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Computer Science Major Is Cool Again
netbuzz sends along a piece from Network World reporting that the number of computer science majors enrolled at US universities increased for the first time in six years, according to new survey data out this morning. The Taulbee Study found that the number of undergraduates signed up as computer science majors rose 8% last year. The survey was conducted last fall, just as the economic downturn started to bite. The article notes the daunting competition for positions at top universities: Carnegie Mellon University received 2,600 applications for 130 undergrad spots, and 1,400 for 26 PhD slots. "...the popularity of computer science majors among college freshmen and sophomores is because IT has better job prospects than other specialties, especially in light of the global economic downturn. ... The latest unemployment numbers for 2008 for computer software engineers is 1.6%... That's beyond full employment. ... The demand for tech jobs may rise further thanks to the Obama Administration's stimulus package, which could create nearly 1 million new tech jobs."
What a spin piece.
CS majors had plummeted to near extinction over the past decade.
Given the market is still there, the stats had nowhere to go but up out of sheer law of averages.
Additionally, major does not necessarily mean field. People might be going into the major to gain greater understanding of the tools used by even the burger flippers today.
The fact that it's math and logic heavy makes it look better on a resume than east asian studies.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
That's because economist-bureaucrats have defined a certain level of unemployment as "full employment". They figure you're always going to have some people who are out of work... so they don't count that many of them.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Full employment is defined as around 5% unemployment. This is made up of frictional unemployment, people between jobs or looking for their first one, structural unemployment, people whose skills are obsolete, and cyclical unemployment, unemployment due to the ebb and flow of the business cycle.
All your base are belong to Wii.
Data mining and databases aren't really the same thing (although mining is often performed on databases). Data mining is actually pretty similar to AI: it involves tasks such as classification, clustering, and feature extraction that require constructing statistical models and learning about the dataset in question. The techniques involve more linear algebra and statistics than many CS undergrads will take. Moreover, mining isn't explicitly demanded in industry (certainly not at the level that programming is, at least). I suspect most people are unaware of it.
You can't get through a single news item or political speech on the subject of the current job market without the reporter/politician saying something about how people need to be retrained for jobs in "health care" or "high tech", because that's where the jobs will be. Of course this doesn't mean that we'll have a surplus of job openings in IT... only that most other fields (especially manufacturing and farming) are contracting like an old red supergiant.
(The only field that really looks good for the foreseeable future is nursing. With the Boomers already starting into their 60s and lifespans reaching into the medically-dependent 90s, there is going to be a persistent need for lots of nurses in the decades to come, and that's something that simply cannot be "off-shored". How we'll pay them all a living wage is a good question, but at least they'll have jobs.)
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Software Engineering is actually more of a Business Study then a Technical Study. That said it is pritty darn useful. While a lot of people know how to program very few are able to make an application.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Interesting statistic in that I am about to get laid off (BSCS with 15+ years of experience), along with four other programmers (two already gone), two software QA, a manager, and two tech support people. I've already interviewed with one company over a week and a half ago and haven't heard back yet. I heard through an acquaintance that the company's HR was overwhelmed with the number of applicants. It feels kind of like the government's inflation rate statistic; the annual retported number has been real low for the last decade in spite of very noticebale changes at the checkouts.
Um, if 1.6% or more of all CS people are unemployed, I think it's weird to say that's "beyond full employment." How is it that you can even be beyond full employment? Weird! LOL
In economics full employment is defined as an unemployment rate of between 2 and 7%.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Do yourself a favor, go find the richest, most Republican suburb you can, and find its mall. Time how long it takes from stepping out of your car to finding Army recruiters. Move towards the urban center and repeat this experiment every five miles.
Feel free to stop when you can't make it to the mall doors anymore. Then look around, and look at the economic conditions people there live in. Ask yourself whether you feel "desperation" or "patriotism".
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Considering where the world economy is currently headed, I wouldn't worry that much about outsourcing. China's economy is most likely going to rise relative to the US economy. So engineers in China will keep getting more expensive, and engineers in America will keep getting cheaper.
Right, someone just "made it up" after decades of scientific study.
The idea here is that "full employment" is the condition where there's a job available for everyone who wants to work at the prevailing wage. There's still unemployment in that situation, because it takes time to fill positions. If you're given 2 week's notice that your position is being eliminated, and you get multiple leads and go on several interviews in that time (as happened in my last gig), and you know what your new job is by you last day on the current one, you're still going to be out of work for a while. This is the "frictional cost" of changes. More employers hiring can't possibly reduce this.
"Beyond full employment" means there are more jobs than workers. Yes, people are still unemployed for periods beween jobs even when there are more jobs than workers. No, that's not a vast government conspiracy.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When you are doing reading corporate propaganda from a lobbyist group. You might want to take a look at comments from real IT pros:
http://techtoil.org/wiki/doku.php?id=articles:news_and_commentary
A BSCS is almost as difficult as a degree in engineering, but it's as worthless as a degree in Liberal Arts.
Look at the job ads, employers don't give a damn about your silly BSCS, they want experience - many years of professional, verifiable, recent experience, and in many different technologies, and no jobs have the same requirements.
Maybe there are few slashdot readers, who don't live in caves, who may have noticed that practically ever major tech employer has been laying workers by the thousands - especially US IT workers. And yet you are going to believe this corporate sponsored bullshit? You have my pity.