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College Students Are Flocking To Computer Science Majors (ieeeusa.org)
Slashdot reader dcblogs writes:
Enrollments in Computer Science are on a hockey stick trajectory and show no signs of slowing down. Stanford University declared computer science enrollments, for instance, went from 87 in the 2007-08 academic year to 353 in the recently completed year. It's similar at other schools. Boston University, for instance, had 110 declared undergraduate computer science majors in 2009. This fall it will have more than 550. Professor Mehran Sahami, who is the associate chair for education in the CS department at Stanford, believes the enrollment trend will continue. "As the numbers bear out, the interest in computer science has grown tremendously and shows no signs of crashing." But after the 2000 dot-com bust computer science enrollments fell dramatically and students soured on the degree. Could something like it happen again?
Mark Crovella, the chair of Boston University's CS department, notes that "the overall interest in computer science at B.U. is currently at about twice the level it was at the peak of the dot.com year." But the article points out that salaries for new grads are still rising, "which suggests that demand is real." And Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business Administration, adds "I'm more worried about the job outlook for people without these skills."
Mark Crovella, the chair of Boston University's CS department, notes that "the overall interest in computer science at B.U. is currently at about twice the level it was at the peak of the dot.com year." But the article points out that salaries for new grads are still rising, "which suggests that demand is real." And Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business Administration, adds "I'm more worried about the job outlook for people without these skills."
The idea that having a CS degree makes you a competent programmer is laughable... Those "deep" algorithmic problem solving abilities are what pay so much, and more important, and interest in them. My value to my employer has little do with any degree and mostly due to the fact when I was given a problem, I could identify why the current solutions had failed because I knew how computers work.
The majority of CS majors I know can't even tell you how a processor works on basic principles. It's just a black box to them, and when things fail like a stack overflow, they don't know what that even means.
I agree that a CS degree on it's own doesn't make someone a competent programmer, but I think you're painting with a broad brush when you say the majority of CS majors can't tell you how a processor works. Every worthwhile CS program has at least one computer architecture course and probably a compiler course as well.