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?"

Comments

Other paths to "computer science" careers

[erick99]

I worked for a company that did high-end engineering and programming for the military. They currently have about 120 network engineers, programmers, and other related staff. Maybe 10 of these folks have computer science degrees. However, they *all* had Cisco cerifications and many had MCSE and other certs as well. 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. Also, in this area, if you want to be an engineer or a programmer you might be as well off going to one of the schools that provide training and various certs in 12 month to 24 month time frames. Colleges are not the exclusive path to a career in programming or engineering.

Cheers,

Erick

Re:Other paths to "computer science" careers

[randyest]

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.

Re:Other paths to "computer science" careers

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Other paths to "computer science" careers

[GoatChunks]

Up until recently, I would have argued that you don't need a degree of any sort to be a successful software engineer. Me, and about 5 of my peers are/were living proof of that.

Of the top 10 software engineers in my organization, up until about a year ago, 6 of them had no degree at all. None of the top 5 did. Then suddenly we all hit a brick wall. We were told by our organization that we were pretty much at a standstill in our careers until we got our degrees.

This is an odd thing for someone who's making $80-$100k to hear. You'd think with all of that experience under our belts nobody would care anymore. But as we try to move up by moving out, we're seeing the same thing. Nobody wants to hire software engineers without a degree.

None of us are far from getting them, as we all seemed to have the same story. We were plucked out of college by an up-and-rising dot-com a semester or three before graduating. But basically everything is on hold until we get those degrees. After that, or so I'm told, we can write our own tickets.

Re:Other paths to "computer science" careers

[betelgeuse68]

I have a BS in CS but I wholeheartedly disagree with you.

"Sofware engineering" is an oxymoron. You can employ strict process control, aka protocol, but that is not engineering per se. For example, the idea of version control or staging to deploy new web applications, that may be "release engineering" but you are stil talking about setting protocols for pushing files around.

Today I muse at some of the research interests of some professors I had back in the day, "software engineering." Yeah sure, they changed the software engineering world.

Given that the number of abstractions the software space allows is infinite (vs. being bound to the physical universe) there is a level of complexity and an opportunity for induction (by drawing from all these abstractions) that ascribing a pithy label such as "software engineering" seems quite moot in my book.

I might add I spent 2-1/2 years at Microsoft and have moved onto the *NIX space. I've seen both ends of the spectrum and I haven't seen any real notion of software engineering except for ONE small company I had occasion to work at. The problem is that 99.9% of the situations that are cranking out code have no semblance of what was going on there.

-M

Re:Other paths to "computer science" careers

[putaro]

When I was in college I started working as an intern at a local computer manufacturer (this was in the mid-80's when there actually were many real manufacturers). They made a Unix based system, soup-to-nuts (that is, we had our own processor architecture, compilers, and version of BSD Unix). It was basically incredible OJT and I learned fast and before long they had started throwing real projects at me. At one point they asked me to drop out and go to work for them full-time. Things were going on in my life that required more cash than a part-time job would give me, but I figured that finishing my degree wasn't a bad thing, so I cut a deal where I would go full-time working and become a part-time student.

Shortly afterwards they hired a recent college grad. She was a pretty sharp gal, no doubt about it, but I would say we were pretty much on the same level and I had more experience than her. We got to be good friends and one day the question of salary came up and I discovered that she was making substantially more than I was. I went to my boss and said, "WTF?!" The answer - "You don't have a degree."

I was glad that I hadn't stopped out, stayed in school and got my degree. About the time I graduated the company went thru a near-death experience, everyone was laid off for about two weeks and I found a new job paying twice as much as I had been making. (After two weeks the company was resurrected and everyone went back to work except for Y.T and one other person)

I don't bear any animosity towards them for not paying me less for not having a degree, but I am still a little peeved that they tried to get me to drop out of school. Every time I've gone looking for a new job (or venture capital :-) ) since then, I'm glad that I finished my degree since I don't have to start interviews with a song and dance about why I didn't get my degree. Instead, when we talk about education, I say "Yup, been there, done that, let's talk about something more interesting".

Re:Other paths to "computer science" careers

[fitten]

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.

Maybe now

[w.p.richardson]

people who major in CS are actually doing it because they like computers and want to learn about them, instead of viewing a degree as an easy ticket to big $$$$.

Supply and demand, no?

Not true geeks...

[danielrm26]

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.

Re:Not true geeks...

[jbrocklin]

I'm going into my senoir year in CS this fall at a university who has their CS degree in the engineering college. I help out with some of the college recruiting things and you wouldn't believe the number of people who want to come to a CS degree for game programming. Just because there isn't the big $$ involved all the time doesn't mean people are still coming to CS degrees for the wrong reasons.

Those that do come into the program for this usually end up dropping out or switching to a non-engineering major because they want to PLAY games all the time and not do the stuff like algorithm design and analysis that the CS degree requires.

Re:Not true geeks...

[thafreak]

Actually, from talking to everyday "non-geek" people, I find that they're all still under the impression that there is alot of money to be made in CS. So I bet the people leaving the field ARE the real geeks who love computers. I bet they're all waking up and realizing that if they want to survive (and afford their expensive habit if you will), they need to get a real job that pays...
I'd venture to say the poeple sticking with it are still mostly money grubbers who are going to have a very surprising wake up call when they graduate.
Maybe all the real geeks are going over to MIS...anyone compare the decline in CS to the numbers from business schools???
I'd like to see them...

Why a surprise?

[Peter Cooper]

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).

Don't think this is such a big deal.

[frostman]

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.

What's surprising?

[Freon115]

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.

Re:What's surprising?

[Launch]

But USA represents much more than 6% of the world's technological advancements, especially engineering ones. So it is suprising.

I knew lots of *amazing* programmers...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Jobs and such

[Stevyn]

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.

Don't need an IT degree, and yet...

[MarkEst1973]

There is a lot to learn from books. In fact, books form the backbone of the college lecture, so it is plausible that a sufficiently motivated student can learn everything there is from the books w/o the need for the accompanying lecture. I've learned computer languages from books, as well as more abstract things like design patterns.

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.

A nitpick

[Noose For A Neck]

Engineers have absolutely nothing to do with IT workers and programmers. We're talking professionals vs. people straight out of high school, and it's not even close to the same field, except for maybe computer engineers.

It's not like us mechanical engineers had a sudden influx of phonies and money-grubbers in the dot com bubble.

Re:university professors

[donnyspi]

If you want to learn a new language or are that concerned about the OS you use, go to ITT tech or something like that.

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.

Re:MCSE? Are you serious?

[TheHonestTruth]

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. :-)

-truth

Degrees vs Non-Degrees

[Jinsaku]

I work for a start-up that has a team of 4 developers. In skill order and value to the company, they are:

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.

it comes and goes in cycles

[acroyear]

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.

Re:Kind of amusing, in a sad way ...

[nate1138]

Don't discount the online schools so quickly. I have been a programmer for about 10 years, and did not have a degree. To advance into management, a degree was pretty much a requirement. For somebody like me, Phoenix was ideal. I don't have the time to go to a campus (not to mention that there isn't a good school near me), and I really have no interest in doing so. At the same time, I needed to finish my degree to advance my career. University of Phoenix fit the bill nicely. I am about to complete a degree in MIS, and that, coupled with a decade of hard software development experience puts me in a good position for the future. While I agree that simply having a degree doesn't qualify you for "IT Management", I don't think that it is fair to single out online programs. Traditional 4 year brick and mortar institutions turn out just as many (more, probably) clueless wanabees.

Re:MCSE? Are you serious?

[guitaristx]

Finite State Automata, discrete mathematics, knowledge of performance metrics (and how to tune algorithms for better performance), and knowledge of how compilers, operating systems, and assemblers are built are just a few things that separate programmers from computer scientists. This is why we've got so many, er, pieces, of software out there. They're not engineered, they're just slopped together.

There's a reason why all that "useless" stuff is taught to CS majors.

Comp Sci Recent Grad

[mattboy99]

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 :-).

Fewer CS Majors? GOOD!

[drtomaso]

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.

Why not rename CS?

[Theatetus]

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?

Because they're intelligent.

[Gannoc]

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# .NET now for my job, but I'm an experienced programmer. Its just the same shit with different syntax. Maybe it will let me do my job easier. I'm not excited about it.

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.

Re:Because they're intelligent.

[east coast]

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...