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Fewer Computer Science Majors
skrysakj writes "USA today reports that there are fewer undergraduate students choosing computer science related majors in the USA. What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA. Before there was a dot-com bubble to burst, I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees, so how is this new trend any different than before?"
Supply and demand, no?
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
This is a no-brainer. Most people in computer science got into it because they heard there was money in it - not because they had a love for it. Now that it's become clear that compsci's not a crap shoot when it comes to getting a high-paying job, they're jumping ship like there's airborne HIV on board.
Only the true geeks (the ones who love the stuff) will stay with it even when it gets rocky.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
- The press reports explosive growth in an industry
- The press reports that there are not enough workers in a particular industry
Both of those items imply a higher salary. This is not new. Students who don't have a true interest in something before they get to college will nearly always opt to go where the money is. When the expected salary dries up, they look elsewhere. It's happened over and over in the past and, I expect, will continue. Those are the students who do have a true interest in the computer field before they get to college. Again, this is not new, and virtually every job segment has people like this.Speaking as an employer, I'm very happy with this trend. The quality of graduates with programming degrees has been absolutely terrible for years now.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
I'm not sure why this is seen as surprising. This is actually pretty good, given that Americans make up less than 5% of the world population. America isn't particularly known for its long line of fine engineers (although there are many, I'd admit), or its large scale industry, being known better for the development of the service industries. I'd like to see the figures, but I'd put money that there are significantly more engineers coming out of industrial stalwarts like France, Germany, or Japan (which have large manufacturing sectors).
The article is followed by a bunch of ads for distance degrees, in which the University of Phoenix features prominently. Has there ever been a greater curse on the CS field than people getting degrees from places like this in the middle of the dot-com boom? The worst aspect, I think, being how many of these degrees are in "IT management" or some such garbage, thus turning out a whole bunch of apprentice PHB's who think they're qualified to tell people with real educations what to do. If the current decline in enrollment trims the fat by getting rid of those people, it won't bother me a bit.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
This shouldn't be surprising. Since engineers are naturally capable people, they tend to be the type to start their own businesses and create with an education of their own appetite. Just because someone doesn't have a formal degree doesn't mean that they aren't "educated".
What about the proverbial millionaire/billionaire who dropped out of college to start [insert successful company here]. I know several.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I make my living as a programmer and database designer, though my formal education is in German literature and fine art.
Among the many great computer people I've worked with in the last 11ish years, about half had computer science (or for that matter engineering) degrees.
My brother writes insanely complex software for NASA, and his degrees are in aerospace engineering, not CS.
We all "played computers" back in the 70s, and now many of us work with them. Seems pretty natural to me.
TFA is really a FA (at USAToday? gasp!) in that it draws a scary picture based on very little real information.
Of course CS and related enrollment is down.... for the same reason it was up during the dot-comedy. These are perfectly normal cycles, and have precious little to do with the actual talent pool.
If you want to blame the lack of interest in engineering and science on something, blame it on the miserable quality of public schools in the US.
This Like That - fun with words!
with the outsourcing thing going on shouldn't we be expecting this?
in the mid-late 90s having a CS to a lot of people ment lots of money. they thought it was a secure job that paid well. now however it seems you actually have to want to program for a living to go into CS.
i have nothing wrong with that. the college i went to 70% of the undergrads changed majors by their sophmore year.
I find this a bit arrogant. The USA population doesn't even represent 5% of the world population. That's nothing compared to countries like India.
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had NO degrees. Desire for self-study combined with a willingness to take on resposibility went father than a whole room of antisocial PHDs.
I really don't think tuition is cheaper in the US than abroad, since many foreign countries fully or partially subsidize education to a much greater extent. I think most of Europe has free tuition, and tuition in the developing world and China is certainly lower. Even the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology costs a fraction of what MIT and Caltech charge. The United States schools are just considered the best in the world, especially for the hard sciences.
Colleges are not the exclusive path to a career in programming or engineering.
I'd grant the first, but argue the second. Unless you meant "software engineering."
Not to troll or bait flames, but most real engineering companies require a Bachelor's or better from an Abet accredited institution from new hires. I guess it's possible to start as a tech in the lab and work your way up (eventually experience is worth the same or more than a degree, it's just hard to get without the degree.)
My $0.02.
everything in moderation
That said, I wish I had gotten a comp sci degree. I think it would have been much more "hands on" than my poli sci degree and would have been equally as interesting. As it was, I learned programming by myself, motivated by the many luminaries who said that many great hackers are self-taught. Nevertheless, I would have appreciated a general OS class, an algorithms class, or learning how to make a language with accompanying compiler. I'd love to learn how to make a runtime like Java or Python. I can code in Java and Python, but I want to understand the guts of it.
These are a few examples of things I think one would learn with a comp sci degree.
Most engineering schools are reporting declines in enrollment. This is hardly surprising since most engineering curriculums, including CS, are difficult compared to other fields of study. Without the prospect of a good job waiting for them, many college students are veering away from these majors.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
CS doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. To some, it's a computer degree. To others, it's a science degree.
At my school, there are three options:
1. Computer Applications - Learn how to use programs
2. Management Information Systems (MIS) - Learn how to write programs
3. Computer Science and Engineering - Learn how to write an operating system
You don't need a computer-related degree at all to be able to do any of these. I started programming when I was about ten years old, using the Apple IIe from my elementary school. By middle school, I was writing bulletin board door games and by high school I was writing my first applications.
In college, I was bored in the few programming classes I took (three weeks to learn conditionals?!) and started taking self-directed courses because I could teach myself better (with the aid of Google) than most of the profs I could take classes from.
Oh, and I was a Japanese major. Go figure.
It's not like us mechanical engineers had a sudden influx of phonies and money-grubbers in the dot com bubble.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
When I was a student all the best programmers I knew were math majors.
Implying that an MCSE is a path to a career in programming or computer science is like saying that a certificate in oil and air filter changing from Micks auto shop is a stepping stone into car engineering and design! Sorry , I'm not trying to be anti MS but MCSEs are just mickey mouse qualifications (and frankly a lot of other companys in house certs arn't much better). Learning to do A,B or C if X,Y or Z happens is NOT computer science!
If you want a well-rounded education where they teach you how to think, and focus on wisdom, rather than straight up knowledge which will be obsolete on graduation day anyway, go to a university.
I am glad that things are evening out and people are jumping ship. I am a Computer Science graduate, what separates me from most of the others is that I wanted to be involved in a computer industry since age 7. My dream back then was to design video games (I'm sure most of my fellow geeks went through a similar phase..)
I worked as a Computer Vision developer for 3 years during college, and more recently as a Database Monkey (current job.)
I think it takes a lot of love for the field to be able get through some of the more mundane days. The pay isn't that great either, but I really can't think of a job I'd rather be doing that doesn't involve a computer.
Choosing a career based on a market trend seems like a bad way to go about choosing a profession for life. It's like becoming a Brain Surgeon because the pay is "good".
I'm sorry, but there is a huge difference between a software crash course and a proper computer science or computer engineering degree.
A good CMPSCI or CMPEN program doesn't teach programming languages; they teach how to program in general and how to reason about programs. Once you master this, you can apply it to any language.
Too many people with these crase course certificates only care about getting something working, whereas understanding why it is working will always be better for the project in the long run.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Perhaps measuring the amount of people getting certified for hardware platforms, languages, etc. might provide more insight into how many people are pursuing computer science type jobs.
I think maybe measuring the certifications might provide insight into who is pursuing technology-type jobs, not computer science-type jobs. My CS degree didn't teach me to do a darned thing with a Cisco router and doesn't even necessarily make me a very good programmer. Likewise, all the Cisco certifications in the world don't mean that one knows snot about computer science. The two are not exclusive, mind you, but they're not synonymous either.
-db
How old are you? I'm sorry but that statement is very immature. I for one know from first hand experience how stupid proffessors can be (I was a sysadmin at a univeristy for a few years) and how little they know about using computers, even windows boxes. But knowing how to work a windows box and programming doesn't ecompass even a fraction of what computer science is about.
Lets face it, when the language of the week, or the OS of the year fades away, we'll still have theory! And that's what's important to a CS program.
The saying "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life" or some crap, same goes for cs. Teach a student some programming language and they can program as long as that language is popular, but teach a student HOW to program, and they can pick up any languages in no time!
Just my theory on CS education...
High-end engineering??? Well we all have relative levels of how we define things. If you had "high-end" engineers I'm going to assume that a lot of them had at least a Bachelors or Masters in EE. Computer Science is really Applied Math so anybody that was doing the design there probably had advanced math capabilities. Let's not confuse those with the ability to actually get through a reputable Computer Science or Electrical Engineering program with those that have certifications, which are just tests provided by a company to prove that there are trained individuals available to service their products. You can't compare someone sitting down and developing the algorithms necessary for a project and then implementing them and testing them to somebody making sure the mail server is running. I'm not belittling IT. I know some stellar IT people, including somebody that didn't finish their masters in CS but is a hell of a network guru.
I'm in the middle of interviewing candidates right now to fill a junior network admin position, and the overwhelming vast majority who shout out their list of certifications loudest at the tops of their resumes, trying to look impressive, are proving to be the least knowledgeable of the whole bunch. All they know how to do is memorize a study booklet or braindump full of quick answers long enough to take a test. No thanks. The MCSEs are the worst. Even the Cisco CCNA's are getting to be just as bad. Part of my interview questions involves asking the candidate to write down a simple cisco extended access list to filter out all inbound connections except inbound http to a specific host, and only one had gotten it right (it's only three farkin' lines for crying out loud!!!) and he's not Cisco certified either. He's only got hands-on experience. That's what I'm looking for... EXPERIENCE. Paper certs be damned. The only problem with the good candidate is that he's not a citizen and needs company sponsorship to stay in the US. My company refuses to sponsor any more foreigners, having been burned too many times in the past by those who just stayed long enough to get some experience to put on their resumes, then bailed out on us to move back home when we could least afford to lose them.
The difference is that the cat is out of the bag as far as people knowing that CS is a risky career in several respects - long hours, difficult work, offshoring, value dilution from OSS (sorry guys), and few new exciting software startups.
It's not just fewer CS majors, fewer people will be switching from other career areas, unless some of the above changes.
What really woke me up was their statement that only 6% of the worlds engineers are educated in the USA.
Since the U.S. only has ~5% of the worlds population, this isn't too out of line... However, I'm sure we have the capacity to educate more, it's just that people aren't choosing engineering careers for a variety of reasons. Also, don't forget that a substantial percentage of those educated in the U.S. head back to their native countries with the knowledge they've gained - and the percentage of U.S. educated foreign science/engineering grads is quite high.
Simply put, we need to interest more U.S. students in math and science AND provide real incentives to choose science/engineering careers.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
...not that you are necessarily educated in that area of your major, but instead proves that you have endurance to stay with something for the long haul. In essence it is a proof that you've successfully passed thru the biggest bullshit filter known to society. College is not a place you go to get educated -- you actually end up teaching yourself the course material, which you can do without school. It's a place to go thru to see how much bullshit can be thrown at you, to see if you are capable of withstanding it all and coming out on the other side. College is a place to filter out those who cannot withstand an endless stream of bullshit thrown at them, because that's what you'll have to face in corporate world if you expect to survive and prosper there.
Your sample size is so tiny, at best you can form a hypothesis (i.e. not a conclusion)! I guess you'd need a much larger workplace to actuallly carry out the experiments that could support or disprove your hypothesis.
... hence the nit-picking ...
Okay, I'm admittedly in the middle of preparing lectures for first-year science students
YS
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
Not to troll or bait flames, but most real engineering companies require a Bachelor's or better from an Abet accredited institution from new hires. I guess it's possible to start as a tech in the lab and work your way up (eventually experience is worth the same or more than a degree, it's just hard to get without the degree.)
I agree 100% with your post. If I handed in a resume for a software engineering job with even a degree in Information Technology, I probably wouldnt get a second glance.
100% Insightful
as kids get into CS when there seems to be interesting things to do with computers.
The early PC boom of '81-'85 is one example, where JMU had about 200 CS majors. By the time the IBM-PC took over the world ('89), the general feeling was static, of things not really changing, not being interesting, not being worth a career. JMU's CS class of '93 (my class) was only 24 graduates -- and those of us who were programmer-hackers tended to prefer hanging out on the Unix boxes or the Vax/VMS system over the stoic IBM-PC (which we only went over to for playing games).
5 years later, in the midst of the internet and dot-com boom, things looked interesting and promising and people were really doing "new" things (in spite of what the granted patents of the time would tell us) and CS seemed an interesting thing to get into again. JMU's CS graduates got up to about 125 / year.
So now, the rush to do "new" stuff of the dot-com era is gone, people are back to just doing work for businesses that pay, which is rarely interesting, and the military has slowed down its spending on software in order to pay for the replacement weapons we've been detonating all over the mid-east. Add the outsourcing demonstrated by the dot-bomb fallout and it leads people to think that CS and the software industry is just business and not interesting (or lucrative) enough to bother with.
something will arrive in a couple of years which nobody would have predicted (hint: it isn't Longhorn, and like Netscape it WON'T come from Microsoft) and will spin the cycle round again.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
As a current CS major at university, I think that most people coming from high school have a general misconception of what CS is and what it involves. I think people still look upon computer science as an insanely lucrative field that is fairly simple to master. However, I think they are quickly shocked once they start to learn that it really is a difficult major. At my university upperclassmen speak of how some of the more advanced CS courses are famous for causing people to switch majors. For instance, one class started with two sections of about 50-75 people each and by the middle of the term they were down to around 12-15 each. This drop was very shocking to me, at least.
I have always had a passion for computers and technology and I can't really see my doing anything else with my life. However, I sense a lack of this passion from many of the CS majors. In one of my classes we had mock interviews and some of the questions revolved around general ideas of technology and things that you probably wouldn't pick up in class. I was surprised by how many people couldn't answer the questions or didn't seem to really care about anything that wasn't taught in lecture. I have always paid attention to technology and things going on in the computing industry, but I seem to be in the minority among my fellow CS majors. I can't imagine choosing a major simply because it seems lucrative, but it seems that many choose CS for that reason.
SIGFAULT
You haven't been paying attention either. MBA's are also out of vogue. Even FedEx commercials are now poking fun at them for being useless!
The distinction you made is interesting. The reason there is so much crappy software being produced is companies don't require adequate computer science credentials for developers. It's extremely common for me to get stuck with people that don't have the slightest clue how to analyze the efficiency of an algorithm or properly handle parallel access to resources. I consider those rock bottom basic requirements for a developer.
Learning to do A,B or C if X,Y or Z happens is NOT computer science!
:-)
Really? Because I really don't understand finite state automata then. Crud.
The poster to whom you replied was correct, and your retort was misplaced. "Doing A, B or C if X, Y or Z happens" is merely what FSAs do rather than FSA theory, and does not require any technical knowledge about FSAs at all. MS admins are often taught to perform reactive duties like that too, as if they were cogs in a machine, since the platform is largely a black box. Being able to do that yourself does not constitute understanding how it is done, nor does it provide you with any of the background or principles of FSAs.
That's the difference between vocational training and education. An MCSE suggests that the holder is competent in certain computing duties for a particular platform. It doesn't pretend to offer an education in computer science.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Their are two kinds of computer professionals in the world; those who truly enjoy the tech (geek) and those who simply do their job (drone). The drone will do what is required, but only what is required. He takes no joy in his profession and marks time until he can leave it.
The geek on, the other hand, is the far more desirable employee. He'll keep up to date without prompting and will even educate himself on his own time. While work can be a grind, the satisfaction of doing it well is often enough compensation to keep him going. He'll even occasionally work for a lower paycheck if he finds an environment to his liking.
Unfortunately, while these two species can easily recognize each other on site, outsiders have a harder time differentiating. In an interview, the successful drone has a disconcerting ability to mimic the geek, casting a cloud of confusion around their true skill level. Conversely, the geek may not adequately convey their skill level to those not conversant in reading the signs.
I now see fewer drones than in years past. If this is a sign they are dying out, I welcome it.
For the record, I'm an Oracle DBA / developer with a BS in English Lit. The best geeks are, as always, self taught.
I think a lot of open source projects are proof that Comp Sci degrees are almost pointless.
:-).
I just graduated with CompSci degree and instead of being taken seriously at my new job, I am the new guy fresh out of college. I've been programming since I was 4 years old (Commodore 64), and I can confidently say I know more and code better than the guy who's been at this company for 10 years.
Experience is really the key. You have to know your stuff and be prepared to tackle tough problems. You have to be a great problem solver.
True, Engineering courses at school help you learn how to solve problems better, but those were only 5 really helpful courses and then there is the rest of liberal arts easy A stuff
The fact of the matter is IT is becoming a major factor for all types of degrees. We live in a generation that essentially grew up with computers and saw the birth of the internet (and some major advances in networking, computing, applications, etc etc). Sure there are less and less degrees in the field obtained, but more and more people are becoming familar with the way a computer works are earlier and earlier ages. Eventually its going to get to the point where advanced languages (what we consider advanced) will taught at lower and lower grade levels (Java/C#/C++, etc.. is already an elective in some high schools).
Sure, people can still go out and study further into these disciplines (PhD's are good to have, as they advance whats known). But your average accountant should have the skills to write himself a nifty little batch or a cute little applet to help him achieve his goals at work in a more efficient and timely manner.
I think it is a good thing that there isn?t as many CS Majors as in the bubble. I was in the CS Major (doing the classes to get my major) from 1999-2001. During that time the bar of excellence was lowered repeatedly because a great number of the majors were doing it for the money and not the love of tech or computers. It was quite annoying to work hard and get a good score on a project or something like that, let?s say a mid A and then to have the proff slide everyone up, lets say a D to a C+. My grade couldn?t go up anymore but all of a sudden my knowledge of some material was equivalent to another that it wasn?t! I also got tired of the people who could barely get through high school algebra in the Major because they have repeatedly taken math up to what, the Calc I required and squeaked into the major. I can go on, but I think my point is made. Back in the bubble there were many people getting a CS degree for reasons other than the love of computers/tech and many people getting degrees in CS who should have been flipping burgers at McDonalds. The bursting of the bubble was a good thing, now the industry will be filled with better qualified, my passonate workers.
Nuttles
Christian and proud of it
First a disclaimer- one of my undergrad degrees is in CS, I did 3 years of a CS PhD program, and taught undergrad CS. My feelings on CS are colored accordingly
Could someone please explain to me why this is a bad thing? The economy cannot support the current numbers of IT professionals, as evidenced by the unemployment statistics. Further, outsourcing isnt entirely to blame for this, though I do see it mitigating job growth. Fewer CS majors means we will have a higher "signal to noise ratio", our universities will output higher quality CS grads, and the economy will have a better chance of supporting them with job opportunities.
The vast majority of people fleeing CS at the moment are doing so because they have no interest in the subject matter other than fiscal. Most of my freshman CS majors fell into this category in 2000-2001. Does this mean that we might miss the next Turing? Possibly, but truely great minds will find a way to enrich our society regardless of the field of study they pursue. If anything, these numbers are further evidence that the dot com bubble burst was a return to sanity.
As someone (dijkstra? soustroup? one of those guys with a funny name) said, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. Knuth said in his lectures on theology that he was not the person to ask if you had problems getting lotus 123 working. Computers are very useful to computer scientists in that they can perform the algorithms computer scientists study.
Why don't we change the name of computer science to something more appropriate. Algorithmics? Computational theory? (that one still comes too close to the word "computer") Symbolic processing? (and that one may just be my Lisp background showing through.)
I don't know. But I'm both amazed and saddened by how many job postings I see saying something like "need a cold fusion developer. Bachelor's in CS required." That's idiotic.
Computer science is not programming, though programming is a skill that most computer scientists need to ahve. Ditto networking, hardware troubleshooting, etc. But that's also true of physicists and chemists. Computer scientists study efficient means of transforming sets of symbols and numbers. Why don't we just sever the imagined link between that discipline and writing the crappy string transformation routines that make up most of development today?
All's true that is mistrusted
I've worked with several small shops of this sort that made a good living for themselves (in several capacities, both as a consultant on projects, as a customer for their services and so on).
I see so many programmers hit their early 30s and really hate their jobs.
Most people in their early 30s hate their jobs period. It has nothing to do with CS, it has to do with the terms of the real world. Their late teens and early-mid twenties were great; college, away from home and making their own rules for the first time in their life... mid-20s - 30; buy a home, a new car that they really like, making a bit of money, maybe getting married if they're not clubbing every weekend... early thirties... 25 years more of a house payments, 2 more yeras of car payments on a car that really isn't that bitchin anymore, kids, divorce, the loss of their friends to their own lives of the same, long hours, less freedom. And the worst part of this hits them; this is what their life will be like for 30 more yeras, the same routine for as long as they've lived. It's pretty depressing that most people can honestly say that 17-25 was the best time of their life especially when you hit 32 and know that you're either stuck where you are or that you're going to have to sacrifice plenty to get somewhere else.
Think before you choose a career with computers.
Luckily the concept of computers being a fun, carefree job is going away and fast. but you have to consider any job from mutliple aspects before getting into it. If it was just a matter of pay we'd all be lawyers and doctors, if it was just an easy lifestyle we'd all be in politics, etc etc...
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
The sad truth is that all science and engineering jobs that can be will be sent overseas. It's a major strategic problem for our country as a whole, and IMHO it could lead to us losing our world status. However, if anyone's complaining, they're not doing so loudly enough. It's very hard for CEOs to resist the temptation of 90% labor cost savings.
One thing I remember hearing a year or so ago is that "Americans will have two jobs in the future, CEO or janitor." Otherwise smart people are being forced into management as the only choice to move up in an organization. I'd much rather use my brain all day long instead of writing e-mails and having endless conference calls.
If I were president, I'd do something similar to what Kennedy did in the 60s. He set a deadline for a mission to the moon, and backed it up with federal resources. Imagine what would happen if whoever ends up running things in November mandates that we end our dependence on foriegn oil in 10 to 15 years. Instant end to the middle east problem, and a great boom for science!
In the 11 years since I graduated college I've been a technology project manager, a programmer, a manager of internet development, a system administrator, and a systems analyst.
And to think, people used to give me weird looks when I told them I was getting a degree in English and Philosophy.
Read any good sonnets lately?
"Apparently you didn't read everything I wrote."
Really? Here is what you wrote, in toto:
"Unless you are retard, what do you expect with 30 YEARS MORE life experience than your class mates?
I would hope that after 30 years you can do college in a breeze and would know more than some of your professors in some subjects."
I note with interest that you are presuming there was a difference between me and the others in my classes. I went at night with a bunch of other middle-aged folks. Everyone had 20-30 years experience over entry-level students. I don't recall mentioning the level of the other students *at all*, just the sad level of the cirriculum and instructors. I do not believe that all but three constitutes "some".
Remember, the parent to this thread said "...where they teach you how to think, and focus on wisdom, rather than straight up knowledge...go to a university". I do not believe this to be any more than wishful thinking. I found the material and the instructors to be "dumbed down", and I mean for the courses they were, not for me. There is no excuse for that.
To answer your reflections:
"Why do you think you know more about a subject than the instructor?"
Because I was correcting them (mostly not in front of class). Also, I was bringing them current information pertinent to their field that they did not know existed, and they were also unable to follow some of the discussions I had with them.
"You may...didn't know more."
I made Dean's list each and every semester. It was not a question of my not knowing.
"But I usually explained what was wrong..."
Had that happened, I would not have the opinion I do. It did not happen (except with those three I mentioned, oddly enough), much the pity.
"Maybe your instructors..."
I didn't and don't just complain. I laid out their mistakes in b/w and gave them the corrections with references. I too, have taught before.
"It doesn't mean they aren't knowledgable in their subject area."
When they are incapable of discussing their subject area in depth and with current information, yes it does.
"You may have just gone to a crap school."
Well, that would have been my initial point, wouldn't it? Reading other posts on this topic, it seems I was nowhere near alone.
PE's are useless outside the civil engineering though. Among EE's they are paricularly scoffed at. The test for EIT certification is so incongruent with modern electrical engineering that even recent (or imminent) graduates take a separate course to master the material. EE's who feature PE's too prominently in their resumes are actually given less consideration than those who don't have them (or leave it off); the reasoning is that such a candidate is looking for a different sort of job than what most EE's do.
It is not impossible to work your way up to "real" engineering, with little to no formal education, even today. It does seem less common than 15 years ago, not that it was common even then. To do that you need to work in a large engineering organization for a long time, a work environment that becomes rarer with every passing year. Most who do that are ME's; I've heard of such EE's & ChemE's but never actually worked with one. I can't speak for CivE's but I suspect that it is rare gven the pevalence of PE certification.
Most EE's who get PE certification get it so they can
In the US, we value money and power. We absolutely despise knowledge and intellect. This is why academic research in CS is 5-30+ years ahead of the industry. Why can't we do a better job programming? Because people refuse to learn why things went/go wrong and what can be done to prevent them in the future. Those are social factors that will end up causing the US to sink to the bottom. We may have invented this profession, but if we continually fail to properly educate people, we will end up the lowest cost workers in the world.
You will see dozens of anecdotes here claiming that the best programmer at their shop never got a degree. As a result, everyone in the industry ends up reinventing the wheel. The plural of anecdote is NOT data. Yes, there are some smart people who never got edumacated; they would have been even better people if they had been. You wouldn't go to a self-taught doctor. Why would you trust your business to a self-taught IT worker?
Welcome to the job market.
Politicus
Actually, a lot of engineers end up in managerial positions down the road in their career.
There's a trend towards "engineering and management" courses (at least here in Canada) where you receive your B.Eng and an MBA, for the above stated purpose.
Being passionate about engineering is fine, but after time, you'll find you either want more money (the higher up the ladder you go...), or more control (the higher up the ladder you go...).
I don't want this to sound like engineers are greedy control freaks (though there is certainly an argument for this), but it's just the way life is. The longer you work somewhere, the more seniority you acquire. Seniority usually requires you to manage less senior people.
I'll have to disagree there. It's quite easy to slide through almost any university with the minimum of effort. At my University, cheating was so rampant that it was impossible to prevent. A college degree shows that you had access to many tens of thousands of dollars, 4 or 5 years, and a little perseverance. Not really that much integrity.
The article headline used the word "fewer" instead of "less" ... and they were right to do so!
:P
Usually, people use those two words as synonyms and they're not. Where are our grammar nazis? You should tell people when they get things right, or they might not realize it
The vast majority of people fleeing CS at the moment are doing so because they have no interest in the subject matter other than fiscal.
Lets hope so.
A couple friends and I had a term for these people when we were CS undergrads from 1997 through 2000:
CS Mercenaries.
The goal of these folks was to gain a degree so that they could make lots of money. They generally did as little work as possible to get through. They were not interested in writing good code (or any at all for that matter), or gaining knowledge and insight into how a computer works.
This attitude struck us as very similar to that of someone who would kill for the highest bidder. They were simply trying to find the program that paid the highest starting salaries that they thought they could actually graduate in.
Lets hope that those who have a true love for computing are the folks that are still majoring in computer science. I certainly will not shed any tears over the lack of CS Mercenaries enrolling in (leeching) CS programs.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
I think you make an interesting statement, one that I agree with for the most part (regarding quality of software).
However, I believe that the reason we're seeing a "decline" in the number of people seeking C.S. degrees isn't because the degrees are losing their meaning or because people are hiring those with certifications (that cost less and take less time to obtain) more than those with degrees. IMHO it's because the field continues to grow, along with the number of available positions. People without C.S. degrees are fully capable of filling the majority of these positions, even without experience, because the majority of these positions don't involve things like parallel access to resources or algorithm efficiency (as you mention).
I'd say the majority of these positions involve rudimentary (for lack of a better word) application development that don't usually need complicated algorithms or parallel programming.
I believe the issue you speak of (the quality of software) stems from when those without the formal software engineering education are put into positions that require such skills.
just my 2 cents
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
"I'm happy there are less comp sci majors, it takes away the needless competition facing the good ones."
IMO competition is never needless. And who gets to define who and what competition/threat is needless? The *good ones*?
The colleges will go down with the crappy students they produce. Some colleges will maintain their academic standards and continue to prosper along with the students they educate.
... and furthermore
Wow. This is really sad. I'm 46 and been programming since I was 15 years old. Not once have I ever been bored or regretted being a computer programmer. When the corporate bullshit gets to be too much, I just change jobs. There are always people looking for good programmers. If you like to travel you can find a niche like QNX where people all around the world want you.
I'd say if you like the act of writing, sitting at a keyboard, or perhaps like playing a musical instrument or writing music, that is a similar mindset to computer programming (though not exactly the same).
I have even seen many folks who don't know basic data structure concepts either... things that should be as ingrained into a programmer as breathing is... things like trees, hashes, linked lists, arrays, etc.
There's nothing like talking to a new hire and who is fretting over how to store some data for later lookup and saying something like "just put it in a dictionary or something" and seeing his eyes glaze over.
Getting a degree (actually, in many scientific/engineering fields) isn't as much about what you know as about having exposure to lots of different things, knowing how to find out what you don't know, and having the discipline to do it right and follow through instead of beating it until it fits and then declaring yourself "done".
The *most* common things that I have seen about non-CS (non- engineering/scientific) programmers (especially folks who "taught themselves") is that
1. Degrees are a waste of time because you don't need them and that they are a shining example of not needing a degree (when in many cases, they are a shining example of why you need a degree - they just don't, and won't, realize it).
2. They are always right, even when confronted with indisputable evidence that shows that they might not be right.
They also typically make lots of obvious mistaken conclusions that a basic algorithms or data structures class would have easily avoided.
What you say is true...there are exceptional cases where people can be good software engineers even though they don't have college degrees. But so what? This is a numbers game, and getting through college nowadays is a badge that means you can reasonably stick through and complete a long-term goal at a relatively young age. That's important...it means you were forged in an environment that allowed you to balance your personal life with a work load (not a terribly tough one) and carry off both.
Your argument by example (5 examples, actually) is just flawed logic. By that argument, I could say the same thing about being a billionaire--Gates didn't complete college, therefore it's reasonable to expect that billionaires do not generally have degrees. But this would be wrong...most billionaires do have college degrees.
That's how companies look at hiring. They want to mitigate their risk. They interview someone, and that person seems good (interviews are notoriously bad ways of judging how people are going to perform on a job, except the part where they talk to past employers and consider your past experience, or the guy walks in and has an obvious chip on his shoulder), but they're still pretty worried about whether he'll perform when he walks out. So say they hire two guys, one with a degree and one without and they both turn out to be disasters. How does the manager that hired the guy without explain the hiring decision to his boss? The boss'll say, "What were you thinking, this guy doesn't even have a college degree!"
You could keep living in the clouds and say the manager should patiently explain to his boss his view that college degrees don't really matter...except that's totally wrong. Remember, we're not talking about the exceptional case here, we're talking about a numbers game, and whether you like it or not, it is generally true that people with degrees will, on the average, outperform people without.
In discussions like this it's common for people to pay so much attention to the exceptional cases that they forget they're still dealing with exceptional cases.
Having said that, I think your way of looking at things has become increasingly popular over the last generation or two. This is because in the 50s, 60s, and 70s having a college degree meant more than it does today. It was difficult to get one. Now the average university has become a rubber stamp mill that just passes students through. The average bachelors degree student today knows less than the average high school graduate of the 1950s. Jobs like engineer, architect, etc, didn't used to require college degrees for this reason.
Now college is necessary because our public schools are in decline and have been for several decades (my journal entry on public school). As the teachers unions force one decision-by-committee on the system after another, things get worse and worse and all the good teachers get driven into other professions. Couple this with the sense of entitlement that most people in the US have nowadays about education ("my child has a RIGHT to an education whether he works hard or not!") and you get the current situation, where everyone must have college degrees just to prove they're smart enough to breathe. This is why the top 20 or so college institutions of each particular field, that have managed to retain their previous high standards, are so sought after.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
It appears from the comments that few, if any, differentiate between merely science and the merely technical; The difference between a scientist and a technician, for instance.
Someone with a 4 year CS or CE degree probably won't make a good system/network administrator/manager, and likely didn't get his or her degree for that reason. I'd like to think that people enter into a field of science to expand the discipline into as yet undefined areas of applied knowledge and study. Whereas someone acquiring technician skills are doing so for more narrow and defined purposes - Applying the known state of the science as a vocation.
How many scientists does a culture need in a given discipline? More important to the topic, in my opinion, is the quality of innovation graduating CS/CE majors bring to technology frontiers.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
I wish the comedian I went to go see last week was funnier but I wouldn't start lobbying the government to force comedians to take a humor exam. Maybe he'll become funnier in the future as he learns from other comedians.
Now reread your post s/comedian/engineer/. Bad comedians don't risk people's lives. Be it electric cables, bridges or computers (think hospitals), I'd rather not put my life into hands of somebody who "may become more skilled as he learns from other engineers".
Pavlov. Does this name ring a bell?
Wow. This is really sad. I'm 46 and been programming since I was 15 years old. Not once have I ever been bored or regretted being a computer programmer.
Some don't regret their decisions. Some are happy. It's good that you feel into something you like so much. Most people don't give serious consideration to their overall future until they're sitting with a college application and have to decide a major. After a couple years of school some decide to change but most who aren't happy with their major don't want to be in school until their 25 so they just go with it and accept it as the way the dice roll.
When the corporate bullshit gets to be too much, I just change jobs.
It's a good move but I think that's another thing a lot of companies are good at; convincing employees that their skills aren't that valued in the market. Trying to convince them that they may be underpaid but so is everyone at every company and they're better off to ride it out and hope they move up within their company. I think this esteem gambit runs deep among many geeks.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I'd guess the game industry in general is something like 70% developers without degrees, which is pretty close to the percentages for game programmers I know (75%). One guy I know who currently works for a value software game house was even a high school drop out. CSCI has some benefits, though, as I've found most non-educated programmers have terrible structure and design which often comes at a price. Up until recently, though, there weren't degrees that focused on the skills that game programmers needed - most programmer training in schools was for business and database related fields. Since business programming and graphics programming are radically different, it is really no surprise to me that most game programmers have no degree.
Noone gets a degree in CS because they are a true geek and they love programming.
I did.
Yes, what you learn in any CS program is going to be behind the times of whats out there on the cutting edge. But how do you get to cutting edge knowledge? You have to start somewhere, and I truly believe that if you want to really understand the founding principles of computing that a good CS program is the place to go. Once you've gotten that solid foundation, you can get out to the bleeding edge, by either going out into the right place in the industry or by pursuing a masters.
Some folks do as little work as possible going through a CS program, and those who skate through retain very little knowledge. But I know that doesn't reflect on 100% of people with CS degrees because I happen to have one.
I do find it very disappointing though that the promise of a payoff isn't in fact paying off. Just last week I contacted my agent...
First of all, this sounds like a problem specific to the company you work for. I suggest you start looking elsewhere, since your company apparently does not understand that your market value has changed. Unless you're already salaried at a reasonable rate, in which case I'd say that they'd be justified, having esentially overpaid you during the time you've been there so far.
Secondly, you have an agent?
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
When the tech market first started tanking, we saw a 33% decline in enrollment in CS classes here at Stanford, if I remember my numbers correctly. What this tells me is that at least 1 in 3 people were taking CS just for the money. I've gotta say, if you like CS, it can be a really fun thing to do, but if you don't like it, I'd imagine it would be some of the worst drudgery. And frankly, people who don't like CS don't do very well in it anyway. While numbers of CS majors may go down, I believe this causes quality of code and quality of life to go up.
Why??? (and I wasn't a CS major by the way)
:-))
I am/was sick of people telling 18-year old NON-geeks that "Technology is the future. You need to study a technical-related field and work in it, because that is where the money is at."
Too many people in the late 90's and early 00's went into CS/Engineering/MIS because the "money" was there, although they had no interest in computer science before that. That used to tick me off. It was pathetic to see some freshman "CS" majors who had to take bogus classes like "Intro to Computers"...and they were CS MAJORS!!!!!
Thank god the CS field will be left to the geeks who, by age 10, write simple programs in BASIC, by age 15, write simple C/C++ programs, and by age 22 (CS grad) can whip out almost anything in any comp lang (Except assembly, that's machine lang for morons
I think that your option number 2 is not just the most common problem with non-cs programmers, but is one of the most common problems with anyone.
I have bad karma....
Open source is heavenly, Microsoft is the devil, SCO is going to hell
If that's your life, then you've carved out a little piece of hell of your own making. The problem is with your decisions and your priorities, not with the world.
Me? I live in a small town (25,000 people in the middle of an agricultural region). I'm in my early 30s and freakin' LOVE my job! I have complete decision making authority over my own projects ("Yeah, I think that Zope+Python on a FreeBSD server would be just the thing - OK if I go ahead and get started?") and am doing new and interesting things almost every day for a company with cool management, good pay, and outstanding benefits.
For example, the job description I applied for never mentioned anything about writing pseudo-AI image processing software to look for barcodes on faxes we receive so that we can import them into the appropriate place in our database, but that was my main project a few months ago. This month, I'm working on profiling and tuning the database connector I wrote to make Zope talk to Foxpro. As a side project, I've been looking at partitioning our webserver into a set of jails with service isolation. Next month, I'll be working on EDI files that we're swapping between the federal government and a large national bank.
If your job is boring, then either get used to it or sit down, decide what's important to you, and make it happen. So far you've settled for drudgery, but you have the choice to change that! There's a very large world out there, and maybe this would be a good time to find a part of it that makes you happier.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Mark Twain
I don't hold any papers but I certainly have a lot of code running to back up my abilities. As many said, books and the internet usually provide better education at the pace of many programmers.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Holy shit, this is the most naive comment I've ever seen on Slashdot.
What would you hire a "CS person" for? Choose your answer carefully, because I think it will demonstrate that you have no idea what a "CS person" actually studies, knows, and is good at. Hint: it isn't programming.
Why get a Biology degree and then look for a job in computers? You picked the major so go find a job in it, sheesh.
The arrogance of this comment is astonishing. A college degree indicates that you have dedicated four years of your life to study, work, and long-term goals. It proves that you're able to stick it out even when confronted with nonsense and bullshit. It demonstrates that your mind is flexible enough to apply to many different fields of learning.
Most of all, it demonstrates that you are serious about the outcome of your own life.
Around here, we require college degrees of all employees. It doesn't matter what the degree is in. We've hired philosophy majors as system administrators, electrical engineers as programmers, biology majors as human resources directors, forest management majors as technical support staff, etc. The degree proves a certain level of intelligence and tenacity. The particular subject area is less important.
You have no real world experience, do you?
That's the problem right there. You think CS is about programming. I heartily agree that the field of computer programming can be a crap one, but that's not what CS is about.
There are computer scientists working at NASA, writing physical dynamics software. Computer scientists at places like Google who do nothing but write information-theoretic equations on whiteboards all day, trying to enhance search algorithms. There are computer scientists designing machine learning algorithms, robotic control systems, and programs that play Go.
There are computer scientists who spend 8 hours a day thinking about how to optimize the arrangement of boxes in the back of a UPS truck.
It's no wonder you disparage the field of CS, because you've confused it with your daily grind of programming computers. The two are not the same thing at all.
If you can't find ways to make your computer science degree fun and rewarding for you, I think you have an enormous lack of vision. Expect your alternate job with your alternate master's degree to be equally unrewarding. Just switching topics isn't going to fix the fundamental problem, which is that you have no drive.
In french, computer science is 'informatique'. I like that name better. I think 'informatics' would be a nicer name for the field, i.e. the science of information. but it's not like we can change that now...
If you work with formally trained engineers (mechanical, electrical, civil, chemical, aerospace...) and see how the good ones in those fields go about their daily work, you will find that the truly good software engineers work much more like them than the people who just code. In the end, Engineering is a process. The good ones, in any field, work and produce similarly. That's not to say formal engineering training automatically makes you great. But, you do get more exposure to relevant technical issues.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender