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In UK, Computer Science Graduates the Least Employable
Rogerborg writes "The BBC reports that in the UK, computer science graduates are now the least employable of students leaving with a degree, 17% of them being unable to find a job within six months of graduation. Unsurprisingly, medics, educators and lawyers do better, but even much mocked communications and creative arts graduates are finding work more easily."
The fact that they only mention "jobs" without distinction for what job level or type, and can include arts and communication skills majors in the same statistics make me think it might be a more mundane aspect to it than "CS graduates are less employable."
More likely, some 17% of CS graduates are holding out for some programming job or higher, whereas an arts or women's studies graduate quickly comes to terms with getting a job as a receptionist or even a McDonald's job. It's not hard to notice that there are very few jobs as, say, an anthropologist studying the natives on some fabulous vacation island, or as some deluxe lobbyist for women's equality in Washington. And even if one still clings to that delusion in the long run, it's pretty obvious that another source of income will be needed until such a job becomes available.
Basically in fact a lot of the CS graduates are simply competing for a very specific slice of the employment market, with a much smaller pool of jobs. And most likely are actually _more_ employable on that slice, and no less employable than an arts or anthropology graduate in the kind of McDonald's jobs most of those will get.
And that is also not taking into account that a lot of CS and EE graduates actually have an even narrower slice in mind. E.g., most want a job making computer games, and precious few want one of those boring jobs that involve databases and java and writing unit tests. Or the elder gods forbid, maintaining a cobol program on some mainframe. Not only that has driven down wages in the games industry, but there still simply aren't half as many jobs as people who want them. A lot will spend those 6 months or a large part thereof, still hoping that Blizzard or Epic or Id will hire them, and inflate that unemployment number.
And then there are those who think they're so smart, that anything short of directly starting as senior architect and/or a 6 figure starting wage, is waay below them and in fact outright demeaning. 'Cause, you know, their mommy always told them they're so smart, and besides they wrote the most compact bubble-sort in college, _and_ had a submission to the obfuscated C contest too. So they know all about how your programs should be made, obviously. And they even used "emerge" to compile a Gentoo distro once, which makes them practically kernel hackers, right? Needless to say, some of those inflate the unemployment figure too.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
All the computer science uber-gods were mathematicians, physicists and engineers by training anyway.
That kind of follows naturally from the fact that CS didn't exist before they got their degrees and invented it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You may have gone to some piss pot ex-college bigging itself up by putting university in its title that only cared about the number of students on a course and not what they learned but I went to a proper Uni and we were *required* to learn formal proofs, predicate logic, set theory, database theory and microprocessor design amongst other things. If you failed those modules you were out. End of.
"The only thing a degree measures is whether you can sit in a room for three-four years and learn what is told to you."
So you think knowledge is a waste of time? An interesting point of view. What are you expecting , a degree that teaches you all the skills you require to go straight into a 6 figure salary? Get real. It gives you a grounding in various parts of CS, nothing more , and also a proof of ability to potential employers.
"Try explaining what spanning-tree algorithms do and why they can be used to avoid network loops... most CS grads can't once they have left their graph theory courses"
And I doubt you'd have much lucky explaining how gouraud shading works or how 3rd normal form differs from 2nd without looking it up first. So what? So you're clued up on one small part of CS because you work in that area. BFD. That doesn't make some sort of genius.