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Computer Science Enrollment Up 10% Last Fall
dcblogs writes "Computer science enrollments increased 10% last fall, according to the Computer Research Association. At the peak of the dot-com era, the average enrollment in computer science departments was 398, but by 2007 it had declined in half. Enrollments now average 253 students per department. Enrollments have now increased in the last three years. The CRA's annual survey tracks students enrolled at Ph.D.-granting institutions. Compared to the dot-com era, the interest today in computer science may be 'a more reasoned response to a field that seems positioned at the hub of just about every national priority.'"
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Computer Science drop out rate will increase.
After seeing what Goldman Sachs can do with a computer, who wouldn't sign up?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
... befor these newly minted CS people? It seems that every company doesn't want anything to do with recent grads or those that want to change fields/jobs within it (i.e. moving up from say help desk or QA) .
... I don't mean to sound negative, but I expect a number of these aren't people who are genuinely interested in computer science, more the kind of person who wants to write an iPhone app and retire a millionaire within 5 years...
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
If you were in college when the dot com era happened and graduated after the bust, you were in worse shape than people who went straight to work out of highschool. The reverse is true now. Since the job market is awful, it is good to be in school now.
God spoke to me.
How many are actually studying computer science and how many are actually in hopped up vocational programs?
Universities are still teaching computer science, much to the chagrin of people like this AC who apparently thinks that the degree should be a hopped up vocational program.
Personally, if employers want votech students they should say so and stop demanding a degree. If they want a degree, they should stop whining about how the degree isn't votech.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'm not going to say that a CS degree is worthless, but pretty much all of college is for employment.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Nothing wrong with a good vocational program as long as it is properly structured and teaches useful skills. You could say "and how many are hopped up degree programs". Looking back at my degree, having done education in both a vocational and a, whatever the opposite word is, standard degree format, I find I have learned considerably more through vocational methodology. My coursework marks have always been consistently better than my exam results. Shame about my English skills, but I'm an engineer not an author.
A $100,000 marketing campaign will land you far more jobs than a $100,000 degree. If you are only in college to find a job later in life, you're doing it wrong.
I started my Master's about 18 months ago after graduating with a Bachelor's in 1995. Why? Cash. Simply put, after a bit over 15 years in the industry you can't advance too far from "Senior SysAdmin" without a Master's. Oh, there are some possibilities but the cold hard fact is that to get anywhere fast it's the way to go, just like having the Bacehlor's kept me ahead of the competition during the .COM days. Sure, I didn't make outrageous money but I've been very comforable since I started working and that's no bad thing.
Did I learn anything then or am I learning anything now? Not anything directly useful on the job, no. But that's not the point of school anyway. You're there to hone your thought process and take in ideas and points of view you otherwise wouldn't encounter. Science knows, I'd never have taken Java last year if they didn't make me do it for the degree.
Bottom line: We need more IT professionals that are... IT *professionals*. Too often I've interviewed people that can't write or speak professionally (no, I don't care about accents!), or are just plain sloppy either in their manner of dress, their grasp of their skills, or (worst) their grasp of what work is about. The money is out there to be made, but getting the right person for an IT job in a financial firm is often a long process. A degree in CS is a good starting point and if nothing else lays a foundation for becoming a professional.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Unemployment in the IT field is under 5%, even with the economic down turn. There are jobs for new grads.
For example, the company I work for is currently looking for a new DBA (preferably senior), a new BI guy, a new SharePoint person, and likely 2 more business/IT analysts. We'd take college grads for any of them but the DBA, and possibly for the DBA if it's the right kind of person.
Experience is important, but we've got work that needs doing and we're not going to waste money waiting for the perfect hire when we can get a skilled person in and spin them up.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
After seeing what Goldman Sachs can do with a computer, who wouldn't sign up?
The computers (and the people who programmed them) were just patsies. It was the lawyers and lobbyists that let Goldman do what it did.
I think it matters on your goal. If you want skills for a job, go to a vocational school and get a tech degree.
If you want to be doing non-line of business work, go to a university and get a comp sci degree.
But there are a LOT more jobs that demand CS tech knowledge than CD university knowledge. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just the market.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
positioned at the hub of just about every national priority
like plumbers and janitors, right?
Actually, this really isn't a joke in this context. I can definitely see history repeating itself. I joined the roster of CS students during a period when Computer Science was suddenly a hot topic only to find that, come graduation, those hot jobs all dried up. I guess I should put my umbrella up for the coming mass of inexperienced job applicants. The buzz is a trap, I tell you.
Really we need more categories.
+1 incoherent
+1 too many ellipses
+1 imaginative use of mixed case
+1 disturbing
+1 peculiar
+1 could be charlie sheen
How many are actually studying computer science and how many are actually in hopped up vocational programs?
Don't forget option 3, which is the "IT" department in the business department, as opposed to "CS" which is in the math department.
Amusingly the report is about "CS" enrollment, which is all about analysis of algorithms, Knuth, and Scheme/LISP, but all the comments on /. so far are about "IT" jobs, which are all about SQL, TPS reports, and the "COBOL of the New Millennium aka Java"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Enrollments are up because unemployment is up. Pure and simple. People lose a job, they go back and get retrained. Enrollment is up across the board - not just in Comp Sci.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
CS is the study of discrete math and algorithms, not writing code. We didn't have a single class during my undergrad on writing code - things like C and Java were used to describe algorithms but we were expected to learn the languages on our own time, if we didn't already know them.
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Computer Science is still a hot field, regardless of the current dot-com bubble. People will always need software engineers, website developers, database administrators, and general IT guys.
Not just that, they should articulate what it really is that they are looking for so schools can stop shooting wildly.
I suspect the problem is that they don't know; that they want "someone that is good". To someone skilled in the arts of Human Resources, this can only mean good degree from a good school.
The problem is not vocational programs in general, it's vocational programs that masquerade as academic degrees. These typically end up combining all of the disadvantages of both: they're light on theory and don't teach things that are current in industry. A lot of people would be better off doing vocational courses, but only if they're good vocational courses. Calling them degrees devalues both good academic qualifications and good vocational courses.
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Wake me up when these 10% actually complete their CS degree.
I'm surprised about this statistic as well as happy. I was pretty much sure CS and other science work was completely written off by US students as nonviable. After all, it's easier to go into investment banking or management consulting, and the course load is much easier for a bigger payoff.
Some people have posted sentiments along the lines of -- "is this actual CS being studied, or a checkbox for an IT job?" Being in IT, I can say that having a background in a science or engineering discipline (doesn't matter which one) is a huge asset. The abiltiy to logically break down a system or problem, analyze dependencies and troubleshoot separates a really good IT guru from the guy who just got out of a certification class. (If you have this ability naturally, then great...but most people need to actually practice on something to get good at it, hence the degree.) This also can lead to more job satisfaction -- I enjoy my job because my company gives me interesting problems to solve, partially because they know I'll be able to deal with the "interesting" stuff better than someone who can just follow directions. I have a non-CS background (chemistry,) but the same scientific, logical reasoning applies. For example, when ýou're trying to figure out a poorly documented application with no access to the developers or support, and something goes wrong, this kicks in. Someone who just took a certification class will (may!) know how to drive the product's GUI or CLI, and often changes six things at a time in the vague hope that something will work. A science-trained individual is much more likely to methodically approach troubleshooting, and understand how what they do possibly affects connected systems. There are huge exceptions in both cases, and I've seen them, but it's a good rule of thumb that someone with a science/engineering background is going to be a better candidate for a job. Maybe my judgement is a little clouded since I'm in systems integration, where this skillset is even more important to have. Anything outside of a formulaic procedure, or a situation where you actually have to come up with the procedure is better staffed by someone who can deal with the higher-level work.
One interesting side effect of this is that if enrollment in good CS programs gets high enough, employers will no longer be able to sell the "we can't find qualified Americans to do our jobs." Like I said, I only agree with them to a point -- there's a lot of bozos in our field that don't belong and are better suited to other professions. However, there are a lot of good, qualified people out there...they just don't work cheap and are usually employed unless a major layoff/restructuring leaves you without a seat.
Point taken on that, I understand what you're getting at now. Thanks.
Sounds like they also taught you a little bit about necromancy.
I'd recommend a minor in written communication while I was at it.
in 2 years we'll have a 10% increase in CS dropouts. So many kids are signing up with little programming and virtually no CS theory under their belts and institutions are nothing if not overjoyed to take their money. Soon, however, they become shocked into heavy schedules of general electives once the learn the dirty truth of what CS really is.
Do they have stats on foreign enrollment vs. US Citizen enrollment? Most of my esteemed coworkers are from other countries; I'd sure like to see more Americans picking up those high salaries. I do find it hilarious though that due to the weak dollar, my foreign coworkers discovered to their dismay that their bitchin' high salaries don't buy nearly as much back home as they once did. Ha!
Heh...
Mr. Big: "So, Mr. APK, I see here on your resume that you've got plenty of +5 moderations on Slashdot... We could really use a man like you here..."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
How many are actually studying computer science and how many are actually in hopped up vocational programs?
Don't forget option 3, which is the "IT" department in the business department, as opposed to "CS" which is in the math department.
Amusingly the report is about "CS" enrollment, which is all about analysis of algorithms, Knuth, and Scheme/LISP, but all the comments on /. so far are about "IT" jobs, which are all about SQL, TPS reports, and the "COBOL of the New Millennium aka Java"
The reason for this is that unless you are in a city or town that has a good CS undergrad program the private industry won't know how to tell the difference. So a lot of times if you get a good CS degree you'll still be doing "IT". This isn't entirely to blame on the managers, a lot of times it is the fault of HR that don't know how to tell the difference.
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Also:
+ 1 Overly Dramatic
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
APK is a travesty generator? Does it script ./ to auto-reply to posts? Its kinda funny, and I wonder if we could replace Charlie Sheen with a similar program...
When I watched Watson on Jeopardy!, I realized we had entered the post-Microsoft era: Where technologies and techniques that were common in the '70s would be brought back to prominence and we can go forward. It is the dawning of a new age in Computer Science.
B.S. in Computer Science, 1976, Department of Engineering, University of Illinois
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
If that's your thing-- go ahead.
Or you can get some computer courses and a business degree. Graduate earlier, start lower pay but end up higher pay, not work holidays, have more parties and dating prospects, play golf with the bosses.
IT is viewed as a sucking hole of money by every company.
IT people are viewed as fair to work on sundays and holidays 12 hours a day without extra compensation.
If you are in a publicly held company- you can't write a line of code for production without a non-programmer approving it. You'd be amazed how many things they view as unneeded.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
test
My guess is that some of that boost is coming from the thriving mobile industry.
A good chunk of those new students are secretly thinking of making the next angry birds.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
Personally, if employers want votech students they should say so and stop demanding a degree. If they want a degree, they should stop whining about how the degree isn't votech.
And if they want a pliable class of debt slaves, they should keep doing what they are now.
Do you think engineering is "vocational?"
"Algorithm Science," which has been misnamed "Computer Science" in the US, is really a little-needed and little-appreciated discipline. What students want is "Software Engineering." This is also what industry wants. So why are all schools still teaching Algorithm Science, while only a few teach what everyone in that major actually wants?
Incompetence by school administrators. Cut computer science departments to a fraction of their size. Stick them under Mathematics. Then start teaching engineering. Algorithm Science is only a tiny fraction of what Software Engineering is. Focusing on it for four years is insanity for most people.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Every programming job I've had has been more vocational tech than computer theory. Every programming job I've had required a bare minimum of a computer science degree.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
I suppose a large ham like yourself can't help but feed the trolls.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Some of us went to college to learn how to raise funds for our $100,000, marketing campaign.
You know why I'm having more fun than you are? Because my ego doesn't rest on refuting what random people on Slashdot have to say about my reputation. The fact that I can trigger a full page response from a single line post is evidence that you are being trolled very effectively indeed.
That said, I am wasting both our times with this, and I admit I'm tarnishing my character by engaging in it. I beg your forgiveness for intruding on your life of mighty accomplishments.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
"...become a Mech E. Talk about central to all the problems we currently face...
Steve Jobs: Make it thinner!
M.E.: But, but...
Steve Jobs: *smacks M.E.* Thinner, I said!
I don't know, what do you think is useful? I'm currently teaching a module with the title 'High Performance Computing in C/C++' at the local university. For the coursework they have to write an arbitrary-length integer library in C. They have to follow a set of coding standards, including adequate comments and doc comments in the interface. The final programming assignment is marked entirely based on the performance of their code. I've gone through a load of potential bottlenecks in code, including things like cache churn in SMP systems. The performance is going to be measured on one of their lab machines, which has a multicore processor (so a good solution will need to implement some form of concurrency). They've been shown things like OpenCL / CUDA, MPI, OpenMP, and various concurrency models and languages / frameworks, including a things like Erlang and MapReduce.
Is this stuff useful? My customers certainly seem to think it's useful, judging by how much they pay me. This is a third-year course, and I'd hate to teach it if the students didn't already have a solid grounding in complexity theory and computer architecture. Fortunately, they do (or, at least, seem able to pretend that they do).
Oh, and you might be surprised at what counts as useful. I thought learning Haskell was pretty irrelevant from an industrial perspective when I was a student. Last week I was approached by an investment bank wanting to hire Haskell programmers (I turned them down - it's not just that they're basically evil, it's that they're the kind of low-grade evil that completely lacks style).
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Finance may be more secure a career (in the USA). It's harder to offshore due to security concerns, and it may not change as fast as IT with its New Language/Framework of the Month every-time you sneeze.
Obama just talked me into finance.
Table-ized A.I.
Do we have programs called "sailing science" or "watchmaking science" or "business science" or "Weaving science" or "Whale oil science Computer science may deal with electronic gadgets but that no longer qualifies it as a science anymore than all the other things I mentioned. All of those were cutting edge endeavors at some point in the last 1000 years. now they are vocations or hobbies like "or "interior design sceince" or "hotel administration science".
Their is a teeny tiny bit of science left in computer science: e.g. exascale and visualization. Writing new languages or scripting or even worrying about how to organize and cache a data bases is not science.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I never said they weren't still teaching computer science - only that the term 'computer science' is used for a wide variety of disparate degree programs.
A computer science degree is about the method of thinking. I know multiple non CS majors who program just fine every day at my job but when a discussion begins about the finer points of efficiency (which all development projects grapple with at some point or another) these people become suddenly quiet.
You may not need to write a intensive proof as to why an algorithm is efficient/inefficient in your career but being able to look at one and just tell whether or not it's an efficient solution (by leveraging the theory taught you) is important. Additionally completing a CS degree typically should say that a person is capable of learning multiple technologies and languages usually with little to no help as most CS programs will stop teaching practical development after the first year and focus on theory - leaving students to learn the practical aspect themselves. This is a huge pro on the old pro con list when comparing two potential employees.
It's the same conceit that leads them to call themselves "$X Engineers" rather than "Programmers".
You're funny.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
That said, that article is all about starting salaries. Business doesn't have a ceiling like engineering does. Then again, potentially high-paying fields like law and business don't have much of a floor either, whereas engineering is a pretty safe bet.
I think you are pointing out a flaw in the vocational programs more so than a pro in the university program.
For instance, I took a fair number of classes from a tech school (and many from a university). At the tech school, while we focused very much on work-level knowledge (in VB.Net, HTML, ASP.Net, C#, Java, PHP, etc...) we also had classes where we were working with pointers, linked lists, and sorts.
So, if you are talking about those types of efficiencies NOT being taught at your local tech college, I would seriously complain to the faculty.
Conversely, if you are developing a LOB application and you are dealing with performance issues, you are likely doing it wrong. Users can only see so much data at a time, if you are trying to find efficient ways to have users interact with huge data sets, there is likely a better way to do it. One that has a significantly better user experience. Data paging, lazy loading, filtering, searching, something. We don't go to Google, see all trillion entries, and try to filter it down. And any LOB developer that is attacking the performance issues of trying to sort a trillion items for a user interface is doing just that.
On the other hand, many universities still teach low level classes. I remember the old "but can he write his own compiler?" jokes. And here's the deal, in 99.999999% of all LOB jobs, you will never, ever, come anywhere remotely close to having to do that ever again. Yes, it does require a type of thinking, but it is the samy 'type of thinking' that can be pulled out of any number of languages given a specific project, as demonstrated by the other 4 years of college ;) BUT! Knowledge of low level architecture is critical in some jobs. I can't imagine even thinking about getting into hardware design with out that knowledge, or any low level development.
In my personal experience, when it comes to hiring college grads, I've almost always had better luck with tech school grads than university grads. Not because they are better or smarter, but because they typically don't come with a chip on their shoulder and a "my professor says..." record on repeat. We still absolutely need them, just not necesarily for LOB jobs.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Yep. My wife already has an undergrad and a grad degree in soft science, and is now back as an undergrad getting a computer science degree. Why? Because where we work, 23 year old recent computer science grads make more than those of us plugging away for the past 20 years as tech writers. It's not unfair, if you think I'm complaining. They actually have a skill that is harder to learn and provides more value to a software company. You can axe the tech writers in tight times, but you can't axe developers because nobody else can do their work.
It also depends where you live. Since a lot of people aren't willing to relocate to urban areas, they miss out on high paying tech jobs.
Most of the people who use PHP and SQL and python don't go around calling themselves computer scientists, in my experience. Graduate students and professors in comp sci are not making webpages and app games.. Heck, many of [the professors] couldn't; some haven't touched an actual computer in years. Many could probably more accurately be called mathematicians than scientists, if there's a difference. They deal with the theoretical bounds of computation, data storage and compression, encryption, solving or reducing the complexity of hard problems, inventigating the NP-complete problem, etc, etc.
IOW, what you're doing is not like pointing out that there's a difference between nuclear engineering/scientist, it's more like saying that nuclear science doesn't exist. When you get down to it, after all, it's all just banging atoms around with accelerators, you know.
This is also what industry wants. So why are all schools still teaching Algorithm Science, while only a few teach what everyone in that major actually wants?
Because colleges are not trade schools. If industry is so hot for it, then they can damn well pay for it instead of demanding that people take out loans to study it. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You are implying that universities should close their colleges of engineering. You're cracked. Out of your skull. Completely nuts.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Nope, I'm responding to the idea that colleges should be producing what industry demands. If they want it so damn much, they can start training people again. Bunch of greedy whores, the lot of them.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
On what planet did companies routinely pay for engineering degrees? I'd like to send my kids to your world when they're ready for college.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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The problem is with that word "computer". Think of it as Computation Science, or Computing Science, or Algorithm Science. That's the core of CS. It's such a fundamental tool, that maybe it ought to be called simply Computation, same as Math is just Math and not Mathematical Science or some such.
Classic mathematics mostly avoids algorithms. They do the simple stuff like grade school multiplication and greatest common denominator, but not much more. Newton's method and Simpson's Rule is about their limit. In Calculus, they teach all sorts of techniques, from rote memorization of the differentials of particular functions such as sine, to limits and transforms. But straight mathematicians tend to shy away from the numeric methods. They use them, but they don't program them. Fire up the math software for that. By hand on a test, you can't very well bang out 100 iterations of the Jacobi method, or do piecewise interpolation with cubic splines in order to make a nice, smooth, easily handled function from an arbitrary set of dozens of points. Something like Matrix Chain Multiplication is never seen in pure math.
EE also dodges issues with algorithms. They're quite happy to apply calculus to analog circuitry, but making programs to use on digital logic is not their thing.
It was this recognition that algorithms do indeed have properties, characteristics, and most of all powers that cannot be adequately handled with pure math, that is, with classical formulae, that lead to CS being recognized as a discipline of its own.
Algorithms are core, but hardly all of CS. Language is not science, you say? You could not be more wrong. Never looked into Automata Theory, have you? And you take a pot shot at databases too? Lot of specialized research, scientific research, in there.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"