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."

Comments

Probably not even that

[Moraelin]

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.

Re: Who studies C.S.?

[Black Parrot]

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.