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Clinton Foundation: Kids' Lack of CS Savvy Threatens the US Economy
theodp writes: As the press digs for details on Clinton Foundation donations, including a reported $26+ million from Microsoft and Bill Gates, it's probably worth noting the interest the Clintons have developed in computer science and the role they have played — and continue to play — in the national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis that materialized after Microsoft proposed creating such a crisis to advance its 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy, which aims to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Next thing you know, Bill is the face of CS at the launch of Code.org. Then Hillary uses the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference to launch a Facebook, Microsoft, and Google initiative to boost the ranks of female and students of color in CS, and starts decrying woeful CS enrollment. Not to be left out, Chelsea keynotes the NCWIT Summit and launches Google's $50M girls-only Made With Code initiative with now-U.S. CTO Megan Smith. And last December, the Clinton Foundation touted its initiatives to engage middle school girls in CS, revamp the nation's AP CS program, and retrain out-of-work Americans as coders. At next month's CGI America 2015, the conference will kick off with a Beer Bust that CGI says "will also provide an opportunity to learn about Tech Girls Rock, a CGI Commitment to Action launched by CA Technologies in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America that helps girls discover an interest in tech-related educational opportunities and careers." On the following days, CGI sessions will discuss tech's need for a strong and diverse talent pipeline for computer and information technology jobs, which it says is threatened by "the persistent poor performance of American students in science, technology, engineering, and math," presenting "serious implications for the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. economy." So what's the long-term solution? Expanding CS education, of course!
The possibility of a good paying job in software development when they graduate college. Maybe even with the company paying off their student loans for them.
Instead of the chance to compete against low-balling H1B applicants...
These kids should learn by running their own email server at home!
-Women aren't in tech because the STEM world is misogynistic
-I'll bet you are a women's studies major
-Yes I am, what has that got to do with it?
-Why didn't you study STEM?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I've got a PhD in CS, and I grew up with the U.S. education system of the 1970's and 80's. I had playground time, and little formalized national testing. I'll bet few of the Turing award winners or ACM Fellows were educated in the manner advocated by today's politicians and Plutocrats.
If they're so eager to make good computer scientists, one might ask if they're willing to reproduce the educational environments of those luminaries.
One big problem with equating CS with "coding" is the fact that low-skill and high-skill jobs get lumped into the same bucket. Same thing in my side (IT) where systems architects and help desk guys get painted with the same brush. If you teach a student to just "code" then all they're going to know is a few web front end tricks and they'll be difficult to train for the next thing. The students coming into the profession now need to have a science background, not just a 9-week coder bootcamp. Remember MCSE bootcamps from the late 90s/early 2000s? We in IT are _still_ working with some of the products of these.
If anyone is serious about fixing the skills problem, the following needs to happen:
- Salaries need to be stabilized at a level that will attract new entrants to the field. No one is going to waste time and money studying something that doesn't pay off later on. Look at all the little private colleges that are going out of business after burning through their endowments. Lots of students know that they can no longer expect a job after graduating studying just anything.at any college. (I was one of the last graduation years where that was true.) Unfortunately, college is a trade school now for most people.
- Jobs need to be available. Companies can't cry "skill shortage" while outsourcing their IT department to the lowest bidder or throwing people away when they turn 40. I think a technical career provides a very fulfilling job if you're lucky and choose your employers well. But, if I were faced with a choice of what to study, and saw stagnant wages, mass layoffs, and a career that can end at 40, I would probably pick something else.
- A career progression needs to exist. My career progression was help desk monkey --> desktop support monkey --> data center guy --> system administrator --> the strange hybrid admin/designer/architect/integration combo I do now. Now, it doesn't exist to the same degree. Help desk is in India, desktop support is significantly reduced and the pay is much lower than it was, data center monkey jobs now consist of replacing parts in Google or Amazon or Microsoft data centers, and so on. Where are the next generation of IT people and software developers going to be trained? On the dev side, the QA and maintenance coder jobs are increasingly in India or automated. Getting rid of low level jobs means that new entrants can't grow into the better jobs.
I'm an advocate of taking the different tasks in IT and dev, and splitting them into "technician" and "licensed engineer" tracks. Licensing the top tiers of the job field might mean higher quality of systems and software, fewer major security hacks, etc. The technician track would allow people to grow into these jobs, steadily gaining responsibility and salary over time. The thing we would have to avoid is what lawyers are going through now...the Bar Association threw open the doors to the profession a while back, opened tons of law schools, and allowed the offshoring of routine legal work. Now, look online sometime -- lawyers who spent $250K on school and passed the bar exam can't find work. The only way to make money as a lawyer now is if you manage to graduate at the top of your class at Harvard, Yale or Stanford -- otherwise, don't even bother.
So yes, definitely find ways to keep students interested in STEM -- but don't be shocked if no one signs on for the long haul when they see what's coming at the end...
One of the problems is that American corporations are both lazy and greedy. Too cheap and lazy to train local intelligent educated coders in their unique coding operating procedures. So, they lobby to hire foreigners that will keep costs down. Oddly, the foreigners also need training. So, claiming that American't aren't suited is a bold faced lie. They simply want to keep costs down and screw you if you are a qualified American software engineer that has a B+ average and is willing to work hard. Someday, you might become great at what you do and want more money or leave the firm. Hiring H1B applicants keeps costs down and reduces churn, which wouldn't be bad if the cheapskates paid appropriately in the first place and were honest about their hiring needs. Western education is excellent. As a side note, it seems that the Clinton's no longer feel your pain. They help cause it now.
I know you just want to dig at creationists, but keep in mind - since "scientific consensus" is considered an alternative to hard evidence, the problem is just as bad on the other end of the spectrum.
Worse, really - at least creationists don't pretend to have scientific backing when they're making shit up.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It says all you need to know about the culture of the political class that encouraging middle class girls to pursue STEM jobs is higher on their list than ensuring that boys in the inner city and the sticks are getting educational opportunities anywhere near what is accessible, but often avoided, by middle class girls. Maybe Tyrone in the hood would love to make a solid salary working with computers as a sys admin or developer? Jim Bob in bumblefuck, Nowheresville might like to have choices beyond working as a low skilled worker or working minimum wage retail.
Reminds me of a joke about a SJW approved version of Game of Thrones. Sansa Stark starts a social media campaign to highlight the difficulty of being a high lord's daughter and spends most of her day on Twitter telling peasant boys to check their privilege. That is, more or less, where are now with "equality" in America. We let the privileged put on the airs of being proletarian because heaven forbid we tell them to shut up and use their privilege for the good of society and the less fortunate.
I'm not talking about the Slashdot crowd. I'm talking to the politicians pushing the ludicrous idea that "not enough" kids learn CS/STEM and the nodding heads in the audience that think the problem isn't so nuanced that all "winning the future" is really going to take is pushing enough kids to do things that they weren't interested in doing to start with.
Outside of that, I'm regretfully not terribly surprised that the logical conclusion of pushing the misbegotten idea that kids need computer science (despite everyone in the conversation not knowing what it means) hasn't made its way to the mainstream press: that is, flooding the employment pool with applicants to drive down salaries, for positions that aren't filled with H1Bs anyway. It's funny how none of these talking heads talk about THAT part.
Nope, it's always about how sexy these jobs are; spoken by people who have at most done little more coding than the obligatory "Hello World" script. Except, no, they really, really aren't. In the immortal words of Jonathan Coulton, in a song about this very topic: "This job fulfilling in creative way/such a load of crap."
It can be long, grueling, and irritating. It's filled with demands for certification by people who barely understand how to use Outlook. And it's a career that requires lifelong learning. Which, for the record, I find nothing wrong with, BUT if you have a life-plan that doesn't involve any severe paradigm shifts and long hours of self-teaching (fuck's sake, half the languages people use now weren't even a thing fifteen years ago), then CS, coding, or whatever the hell non-techie types are calling is isn't sexy or fun. And the people who make the big bucks doing this ARE the kind of people that are willing to put up with all the long and grueling stuff that comes with the turf.
I don't blame anyone for the life choices they make. I just get pissed when I hear politicians make a career field out to be sexier than it actually is, and trying to turn people into miserable worker-bots.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
The Clinton Corrupt Slush Fund for Easy Policy Change..
Need some weapons deals pushed through? Donate millions to the foundation! http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton...
And who really cares where the money goes.. Charity Navigator won't even rank them due to their "atypical business model." It's a slush fund for the Clintons to doll out favors to their political toadies. Nevermind Hillary's absurd "I can't carry two devices" excuse for hosting a private mail server in her house to conduct State Department business.