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The Continuing American Decline in CS
abb_road writes "America's recent dismal showing in the ACM Programming finals may be more than just a bad year; a BusinessWeek article suggests that the loss is indicative of the US's continuing decline in producing computer scientists. Despite the Labor Dept's forecast of a 40% increase in 'computer/math scientist' jobs, planned CS enrollments have plummeted from 3.7% in 2000 to just 1.1% last year. Other countries, particularly China, India and Eastern Europe, are working hard to pick up the slack, with potentially serious long-term effects for the US economy. From the article: 'If our talent base weakens, our lead in technology, business, and economics will fade faster than any of us can imagine.'"
More demand for me! I'm raising my rates!
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
Counterstrike is old.
The last attractive geek-slash-role model was Denise Richards. If they don't put Misha Barton, or Eva Longoria wearing glasses in front of a keyboard, pencil-behind-ear-or-in-hair-with-requisite-coffee -mug look, with hot grits, this decline will continue.
Those chicks in front of HW in 24 were hot, too. And they saved Bauer's ass. Well, most of them did.
Exactly!
I make $25k per year, and I have 34 years experience in the field including five of it teaching at GA Tech and also cowrite two textbooks used by several top level CS programs. I make more money per hour cutting grass on weekends. In 1989 I made over $200k that year, but all of the good jobs have just disappeared. We recently hired four new college graduates that start in a few weeks, and they're making between $18k and $22k per year. When a local plumber can make $40k year around here their first year, why go to school for 4 years for a (somewhat) difficult degree to make much less money? Or, they can go into an engineering field and pretty much be guaranteed to make at least $40k per year starting which is twice that locally for a CS grad.
Why not just hire an Indian MBA who not only speaks those languages 'like a native', but costs half as much?
You would probably find it easier to retain gainful employment if you would work on your spelling and grammar.
This is one reason I dropped from CS with only a year of school left. I graduate in the fall now with honors and dual BBAs in Finance and Economics. I will most likely pursue a MBA once I am finished. Most of my old friends from my Computer Science days poopoo my decision to go to a business major and can only talk about how much easier it is. I don't know about the other majors but at my university you have to have a very strong background in mathematics (specifically algebra/statistics/calculus) to make decent grades in the coursework. Heck, if you want an advanced degree in economics or finance most reputable programs require you take Calculus II and Linear Algebra before admittance. Some PhD programs also suggest a strong aquaintance with continuous time math.
All this reverence in this country for business degrees is going to really come back to bite us. Innovation and invention is on the decline in this country, and without the new things and the technological innovation, all those business people will be left with nothing to manage, because eventually with all the creation going on overseas, enventually overseas companies will take all the companies (and their management) with them.
We don't need "creation jobs" in this country. We'll be better off when we're all managers and lawyers. With all the illegal Mexicans in the country, we'll just set up enormous lawn-care and landscaping corporations, with the illegals at the bottom doing all the work, and all the Americans in complex layers of bureaucracy managing everything, and then the lawyers will handle all the landscaping megacorporations suing each other.
Browsers! Hell, when I started we didn't even have binary. Binary is for hippies! Ones and zeroes holy bejeebers, we would have been glad for it. Try writing a whole compiler in unary. We had nothing but zeroes! And don't even talk to me about self documenting code.
And Jolt and Bawls, you little sissy men. We were lucky to have water. We would have to go down to the river and make our own durn water. We'd grab two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and smash them together. Took forever to make a pot of coffee. Starbuck's! Sipping your latte...