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Computing's Lost Allure
khendron writes "An article in the New York Times, describes how the number of students majoring in computer science in university has dropped off with the rest of the hi-tech economy. The bright side: the students who are enrolling are doing so because they love computers. Not like a few years ago when students were enrolling because they wanted to make a quick buck. I'll take quality over quantity."
The question is how do the interested learn anything from an education designed to carry the weak through? Looks like it's still a case of learning more in one week of spare time than a month of college.
The other side of the coin that Computer Science graduate admissions are inundated with applicants this year. Hordes of people, after getting a bachelor's degree a few years ago, went off to industry to get rich instead of persuing advanced degrees. Now that the market has cooled off, many of them are returning to graduate school. It sucks to be a recent graduate trying to get into CS grad school, because you have to compete with many more applicants for the same few slots.
The assumption that because someone loves computers they will excel in working with them is false--somewhat like the idea that someone who loves poetry will excel in writing it is also false
The truth is that most people who have an aptitude for a field will at least dabble in it. But that doesn't mean they will care much for it.
An example of this is simple: In high school I was very good at Biology. It came naturally to me, and I made excellent grades in my Bio class. None of that changed the fact that I hated it. To me, Bio is not very interesting or even especially challenging. So I avoid it, even though when I have taken courses, I have always gotten an A in the class.
How does this apply to Computer Science? Well just the opposite is true. I love it, but that doesn't mean that I am particularly skilled. Sure I can do some limited web deisgn, and I understand hardware and software concepts fairly well, but I know that many of the people on this site are much better at all of that than I ever will be. Why? Because I am not really a much at calculus, which is necessary if you want to be really good at Computer Science.
This is why career counseling is so important. People need to get a grip on what they are both good at and enjoy, and concentrate there. This is one of the major failings of American Education--we focus so much on the idea of going to school to get a better job that we miss the point that if you are doing what you enjoy and are good at, you can almost always find a way to make money--if you put forth the effort to be the best.
That said, I would definitely see people that are going into a field because they enjoy it, not because they think it will make them money. Any field.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Of course this would happen. Five years ago (give or take) being a doctor or lawyer was the most desired of all professions; and enrollment was high. I was reading just recently that both have declined in the last few years; much like CS. The reason? Money. When the market is flooded with opportunities to make money in a certain industry there will be an up turn in degree seekers for that field. Now that the 'bubble' has burst the field isn't so attractive to prospective new techies. This is not a bad thing it's just the result of the society changes and morphing. It's like the balloon theory; there may be less CS degree seekers, but there is probably more of some other field. It's very natural that this should happen and kinda cool for techies like myself who actually love what they do. I never looked at computers as a route to make money; rather something I enjoyed experimenting/playing with. It's a happy bi-product that I'm able to make a living with it.
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs" - George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Well put. You just got a friend (Not that you care, but I figured I might as well have one friend on slashdot...)
I am salf taught as well, and it scared me to find out one of the guys in another programming group has a Masters in CS. He is slow at coding and writes poor code.
It's amazing, the majority of guy in my group are self taught and our customers (internal to the company) love us. We go out of the way to make sure that our systems do what they need to do, when they need to do it. The other group all have degrees, all are certified and write systems that routinely crash, are slow and bloated and take FOREVOR to be released.
I do know that not every case is like this. There are good people with degrees and bad people without degrees.
Maybe I am just bitter...