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Pure Science Becoming Less Popular Than CS
An Anonymous Reader writes "An article (free login required) in yesterday's New York Times (Business Section) says that the number of college students in the physical and biological science is decreasing because of the "easy money" available in the field of computers. It also says that the computer industry's growth will slow and that the next big boom of technology jobs will be in biotechnology. Interesting stuff. " Of course the real reason is Turing machines. We really just dig drawing out turing machines on chalk boards and arguing about NP problems.
I think there's a big distinction that needs to be made here. Right now there's alot of jobs in the computer industry but how many of them are really CS? Coding HTML is not CS. Getting your MCSE is not CS. Being a Unix sysadmin is not CS. Running an NT mailserver is not CS.
True CS involves alot more of a high level understanding of what's going on. True CS involves people who are solving problems at a very high level, who are re-thinking the norm and who are applying their background in math and science to solve a problem, not people who are rebooting servers when the pager goes off.
I know alot of people who work answering the pager and maintain unix/nt/cisco systems as their job. They're all really smart people, but what they're doing probably isnt CS. In fact most of them dont have a degree in CS if they have a degree at all. I'm not even sure if what I do really has all that much to do with pure computer science, but I'm pretty sure I have a solid background to fall back on if it were to come up, which is why I dont worry. What worries me is people coming out of assembly line CS programs who dont have any idea what real Computer Science is about, and just want to get paid.
-Rich
That is, until he realized that his hobby, fixing computers, could be a better career bet.
Bingo. I find this article, and others like it, interesting, because many people seem to act surprised that students may want to consider career opportunities in selecting a career. This shouldn't be surprising at all, because that's what American society is heavily slanted toward: money == happiness. Well, I don't think that's the case, and I'm glad that I stayed in school for a bit longer to earn a dual English/CS degree rather than just English...or just CS for that matter. But I'd be a liar if I said that the CS half of my degree was more important in the job market than the English half...or if I said that enough salary to live comfortably was never a consideration along the way.
So, ultimately, the paradox of post-secondary education, apparently (judging by the clamor in the article), is that that level of education is twofold in purpose: to widen and deepen oneself intellectually, and to greatly increase one's future earnings potential. Not many fields of study offer both of these, at least IMNSHO. I attended a large public university, where the two largest schools were the Liberal Arts College (which included the 'traditional' sciences) and the Engineering College (where Computer Engineering and Computer Science were taught, although CS degrees were awarded only by the Liberal Arts school). The vibe I got from a lot of the engineering students I attended classes with was that they were viewing university as a pricey trade school. (To be fair, I didn't get a vibe of intellectual expansion from all of the liberal arts students I ran into.) But the way the curricula were set up did little to counter this attitude. Get your degree, get your job, and get out. Where fault for that attitude lies, I cannot say.
But I can say that it disgusted me to be in a classroom where most people were seemingly interested in the piece of paper from the registrar's office than what it (ostensibly) represented.
Having said that, however, I think that one crucial angle that the article missed was that it's not necessary to work at a job that deals directly with one's favorite intellectual pursuits in order to have a satisfying life. To expect otherwise is ridiculous. That's what hobbies are for.
In fact, people who do true CS could still do their job without writing a line of code.
True CS:_________Not True CS:
Knuth..........................Me
Negroponte.................CmdrTaco
Dijkstra.......................Gates
Date.............................Jobs
Turing..........................Torvalds
...
Still not sure where the likes of Kernighan and Ritchie come in, but I'd give all of the Ancient Gods the benefit of the doubt, and say that they're as close to True CS as Programming can get.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
There are a couple of main issues here.
First, some background. I just graduated from the (or one of the) top CS schools in the nation, with a dual degree in CS and ECE. (And I busted my ass to do so, so please forgive any cockiness that develops, it's a pride thing). Around a hundred graduated this year, with the CS department as their home department.
How many double majors were there for CS/ECE? 1. CS and Mathmatics? 15. What about double majors in CS and Chem? 5. CS and Bio? 6. There was even one guy who in three years managed to pull a CS degree, a Pysch degree and a hard science degree.
And how many of the rest of the graduating class had a hard science as a minor? I know quite a few CS people who have entered into biotech based upon the merits of their minor degree. You wouldn't believe the number of *art*majors* with a CS minor.
My roomate was a physics major. Granted it was a small department, but he was the only one not to go on to grad school. Why? He realized that he was a better computer scientist than a physicist. More power to him.
What does this mean? I think that it means that the really bright *scientists* realize that having a full knowledge of CS will greatly aid them in their research.
I do not feel that biotech and other hard science research will be suffering by this movement. Why? Because the real scientists, the ones that are bright enough to make the breakthroughs in for things like nonotech livers and curing AIDS, WILL STILL BE IN THE FIELD. All they may have done is increased their knowledge, and by doing so are better suited to achieve their original goals.
Does it really matter if Joe Schmoe got-an-A-in-high-school-bio picks CS over Bio or Chem? Would he really have made a difference in the field anyways?
So there's a glut of CS majors. Fine. The people who enter CS for the purpose of learning CS will have better skills and understanding of what is going on. They will always be able to design and implement faster, smaller algorithms. They'll get the sexier work.
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Certainly, CS is not a mere way to learn to program well. Nor is it intended as preparation for an easy-money job (though all too often it is). CS is centered around mathematical fields, and concerns itself more with algorithms than with coding.
To be completely honest, knowing how to reduce a Nondeterministic Automaton to a Deterministic Automaton is not going to help most CS majors in the type of work they will be performing upon graduation. True, there do exist positions in which such knowledge is applicable, but most graduations are not doing programming of that caliber. Industry seems to be under the illusion that Computer Science trains people to work with computers. Will a CS education really help someone set up an NT service, or get Oracle running on Solaris? These are the jobs that await many CS majors. It is sad, but it is the truth. Is this a result of all the hype surrounding CS, that has made it appear to be the golden ticket to success that has attracted people who would otherwise have no interest in the field?