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Interest in CS as a Major Drops

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the bad-raps dept.

Dasein writes "The Computer Research Association says that the popularity of CS as a major among freshman has dropped in the last four years. Why is obvious to anybody working in the field. They conclude by saying 'With a fall in degree production looming, it is difficult to see how CS can match expected future demand for IT workers without raising women's participation at the undergraduate level.'"

4 of 839 comments (clear)

  1. Anecdotal confirmation by l33t-gu3lph1t3 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The University of Guelph (Southern Ontario, Canada) normally has 200 students entering its Bachelor of Computing (honors) program every year. This year the entrance class had 66 students. My own program at Guelph-Humber (degree/diploma in computing/telecom) has a nominal class size of 60, but we've not had a full class in the 3 years we've been running. According to my prof, the only University in Canada whose compsci department hasn't suffered is Waterloo's.

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  2. Why aren't you checking IT Majors? by Xoder · · Score: 4, Informative

    TFSummary says that a drop in CS students will lead to a shortage of IT workers. Most CS students I know do not want to do IT. They want to code, either academically or commercially, but they do not want to do IT. IT is for IT majors (or Cisco/A+/MCSE certs), not for Computer Scientists

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  3. Re:Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics by shizzle · · Score: 5, Informative

    You simply can't take statistics from one university and assume that they're not indicative of a universal trend either. I teach computer engineering at a major public university in the midwestern US, and we are seeing trends exactly like UCLA. If you follow the link in TFA to the Taulbee survey, which encompasses all of North America, you'll see that the data there is consistent with UCLA's findings.

  4. Re:Supply and demand by timeOday · · Score: 4, Informative
    I saw on CNN that all majors(except 2) were gaining starting wage increases this year for the first time in years.

    Now take a wild guess which majors had major starting wage cuts? Computer engineering and computer science.

    I saw one too, and it says the opposite of what you stated - CS has the largest increase.

    If you can find a link for your article maybe we can figure this out.