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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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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) .
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.
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.
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
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
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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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.
I'd say the best senior management for technical projects are the ones who were writing code 10-20 years ago. Someone who majored in business will never fully understand the intricacies of development. I have seen many a project in my company go askew with project managers who thought they could just foist deadlines on their team ignoring developer estimates of how long they would like to take to develop a system.
The result? The good developers quit and you're left with a serious brain drain and cruddy product. But hey at least you finished on schedule.
Also going from a technical career to senior management would put you at the high ends of both compensation curves and lets face it - the vast majority of senior management functions are learned through experience not a degree.
No dating prospects? Get on eHarmony and meet an elementary school teacher. They have the same problems finding dates that we do. And they're educated, intellectual, dedicated. Attractive. It worked for me - I married one last year.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
Your dichotomy is inherently fasle, not to mention Comp Sci != IT, stupid.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
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.