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.'"

Comments

ACM finals aren't correlated with general CS edu.

[keshto]

I participated in the ACM World finals when I was in college. Take it from me, the contest has exactly zero to do with the general state of CS education in a country. 3 kids are picked from each college. Each World finalist team is almost always very smart and quite capable of winning it. But the winners, of late, have overwhelmingly been Chinese or Russians or East Europeans. What differentiates them from the rest is that they actually prepare very hard for it-- with actuve faculty and school encouragement-- because they think it's a big deal. Most others just show up, expecting to have fun. You see, ACM finals require you to have a lot of practice in certain idiomatic programming problems and an ability to code map any new problem to one of the standards and code it up quickly. So you can be very smart and good at CS, but you might still lose.

ACM contest is fun but that doesn't mean that the winners are the world's best CS people. Nope.

Let's see.

[porkchop_d_clown]

1. People still smarting from the tech-bubble popping? Check.
2. New home machines much less accessible to proto-hackers than machines like the C64? Check.
3. Popular culture that denigrates "geeks" and "nerds" and makes it a social crime to get A's? Check.

And people are confused about a decline in the number of student engineers?

On the decline of CS students...

[bziman]

As a graduating computer science student (and long time professional), I was interviewed on this topic by George Mason University's student newspaper. I also wrote a little piece of my own on the declining number of CS students:

I have two perspectives on this -- one, as a veteran software engineer, and two as a computer science student.

I chose computer science because it seemed to make sense, given my job as a software engineer. However, many years of interviewing and hiring have shown me that a computer science degree is not necessarily going to be of any use to a software engineer. The position "software engineer" could mean any number of things. At my company, it requires a wide domain knowledge of different applications, almost none of which are addressed in GMU's computer science program. The computer science program teaches programming at the most rudimentary level, and is not even remotely adequate for a job that requires programming. However, a computer science degree does introduce important concepts that are necessary for understanding the underlying principles of working with computers (even if it isn't presented that way), and also teaches logic and problem solving, which are fundamental to any technical job.

As far as students not choosing computer science, I think there are a number of reasons. At GMU (and my previous university) I used to hear all the time, "oh, there's too much math required for a degree in computer science, I'm switching to a degree in information technology or business information systems, because there's not as much math." Also, when the Internet "bubble" burst, I think a stigma developed, where people don't think they'll be able to find a job in the computer industry when they graduate, or that they won't be able to get the kind of pay that they would like, or have job security.

I think it's a sweeping generalization to say that the US is lacking computer science students. What the US is lacking is individuals who are sincerely interested in developing their technical skills and solving interesting problems for their own sake, rather than people who are trying to find the easiest way into a high paying position that they care very little about -- having worked with both, I'd choose a British Literature major who does programming on her own, just for fun, over a Computer Science major who hates computers, but just wants a high paying job.

--brian

Re:Its Simple - Pay CS Majors More

[ranton]

Damn, where do you live? Im thinking of moving my company to your town if people actually only expect to make $20k a year doing programming work. We pay between $30k-$40k for relatively inexperienced programmers, and that is in a small town of about 30,000 people where you can buy a big house for $200k. I worked for $21k for about a year while my friend and I were starting up the company, but that was only because of the growth potential of the company we started.

You can surely make alot more than $25k if you really looked. For gods sake just find some kind of niche software, program it yourself in your spare time, and start selling it online. That is what I did, and I do not think that I am a rare genius. I didnt even have much freetime, but you can make $25k working part time at a factory while you are doing it.

Only people with no motivation or no skill make $25k a year for any extended period of time. You claim you have the skill, so it must be a lacking in motivation.

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