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The Changing Face of Computer Science
For another facet of CS education, HangingChad writes "MSNBC is carrying an interesting article on the changing demographics of IT workers and education. The upshot of the article is that older, working adults are taking IT related courses for advancement while comp sci continues to slide as a career choice in college, which the researchers in the article attribute to perception issues." From the article: "In fact, as the technology-dependent United States struggles to stay ahead of the Bangalores of the world, the Higher Education Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles found significantly fewer students at the college level -- 60 percent fewer -- wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000. "
attribute to perception issues
It's not a perception issue. It's a real issue.
90% of the people I know in the tech field have been laid off once in the last 4 years. I only know of one mid-sized technical company that hasn't laid off employees, and everyone there hates their job. I quit after 6 months.
Granted, this is just from my own perspective. But look, the tech job world is slowly creeping out of a multi-year massacre, now the tech world is being run by business people who don't know what an IP address is, but spend a million bucks because IBM said it was good (and promised a trip to Hawaii!)
Sure, there's opportunity here, but students are going to have a hard time competing with we techies with 6+ years experience.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
So I can see my career go to India or China?
Better off getting a degree in something useful and just knowing IT and CS. That's what I did, and I do development for a living (while it lasts); and I have a real degree to fall back on when my job gets outsourced.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
I think it is important to be accurate with with our language. IT is not CS. The terms are related, not interchangeable. A graduate of Devry does serve the same function as a graduate of MIT. Sometimes it is useful to talk about fruit, and sometimes we need to differentiate between apples and oranges in order to have an intelligent conversation.
So I wonder what companies where you've been where the engineers were 'immune', because, quite frankly, I've never seen 'immune' engineers. In fact, I've seen a lot of new 'contracting' engineers who would love to have been 'immune'.
You're joking I presume. Computer programming is a very highly paid job. And the job security is good, you have relatively rare skills that can get you a job anywhere in the world. You're at no more risk for outsourcing than anyone else. The more experience you have, the better jobs you can get, you can't say that about a lot of other industries.
Computer Science is bleck. I want to be a programmer, and CS does *not* teach you programming. I'm currently going for my bachelor's in Game Design and Development, which fits perfectly because I want to be a game programmer (not a "software engineer").
I think that could be part of the reason of declining numbers is there being alternatives out there now that will teach you programming as a base and theory secondary, rather than theory first, followed by programmer. I know 2nd and 3rd year CS majors that I could EASILY out-code and I'm only in my 5th month at Full Sail.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
While it's true that the drop in numbers of CS students can be attributed, at least in part, to the whole Web explosion and subsequent collapse, there are fears that the problems are rooted deeper than that.
I'm aware of some studies done at Glasgow which suggest that the drastic reduction in CS applicants year after year is a side-effect of the increased use of ICT in schools, and the increased teaching of ICT in schools. By the end of their secondary education, many kids think ICT is CS, they see ICT as boring, and as such never even consider CS as a potential career move.
It's important for the CS departments around the world to try and counter this trend*, as the computers of today aren't the same as yesteryear. Many efforts are ongoing, looking for new and interesting ways to teach Computing Science to schoolchildren, without which the currently fruitful field of CS could find itself drying up. Those with a natural predilection to coding/hardware/hacking/etc might never discover this interest on their parents' modern 3.xGHz P4 Dell with WinXP installed without some of these approaches. Compare kids brought up with modern PCs and parents afraid of what they've heard about viruses and hackers with kids like myself brought up in the 80's with BBC Micros and Atari STs to play with, for example.
Computing Science taught at a Secondary level, in the UK at least, is a joke, and not representative of modern CS at all. So we have ICT being pushed, and kids calling it Computing, and the ones who actually do take Computing at school not actually being given anything resembling a primer for a University level course. To solve the education problem is but one potential way of improving numbers entering CS programs.
* Some might argue that they shouldn't try to counter the trend and leave the natural selection of those interested enough in their computer to apply to go on to study CS -- then, only the truly interested and motivated fill a space on a CS program. It's wise point out that if people never get a chance to try, then we're throwing away so many potential great minds. Any good CS program should be good at weeding out the crap students from the good, though the quality of courses offered around the world is a different debate entirely.
After getting my bachelor's degree in CS, I worked for an interesting computer company for almost 2 years. But I simply didn't enjoy the job. Unlike what others are saying here about insane overtime, the hours usually weren't bad at all. My evenings and weekends were usually my own, but the days at work just weren't all that interesting.
I eventually went back to grad school and got a PhD, and am now on the tenure track. It's totally the opposite. Now I'm always insanely busy, evenings and weekends I'm just trying to keep up with teaching and research, and there's always something new coming up to deal with. But I absolutely love the job. Even though there's plenty of mundane stuff to deal with, in a very fundamental way I am mostly free to work on what I want to work on. I'm earning less money than I could, but I can't imagine switching to any other job. Also, even though I'm always busy, in some ways my schedule is way more flexible. Lots of times, if I feel I need to take an hour off in the afternoon, I can go ahead and do it, unless I have any meetings or office hours or class at that time; I don't need to check with anyone or tell anyone. Just as long as I do a good job with my teaching and research, I dictate my schedule, within some constraints.
Also, my research often consists of me just thinking/working on my own, in my own little world. But then I get my recommended daily allowance of social contact by teaching (I do really enjoy interacting with the students), and also by talking about my research with my graduate advisees or other faculty or students, etc.
When I switched from industry/CS to academia/Applied Math, I wasn't sure I'd succeed. I'm still not sure (I haven't reached tenure yet), but so far I don't at all regret the decision to try to do what I really want to do.
Right now I'm in the final throes of preparing a grant proposal, so just coming out of one of the high-stress periods. Now I move on to work on some papers, while waiting the 6+ months to hear back on the proposal...
There are some nasty academic politics to deal with, and other crap too (e.g. plagiarizing students, I hate it when they do that). Every job has its ups and downs. You just need to figure out which one has the downs you can tolerate, and the ups which make it all worthwhile. I'm lucky, I managed to find one for me. And fortunately, we're all different, otherwise we'd all be fighting over the same job!