Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

US CompSci Enrollment Leaps For 5th Straight Year

Posted by timothy on from the they-heard-about-the-snacks-and-dancing dept.

dcblogs writes "The number of new undergraduate computing majors in U.S. computer science departments increased more than 29% last year, a pace called 'astonishing' by the Computing Research Association. The increase was the fifth straight annual computer science enrollment gain, according to the CRA's annual survey of computer science departments at Ph.D.-granting institutions. The survey also found that more students are earning a Ph.D., with 1,929 degrees granted — an 8.2% increase over the prior year. The pool of undergraduate students represented in the CRA survey is 67,850. Of that number, 57,500 are in computer science."

6 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Degree Mills by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is because colleges are increasingly becoming degree mills and focusing on quantity over quality. Previously, only the cream of the crop would go to college, but now everyone is going to college, college degrees are becoming more and more worthless, and colleges are lowering standards to accommodate all the new imbeciles.

    1. Re:Degree Mills by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's why you go to a college that actually has standards. There are schools where that is the case, then there are schools that demand a bit more, and you'd be nuts to suggest that the people doing hiring haven't figured out which degrees are valuable and which aren't. At least as far as large employers.

    2. Re:Degree Mills by Niris · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Depends on your definition of standards. I go to a local State college because, well, it's local and I can afford it. If you're paying your own way, there's not a lot of chances for you to go to a very high end university for computer science. I am looking at alternatives for when (if) I get my masters, but I may just end up staying here because of that same exact reason.

      What's really important for a computer science graduate isn't necessarily the school, but their own independent projects. While my school isn't the best, it does provide enough information to lay down a foundation for further self study, and those of us that are smart enough to take the initiative to learn additional platforms (Android, embedded systems and robotics, etc.) and build portfolios are doing way better than the others who are just in the major because they 'like the Internet' or heard that it pays well. There's a huge degree of separation between myself, who has just been offered an internship as an Android development intern for a large media corporation, and a couple of my friends/drinking buddy classmates who haven't developed their abilities outside of class projects that were required to receive a passing grade.

  2. Great News! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hopefully they'll be smart and move to India so they can get a job in the U.S. on an H1B1.

  3. Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by rsilvergun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    who in their right mind would go into CS? Or are these foreign students? I did hear that we've got a lot of them encouraged to come here because they pay a lot more than their local counterparts.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  4. Re:Get a EE degree instead by degeneratemonkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Someone has an awfully fucking large ax to grind, don't they? Let's see an EE build Google Maps from scratch with his cute little books about hash tables and UNIX Networking and shitty FEM code scrapped together in FORTRAN. Just pick up some quality books on the theory and application of ____________ and you can build incredibly complex, massive-scale information systems using the power of numerical analysis and computational fluid dynamics.

    It's not apples and oranges, it's apples and fucking Jupiter.