Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Basically this post can be summed up in a few sentences:
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees
You need to BS boots rather than a BS degree. It sucks but you have to play the game play - say things like sir, thank you, and yes I can develop 2.57 billion lines of code this month all with zero defects fully tested delivered signed and sealed. Let me say that if you don't have a degree today, you have closed a lot of doors yourself. Very few will hire you without a degree - why should someone unless there is nepotism. Get a degree where you work closer to the money and make tech a secondary skill.
43% of computer science and engineering recipients are non-resident aliens
Our government is making it a little harder to float into the country. Now the schools are whining about loosing revenue - tuition must be cheaper here than overseas (hard to imagine)?
computer science and computer engineering majors in the USA and Canada fell 23% vs. the year before
Students of today are not stupid. Would you choose the tech field today? You would be better off getting a MBA and if you like the tech stuff than you can still assist with it but you have to be closer to the money or your at risk of someone else making your life decisions.
about 75% of the worlds lawyers. maybe that why sco in such a pickle
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 was recently "orphaned" in my program - a degree/diploma compsci/telecom course in Canada. The college providing the telecom/IT portion of my classes has dissolved their IT department, and while they'll finish any students still in classes, we're now orphans...
With everyone hearing about how the tech industry is still doing crappy overall, and how jobs are getting outsourced, it's no wonder compsci enrollment's down...
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
--lawyers
--patent lawyers
--or reality tv "stars"
Are there really any other careers in America these days?
Getting back to CS, it's a very different job landscape then 8-10 years ago. They only "safe" CS job in America is one where you get a security clearance and work on government related projects that can't be farmed out due to security constraints.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
After all the flood of comp sci majors realized they couldn't make $150,000 with just a degree and no ambition or geeky desire of computers, people stopped choosing that major. A lot of schools were rushing them through and dumbed down the curriculum to get them through. People just chose computer science not because they liked computers, but they thought they'd have an easy job that paid well. The job market became flooded with these people who could maybe use windows and simple programming, but not much else. I've read accounts on slashdot of people saying how many people in their classes could barely use a CLI. I'm happy there are less comp sci majors, it takes away the needless competition facing the good ones.
I just graduated in May from University of Connecticut with a Computer Science and Engineering degree. I found a job by the begining of August... but I'm the rareity. Most of my friends have had a real hell of a time finding jobs, and even the job I took didn't pay as much as I was hoping. Finding a CS job right now is not so easy. Is the market saturated with computer people... Are employers taking experience over education? Is it really worth it to get a CS degree, or would it be more valible (and a couple factors of 10 less expensive) to get a bunch of certifications?
Your mammas flamebait.
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
In my case, it would be that university professors have less knowledge than the students. Students in the computer science classes are writing their "final" programs in less than 10 minutes. Running pentiums with windows 98 first edition in the computer science lab doesn't make me want to jump up and become a computer science major, either. Maybe if the professors were a bit more qualified and had real world experience instead of learning how to program from a book it would be helpful.
http://dont.spam.me.anymore.com
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.
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!
I orignally wanted to do Computer Science since I wanted to make computer games. However, after taking a bunch of high level CS courses, I learned tha CS is not just programming. There is a ton of crazy math crap that I have to learn. Before college, I would have never imagined that mathmatical induction would play a vital role in computer science. All I really wanted to do in CS was just to make computer games and the more higher level courses I took, the detached the work was from game programming. I know a real programmer should know the complicated math behind it, but CS no longer appealed to me the same way it used to so I switched majors to Human-Computer Interaction since it was much closer to what I wanted than CS (now I am just minoring in CS).
"Graduate programs haven't seen the same decline yet."
When I got my masters degree in CS 4 years ago, it seemed that about 45% of the grad students were from China, 45% were from India, and the rest of the 10% of us were US citizens. Since the graduate community in this country is already overwhelmingly foreign, that might explain why these numbers have remained stable.
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))
My school which shall rename nameless has two levels to the CS program. There is a regular undergrad with about 400 people and a professional program. Now out of those 400 people, my school looks at your grades in art, math, physics, and everything except CS courses (mostly because by the time you're applying for the pro-program you haven't taken any) and grabs the top 95.
This left me high and dry, as I had an issue with a math class. I asked the head undergrad advisor and he told me to wait a few years and enrollment in CS should drop.
Next I walked over to the Math Department and got my degree in Mathematical Science with a Computer Science focus and a Computer Science minor.
The point is, rather than basing the program on skill (currently I write software that Cisco uses in hardware diagnostics) some universities are basing it on grades. The system needs to be overhauled to judge the skill of the programmers, not their book smarts.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I'm an IT Professional with a non-IT degree, I read psychology. It's actually come in more handy than an IT degree probably would have. Not only was it a big help in landing the job in the first place (the value of being different from the herd). The content itself has continued to be timely and useful even ten years on, be it a behavioural approach to OO systems or knowing what makes meetings more productive.
;)
I'd recommend any beginning IT professional to minor/subsid in a good psychology course, it'll last you a lot longer than some of your IT knowledge
Developer A - Architect, super-badass.. self-taught, went to MIT for 1 year but has no college degree. 2nd Youngest of bunch. (late 20s)
Developer B - Me, Senior Developer, pretty good all-around coder and designer, went to college for 2 years but didn't do much with it and has no degree. Youngest of bunch. (mid 20s)
Developer C - Developer, Masters in Psychology and some other discipline of that type (non-comp related). Pretty good developer, but not great. (2nd oldest of bunch) (Early 30s)
Developer D - Junior developer, Masters in Computer Science.. can't grasp anything bigger than a small feature, all code has to be reviewed by someone higher up. (oldest of bunch) (Late 30s)
What does this tell me? Experience and work-skill are a *lot* more important than degrees. This is just one small example, but most every company I've ever worked for, the super-badasses never had degrees, and were all either self-taught or had a little bit of college, and tended to eventually rise to the top.
-- Jinsaku
What do you expect from a country where education and intelligence is not a "High priority"? Education is competition, meaning tomorrow's educated students, who become business men could be your next big competitor. And as everyone knows in the USA people don't matter, Big business does. Yes business's would not be around if people couldn't buy their products, so they (we) get paid just enough to buy their products. And for those who can't afford it, that's what credit cards are for. We are losing a battle, not just with the rest of the world dealing with education, business, ethics(?) but a battle of bettering ourselves and giving our children a chance to survive in the future.
TruePunk | Games
My advice to protential computer scientists, is major in Math and take a couple programming classes. Math is far more useful and prepares people more completely for the problem solving skills needed for a career in programming. Computer Science is far too cobbled together from other disciplines right now, it honestly lacks identity. The formula now is, (some)Math + (a tiny bit of)Engineering + (a lot of)Programming = CS. CS should be a concentration under a Math degree.
I think it's pretty clear that CS undergrad degrees are out there to improve one's income. They are generic, marginally useful, and are basically an exchange of a piece of paper for time and money. Having a CS degree tells nothing of a person's ability with computers. There were countless people who went to school with me and by their time of graduation knew less about computers than some english and history majors I knew.
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 to try to negotiate a better rate with my current employer and one of the reasons was that I am graduating in two weeks with a Math and Comp. Sci. degree. She basically told me that it isn't worth a cent in terms of my rate of pay!
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
As a University engineering student in Canada's likely best known engineering school, we got to learn about the licensing process and what it is to be an engineer.
I think part of the problem is the constant abuse of the word "engineer" in the United States. In this country (Canada) you cannot designate yourself an "engineer" without being licensed by your provincial body (at least here in Ontario). The word is protected to protect the public from people who don't have the necessary license and/or training to perform engineering tasks. The best example of this is the MSCE designation, which Microsoft had agreed to not use MSCE (Microsoft Certified Engineer) in 2001 and now reversed their decision.
The provincial bodies are now considering enforcement, and they are well within their right to do so. I went to a Microsoft presentation recently here and in their software development jobs, and 3/4 of their "college" (University here) full-time positions had the word "engineer" in them . (For those who don't want to RTFA, there is Program Manager, Software design engineer, Software design engineer in test, and software test engineer). Choice quote from the article:
I'm sure there are more examples of this at other companies, for example the term "network engineer" and other such titles given without certification or engineering licenses.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
...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.
We have 4-5% of the population, and produce 6% of the engineers. Sounds like we're well ahead of the curve there. Not mind-numbingly ahead, but decently so.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I knew lots of *amazing* programmers and IT professionals who had non-IT degrees, so how is this new trend any different than before?"
Never let well-researched statistics get in the way of anecdotal evidence.
Students are now trying biology, nursing or other majors.
This line brought a smile to my face. Somehow I don't believe any computer nerds are saying, "Hmmm, maybe I'll go into nursing instead".
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
The retention rate for computer science was low even in 1998. I began with 275 computer science majors and by the next year there were only 75 remaining. The coursework is difficult and requires true commitment. Maybe it begins because people want the money, but once they see the road ahead most back out to an IST, CIS, or MIS major.
Two of the best professors I ever had for programming started out as chemists. I started out as a chemical engineer, hated it, and went to graduate school to switch to programming. Great programming is a passion, and people that love it find it eventually, even if they did not start out doing it. That is probably like alot of fields.
I'm sure you do know lots of amazing IT people without CS degrees, but that's because CS has very little to do with being a Helpdesk or Cisco monkey. Think of it this way, real CS folks are like the people designing cars. IT folks are the UAW workers building them, or more likely Bob, from Bob's Towing and Autobody.
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
Those non-CS background IT programmers typically program just sufficient to make things work. They don't care about data structures, complexity (things like big-O), scalability, etc, which is important to produce efficient code, when handling huge amount of production data. This is especially true in corporate settings when they want to deploy their projects fast to the end-users.
I don't mean that programmers with CS background will always do a better job, but at least they get formal CS training over a 3- or 4-year period, which cannot be comprehensively taught by a 1-year conversion course, assuming that these non-CS background people attempted to do such a course in the first place to 'convert' themselves.
Computer Science is not the same as Information Technology (professional I.T.). You can do I.T. without knowing one lick of Computer Science -- lots of people do. Also, you can do Computer Science knowing surprisingly little I.T. (I help Senior Engineers do basic IT stuff all the time, because they just couldn't figure it out/don't have the patience/focusing on something else/etc.)
stuff |
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
At the risk of being modded flamebait, my immediate reaction to the line you quote was to wonder whether the surprise was at the fact that there are people outside the USA.
A title of nobility is something that is usually given without much earning. A degree is something that a person must work for. It requires time, and effort. In addition to that, a lot of education is publically funded. Public universities are funded by the government so as to make higher education available to the masses. Where nobility was very exclusive, rarely gifted to new people and was almost exclusively passed down through the family lines, degrees can be attained by most anyone who tries. I know people who's parents never went to college and yet, somehow, they are working towards getting degrees right now. Degrees lack the exclusivity of noble titles, as well as their distrobution method. So, going by your logic, I could successfully equate the way that the US government subsidizes farmers to the fuedal serf system of old Europe (in keeping with your old world theme).
-Doug
Personally, I don't believe a degree means an awful lot. But, in current times, you definitely need to have one. I'm currently working as a sys admin, and I'm doing my degree at the same time. I can say that I have used less than 1% of the knowledge I have learnt via my degree in my job. When I get my degree, am I going to be a better sys admin? IMHO, no. However, it will be percieved that I will be able to do my job better....
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.
The key part of "Title of nobility" is the nobility part.
"Nobility" can have two characteristics - heredity of title and/or possession and/or rights and obligations to land. I.e. the Duke of Compton would own Illinois and/or be the King of the USA's representative (in war and peace) in Illinois and/or his son would also become Duke of Compton.
If you can't rell the difference between nobility and certification of academic qualifications, then you've certainly got something against formal education.
The founders may have hated artistocrats but they didn't hate men of learning. If you think so, see how many of them had academic qualifications they were proud of.
I have a CS degree and have never written a line of code(professionally). I have, however, been a Network Technician and Administrator for more than 10 years(before that I chased electrons as a technician doing R&D work for a gov't agency). CS taught me some wonderfull ideas and concepts and is\has been a great tool in planning many projects. I'm just a gear-head with a degree in something I don't really use(like so many others with degrees), I just wanted the paper, tired of going to interviews and being asked why I never graduated. I just like the challenge of troubleshooting and fixing things and playing with computers and networks. The talent was first noticed by my dad when I took our first color TV apart and 'adjusted' it at age 6, after the ass-whupping I was encouraged to ask questions BEFORE I dismantled something. That's my rant and I'm sticking to it.
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
How to make a flawed argument sound reasonable:
Premise: There are many reasons to avoid the CS
major a few reasons not to do so.
Supporting arguments:
Elaborate on the many(2) and dissmiss(forget)
the few(0)
Then go with personal opinion that "ALL CS I
know are worthless as programmers". Clever!
Then try to tone it down a bit to sound credible.
Are you working for FOX news?
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
... and the best in your division. Why not just start your own company instead with your affected peer group? Walk away! You get to keep your brains, they don't. If your employer was able to pay you 6 figures average, that means they were making at least probably double that off of your labor. Screw em! They want a piece of paper instead of productivity, take your productivity to your own office and take all the cash, not some of it. The proof is in the product, not the degrees hanging on the wall.
And something the petit pompous bosses aren't bingoing to yet, even though it's staring at them. First they came for the blue collars who actually produced, and everyone else sneered and laughed at them, and told them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Now they are coming for the white collar actual producers, telling them-and you- to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps "or else". Next they-they being the billionaire globalists who could give a rats ass about anyone else except their profits are going to start eating the lower level managers and sales people, and those dudes STILL think they aren't replaceable with outsourcing overseas. Ha! Sure they aren't!
Get self employed if you want to STAY employed, no matter what field you are in. Better to be employed at 50 or less a year then unemployed at whatever you used to make. And there's no profit for your soul working for cretins like that, and it's something you can't put a dollar tag on.
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
Computer Science is a facinating field of study, and a great hobby. Its a rotten career.
Its like being the high school nerd for the rest of your life. There are very few companies out there that truly respect their programmers, and with outsourcing becoming more and more popular, that trend isn't going anyway anytime soon.
College Students: It may sound GREAT to have a swell job where you get free coke and code all day. Thats because you associate coding and programing with learning and new discoveries. Every programming project, every new linux distrubution, every class has been something new and interesting. When you hit the real world, that ends. It becomes the same old shit everyday. Yes, you can learn on your own, but that isn't your job. Sure, i'm "learning" C#
I myself am halfway through my masters in a different field so I can change my career. Do you really think you'll be excited about working on version 6 of the same product you've been working on for 5 years? Do you think you'll be able to switch jobs at a whim when you get bored?
I make it a part of my life to talk young people out of entering technical fields. Maybe when our society starts respecting us, instead of treating us like we're a bunch of strange teenagers, i'll change my mind.
BTW: I've made my own situation better by demanding to do other tasks at work, and again, working towards a new career in my spare time. I see so many programmers hit their early 30s and really hate their jobs. Think before you choose a career with computers.
So why is it a surprise that the US has 6% of the engineers in the world? That seems about right...
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.
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?
Let me draw an analogy here. Consider chemical lab monkey. Their job is mixing things to make stuff, and performing any one of a batch of analysis techniques.
The most important skill for them to have is good lab procedure - keeping thing clean, labeled, and not spilling things. Also, knowing what to do if one of the above is not true.
This does not need a degree in chemistry (and I say that as a chamietry graduate). The depth of understanding required isn't that great - once you know how to do a titration, you look up the precise set of reagents to use to perform a specifc test. Compare this to a programmer, whose is much the same situation - know the basic principles for a set of techniques, and then looks up the specifics if needed.
Chemistry is very slightly older than programing / computer science. So, if you look at how the split between laboratry workers and the hardline theorists worked out, that might give some insight into how the programming field might develop, right?
Well, there are no seperate qualifications for laboratory work. The nearest thing is stopping the path to a degree before graduauation - be it after highschool, or with something that's equivelent to the first year or two of a bachelors.
Most places, however, when they want some to work thats mostly turning the handle reactions or analysis look for a degree.
For good or ill, then, I suspect that trying to split off programming and CS will come to nothing.
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!
Forget about getting a state or federal technical job without a degree. Most require a degree to "weed people out." And the higher the degree, the more you earn, regardless of actual job duties. That's been my experience.
Congratulations. You've just discovered that computer science has nothing to do with administrating computer systems.
Now if only you could spread the message to everyone else in your company...
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'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.
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
Ernest MacDougal Campbell III
geek ramblings
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?
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