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."

36 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Career with no Prospect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, it is astonishing considering how many jobs are available.

    1. Re:Career with no Prospect by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 2

      It is, if you're under 30 there are plenty of jobs. But as soon as your salary reaches a certain point, manage or panhandle.

    2. Re:Career with no Prospect by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 2

      It is, if you're under 30 there are plenty of jobs. But as soon as your salary reaches a certain point, manage or panhandle.

      I've been hearing that shit since the early years of my career.

      I'm 43, making an upper-middle class salary (not counting benefits), doing nothing but coding and software engineering. Management is not anywhere in my plans (not in the near future). I have a colleague in his 50's doing a killing as a contractor (over $100/hr, with O/T.) Others in their 40's and 50's are still doing predominantly technical jobs doing a killing in terms of salaries with no shortage of opportunities. And I'm not talking coding in some safe-COBOL-niche cave, but doing a variety of things, from Machine Learning/Big Data to device driver development.

      Jobs are plenty in systems and/or application development spaces (and to a lesser, but still substantial degree in IT/infrastructure) ... if you have the technical know-how. Age is rarely an issue. Now, if you (the generic "you", not one in particular) are an easily replaceable, cookie-cutter, copy-n-paste programmer, your job prospects are dim, even if you are in the vitality of your 20's.

    3. Re:Career with no Prospect by czth · · Score: 2

      Sure. Update your resume and start pounding the pavement (make use of any contacts you might have first, then hit the usual online boards). Or strike out on your own (maybe take a few friends with you, depending on what you signed when you started) and build web apps as a contractor.

      Fact remains that your best chance at a pay (and maybe responsibility) increase is to switch employers.

      If you're set on staying where you are, the same kinds of things that you would do to make yourself look good on a resume (e.g., enumerate your accomplishments in terms that can be seen to relate to a company's bottom line - not necessarily in a dollars and cents-specific manner, but in way that makes clear what you built or directed and how you took responsibility) can also help you when talking to your manager.

      If you're strictly looking for a raise, first do some research about prevailing pay rates (check ads; check GlassDoor) - if you're underpaid, you have an easier case (you can also try talking to friends at work - good friends, as pay tends to be something people don't talk about and management encourages not talking about it for obvious reasons). Either way, you want to present a case that has something for them, too. Saying "I think I deserve a raise" doesn't help much and creates defensiveness. Better to come to an agreement about a goal. Ramit Sethi has some great advice in How to Hack Your Day Job (short article and a couple of videos).

      If you're looking for a promotion, and not so much the money, you still want to proceed along the same lines, but first consider whether the company has openings at the level you're looking at. If you want to go from, say, developer to senior developer, that's likely not a problem since the company defines what "senior developer" means, and you can help yourself by examining others at that level and trying to do what they do as well as you can within the constraints of your present position. However, moving to a lead/manager position will require an opening. For any promotion, try to take on more responsibility where you are - volunteer to write requirements documents, coordinate builds, create tools and processes that streamline or automate poor processes. Keep a log of these accomplishments, even if it's just in a text file, so you can present specific reasons when discussing advancement.

      A book I'm reading now called Dinosaur Brains (Albert J. Bernstein) has some interesting observations about office politics and psychology and it may be helpful to you. Avoiding "office politics" isn't really an option, but you can participate on your own terms. Seth Godin's books—Lynchpin (on being indispensable), in particular, in your case, and perhaps The Dip—will also be helpful and help you marshal your arguments and perhaps give you a push to move forward or move on to somewhere that can better use your talents.

    4. Re:Career with no Prospect by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      I am 45 and really good at what I do (building web apps), but I'm not good at self-promotion. I'm pretty quiet and just keep my nose to the grindstone to avoid office politics. Any advice on getting _recognition_ for being good at what I do?

      Look for another career. This career is for highly outgoing people who are really good at self-promotion. There's a reason the term "brogrammer" has risen so much in the last decade. As you've probably found, you can get by pretty well when you're younger based solely on your ability to perform, without having to be really good at socialiaing and promoting yourself, but after you reach a certain age, age discrimination sets in and if you're the quiet type who isn't good at tooting your own horn like all the brogrammers, then you're screwed.

  2. 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.

    3. Re:Degree Mills by TheSeatOfMyPants · · Score: 2

      This is where knowing which school someone's degree(s) came from. The top-tier universities in particular are actually harder to get into than ever to the high number of international & American students vying for acceptance. It's the community colleges & generic state/private schools that are being forced to lower their standards, and that's not because the students are stupid -- it's because so many are being pushed through the K-12 system with abilities that wouldn't have gotten them past the third grade 20 years ago.

      That's speaking both as a 30something aware I wouldn't get into my high-ranked alma mater if my 18-year-old self applied today, and as someone that tutored & the graded papers of local community college freshmen in the mid-late 90s & 2002. The kids in the 90s basically needed help editing their papers or other college-level stuff; the ones in '02 were barely fucking literate despite being white middle-class native English speakers without learning disabilities, and the instructor told me it had been like that for 2-3 years by then, but that the dean said we couldn't flunk anyone unless they turned *nothing* in.

      That said, the main reason for going to college isn't supposed to be job training for the elite -- it's to learn the many things that result in a well-informed citizen and aren't available by just hanging around one's hometown or just traveling for a year or two. That's why our government decided to begin educating our population rather than leaving it to the elite, why it's traditional to have students take courses in multiple fields unrelated to what they *think* they'll want to do with their lives for at least the first 2 years, and why a hell of a lot of students at the good schools find their viewpoints or awareness of what's really going on shifting broadly during that time period.

      --
      Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
    4. Re:Degree Mills by BrianRoach · · Score: 2

      The companies worth working for have engineers do the interviewing and hiring. HR schedules things and does the paperwork.

    5. Re:Degree Mills by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Worst case, you take a couple of less than stellar jobs at low pay as you build a bit of a rep, then move up or around. After a few years, your accomplishments are more important than your education, anyway. A 4.0 from MIT might help when securing an interview for Google but most places are more concerned about your ability to reliably deliver. If you can save costs, be it through math, engineering, or intuition, at the same time, most places will be glad to have you. You won't be a rockstar but, unless you like a startup culture, it's not a big deal.

      If you don't have the prestigious degree, don't worry about it. Instead, work on business skills (e.g., accounting, taxes, business management, networking, and leadership). Straight out of school in 2003 (less-than-prestigious university), I landed a contract as a software tester. Here's a list of my fuck-ups.
      - I didn't know the difference between a contractor and an employee. I just knew that it didn't mean stocking shelves at Home Depot at night for minimum wage.
      - I didn't know what I was worth and it may have cost me the job; I was second choice and given the position after first choice bailed.
      - I didn't know what I was worth, so I was underpaid.
      - I didn't incorporate straight away, how to keep books, or what could be written off. The result is that I've probably paid an extra $15k-$20k in taxes over the past decade.
      - I went to H&R Block (Taxes R Us) to get my taxes done the first time I started writing stuff off and trusted them way more that I should have. They missed some deductions and also have a few oddities in my tax filings that could get me audited.
      - I didn't socialize enough, which left me out of the loop on important things, like other opportunities and even knowing what the contracting organization was paying other contractors. This probably cost me $5k-$10k in my last year alone.
      - I didn't stay in touch. People move around and up; your middle manager today may become a senior manager on a high-profile project tomorrow. Keeping in touch will have more opportunities come to you and will give you a leg up in anything you apply to.
      - Stepped on toes like I was drunkenly dancing in clogs. I was fortunate enough to have a manager that was willing to insulate me from the office politics so I could get work done.

      What I did do right:
      - Studied hard. You'd be amazed how far reading the damn book or instruction manual will get you in life. Study the API, read books on the basics, etc. and you'll be above most people.
      - Worked diligently. Good performance gets attention. In my case, I was the lone tester and managed to bring down the defects to a very low level.
      - Looked for ways to save time. By the end, I used my programming skills plus some off-the-shelf software to be able to write and perform about 300 pages of tests in the course of a week.
      - Asked for that letter of recommendation. When my original supervisor announced he was leaving the organization, I asked if he'd be willing to write a letter of recommendation. That baby is the head-shot of job hunting; whenever I fire off an application, it gets me an interview.
      - Joined LinkedIn. Sounds corny but it's a great way to keep contact info at your finger tips. It also makes it easier for ex-bosses to prescreen you for a position; open hiring is time consuming and expensive, so it's possible that there will be a choice between hiring you and starting the massive machinery of open hiring. Remember that most people aren't looking for the best person for the job, they are looking for a person that will do the job well.

      The skills I learned at school allowed me to execute my duties well. However, from a personal standpoint, I would have done a lot better if I had embraced the business side of things more. Sadly, I learn mostly from my mistakes and not from the mistakes of others.

  3. STOP by fazey · · Score: 3, Funny

    You're saturating the market! Go pick something else!

  4. No jobs and too many Visas by bussdriver · · Score: 2

    Apparently all the advertizing for Visas has high school students confused that there is a shortage of CS people. The side benefit is that having too many graduates will result in the same outcome if the Visa program can not continue to be abused.

    Walmart used to hire people with bad credit (after performing credit checks on applicants) because those employees are the closest to indentured servants. THAT business ethic is not restricted to Walmart management. Indentured servants are the goal. CS graduates with huge debts doing IT support jobs a teenager can perform can fill the gap the Visas have not been filling...

    --
    Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
  5. 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.

  6. "Computer Science" by degeneratemonkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems that an increasing proportion of Computer Science resumes I receive are from recent graduates who don't know much at all about computer science. They've done a little Java or C++ or VB programming, they've explored such in-depth topics as linked lists and arrays, and they've heard of quicksort.

    Anything from complexity analysis, language classification, (heaven forbid) Turing machines, to operating systems, memory management, distributed systems, or synchronization? Hell, hell no.

    1. Re:"Computer Science" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Our Turing machine wasn't Y2K compliant, but it's universal, so we just programmed it to simulate a Y2K-compliant machine.

      (captcha: convert)

  7. 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/
    1. Re:Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by helobugz · · Score: 2

      What do you suggest I pick my major to be mr asshat?

      Mathematics, assclown.

    2. Re:Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I managed to retire from the field this year after about 27 years in it.

      The path I've seen is bad.

      Brutal hours, work holidays and weekends, low status, decent pay.
      Actual early death, lots of divorce (if you can manage to get married).

      Last job worked us 70+ hours for 2 years. 3 deaths, multiple non-fatal heart attacks. The free lunch and dinner at our desks was a nice perk tho it dropped in quality and healthiness as time went on. The pay was good (about $100 to $125k) in the south.

      Now I hear the people who were not laid off are basically being worked even harder and they don't even have the benefits of being laid off.

      If you go into CS, do what i did. Live on half of what you made and save the rest.

      Because the age discrimination is blatant and fierce.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    3. Re:Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by thoth · · Score: 2

      and work for a defense contractor

      Bolded for emphasis... obviously what you did doesn't scale and won't work for EVERYONE going into CS. Even the U.S. citizens can't ALL work for the defense industry.

    4. Re:Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by thoth · · Score: 2

      Argh, replying to my reply because I left off part of what I wanted to say.

      set my own hours, never work more than 40 hrs/wk and get great benefits (and lots of free beer). maybe you were just in a bad location?

      this industry is great.

      Like the original post this was a reply to, my 2nd job out of college was with, let's just say a large software corporation in the Pacific Northwest.

      I worked 60+ hours a week for 3 years. Evenings, Saturdays, Holidays, hell I even worked one day of my vacation (as in, I was out of town visiting some friends where I went to college. That happened to be in the same city as a large OEM computer manufacturer. I went in to the vendor on my vacation to take a look at a problem. Yeah.)

      When I complained about the workload, my boss generally had the attitude "fuck you and quit, there are 9 other people waiting to take your job".

      Basically, Mr. Anon Coward working for the defense industry, which is plump with government largesse (not all of it bad, but I sure hope you aren't one of those dumbfuck republitardservaterians with their idiot hypocrisy about government spending), and who possibly has not ever worked in Corporate "we'd-rape-your-ass-for-profit-if-it-were-legal" America, I have this to say: FUCK YOU you dipshit. 2 years out of college and you think you know everything? You don't have a goddamn clue.

    5. Re:Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 2

      That industry is salaried non-exempt. Which means they're required by law to pay overtime, even to salaried employees. NO ONE else has to do that. They're all exempt. So everywhere outside the defense industry, the GGP's situation is the norm, not the exception.

    6. Re:Congress gunning for 300,000 plus H1Bs by hemp · · Score: 2

      By "qualified" they mean willing to work for the low wages they are offering.

      There is a reason why the biggest users of H1-B visas are contacting shops from India.

      Top 5 H1-B users for 2012:

      Infosys Limited 18844
      Tata Consultancy Services Limited 8461
      Wipro Limited 8086
      Deloitte Consulting Lp 5628
      Ibm India Private Limited

      --
      Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
  8. Get a EE degree instead by ub3r+n3u7r4l1st · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You just need a little bit more physics, able to deal with circuits, microcontroller and so on. Looks much better than CS at least on paper.

    --
    New Economic Perspectives
    1. Re:Get a EE degree instead by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      I agree, but don't minimize the engineering core. 1 semester each from the major engineering disciplines. Statics, thermo, circuits for all engineers. It was joy IIRC.

      Also Engineers need more core math then CS, to go with the physics.

      If you flunk out of engineering you can always go back to CS. That's a very typical path.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:Get a EE degree instead by sourcerror · · Score: 2

      Except that HR doesn't have any idea what a math degree is good for.

    3. Re:Get a EE degree instead by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 2

      Right backatcha. Too many CS types I've worked with just don't get hardware because they've only taken freshman physics and have never had to stay up all night trying to debug a faulty bit just to get a project done. And they can't quite grasp that even an occasional segfault in a program that controls moving machinery is not acceptable.

    4. Re:Get a EE degree instead by englishknnigits · · Score: 2

      I only know one EE that is satisfied with being an EE. All of the others are trying to get CS jobs and wishing they actually had some CS training. The only EE knowledge I have heard of being widely useful is basic circuit analysis which you can get in just a few classes. Granted, there are going to be some jobs where in depth EE knowledge is actually useful but those jobs are few and far between. What you really want is a CPE degree where you become a competent programmer combined with a basic knowledge of circuits and hardware. EE's go too heavy on the physics, which 99% won't need, and too light on programming, which 99% will need.

    5. Re:Get a EE degree instead by tyrione · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Unless you go to a decent school where CS IS engineering. Including the same math and physics requirements. Then when you fail out of engineering, you end up in business school.

      CS is not FUCKING ENGINEERING. It never will be. It is called Computer Science for a reason. Most ME/EE graduates I knew had FORTRAN, C and C++ for Numerical Analysis, Finite Element Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics and more. Not a goddamn CS would understand a fucking think about Fracture Mechanics but an ME would boringly pick up a programming language just by reading the damn book. Want to learn about UNIX Networking, or threading just read some quality books on both the theory and application. Want to learn how to model Aerodynamics for a multi-body nonlinear dynamics system, spend 5 years building up to it. How come? It's far more complex and requires skills that you can't learn in a book. Engineering has many disciplines because people have many different aptitudes towards applied Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Learning a new hashing algorithm isn't an aptitude, but just exposure of how a programming language, compiler and software APIs are designed to best be utilized. They aren't physical immutable laws of programming.

    6. Re:Get a EE degree instead by aztracker1 · · Score: 2

      When you're dealing with moving hardware, any software development really needs t be approached as a engineering discipline. Most software development needs to be approached as more of a craft, however. I wish more people simply understood the difference. Instead manager types tend to expect you to PFM* a solution.

      * Pure F*cking Magic

      --
      Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
    7. Re:Get a EE degree instead by Osgeld · · Score: 2

      "Except you won't be able to code if you do EE."

      most people that do CS cant either, whats your point?

    8. 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.

  9. Somewhat lame report by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    The "Computing Research Association" is a lobbying group. It's not on K Street NW in DC like most lobbyists. It's on L street, one block over. It's a lobby for federal funding for college CS departments.

    Here's the actual report. Two charts are upside down. The focus is on race and gender. There's little discussion of CS vs IT vs EE vs CE degrees, although there are some separate table columns. Employment statistics are provided only for PhD graduates.

    The data seems to be self-reported by the institutions involved.

  10. Mostly matching other degrees. by NitWit005 · · Score: 2

    If you examine Figure 1 in the report, there was a downward slide from 2001-2007 and an increase from 2007-now. That mostly matches what is seen for all majors in Figure 2. The real story here seems to be the overall education trend, not CS specifically.

  11. Re:No jobs = hide in academia for a while. by aztracker1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just a couple suggestions... most people in IT aren't very religious... I don't mind (lean deist myself), but some might... you may want to do some work on your personal website, assuming your name matches the site... It doesn't need to be perfect.. just a little nicer (there are templates to work with like bootstrap, even platforms like wordpress)... If you have personal projects to show off, etc.. throw them up on github (assuming you have the rights).

    On your personal site, have an html copy of your resume, as well as a link to the MS-Word version. Name off every technology you've touched, and then in your work history, re-state what you've touched. If you aren't touching hardware, or interested in game dev, I would suggest picking up a more dynamic environment to program in. Flash is all but dead, though AS3 and JS correlate really well, and NodeJS, MongoDB, Web-UI dev is growing a lot, JS skills can get you placed... .Net, or Java will net higher pay, but the time to build experience may well not be worth it.

    I am not sure where you are located, but in the US, if you have more than 5 years of experience, and are any good, you should be able to find work for more than $30/hr, and if you are really good, you shouldn't be making less than $50/hr (More in some locations). The dot-com bust was a long time ago.. I was down and out for a year.. took a couple jobs at less than half what I made before, kept options open, and was willing to change jobs for opportunity and more money. Note: I'm in Phoenix, AZ... I know of lots of places hiring just the same. If you're in the sticks move to one of the top 20 largest cities (US), and you will find better paying, decent work.

    --
    Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
  12. Three questions: by tlambert · · Score: 2

    Three questions:

    (1) Has the graduation rate gone up correspondingly?

    (2) How many actually complete their degree without running in "year stretching" by the University choosing not to offer required classes?

    (3) How many are at prestigious Universities in the right programs, rather than at Flash Game Programmer/JavaScript diploma mills?