placing greater emphasis on different principles, and finding new ways to relate them to industrial practice.
This development is closely linked to the research activity of the programme academics, continuing a tradition started by Christopher Strachey, who joined the Computing Laboratory in 1965: ...the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. One of [our] central aims... as a teaching and research group has been to set up an atmosphere in which this separation cannot happen.
Between January 1993 and the time at which you accessed this web page, 590 courses have been delivered, by 96 lecturers and assistants, and 392 students have obtained a postgraduate qualification in software engineering from the University of Oxford.