Based on figures available to me when I was publisher at a textbook and trade computer book publisher, enrollments are down in CS (and IT) departments between 30-45% from the admittedly swollen Y2K highpoint. As troubling, many of the vocational tech schools (such as Corinthian Colleges) have cut back - and even dropped - the intro/ IT/CS technician training classes - that again were driven by the A+/CCNA boomlet. And yes, a large part of that is due to the chatter on outsourcing and deflated valuations of tech skilled people, especially at the engineering levels.
Of course, some of this is cyclical, some a one time blow once techies lost their 'rock star' status,(Remember when people expected you to go weak in the knees when they called themsleves 'webmasters'!), and some driven by technology release cycles. (MS.NET vs. Java didn't help the world in this regard.)
Reflecting this decline is the major pull back in publishing in this area. Osborne & McGraw-Hill Technology Education (my old shops) has pretty much walked away from the market, keeping only a few legacy war horses alive (3 cheers for Herb Schildt!). I learned last week that Thomson's college division is restructuring their CS list into the deep freeze too. And even MS Press is putting its list, launched expensively a couple of years ago, on the block. Even venerable Pearson (ne Prentice Hall) and O'Reilly have become highly conservative (or is it market driven). But props to them both...at least they are still in the game.
Last week, went looking for new books on UI design had a hard time finding anything written after 2001 on Amazon, never mind at the book chains. Any recommendations? I need a Strunk and White guide for my application design teams.
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Based on figures available to me when I was publisher at a textbook and trade computer book publisher, enrollments are down in CS (and IT) departments between 30-45% from the admittedly swollen Y2K highpoint. As troubling, many of the vocational tech schools (such as Corinthian Colleges) have cut back - and even dropped - the intro/ IT/CS technician training classes - that again were driven by the A+/CCNA boomlet. And yes, a large part of that is due to the chatter on outsourcing and deflated valuations of tech skilled people, especially at the engineering levels. Of course, some of this is cyclical, some a one time blow once techies lost their 'rock star' status,(Remember when people expected you to go weak in the knees when they called themsleves 'webmasters'!), and some driven by technology release cycles. (MS.NET vs. Java didn't help the world in this regard.) Reflecting this decline is the major pull back in publishing in this area. Osborne & McGraw-Hill Technology Education (my old shops) has pretty much walked away from the market, keeping only a few legacy war horses alive (3 cheers for Herb Schildt!). I learned last week that Thomson's college division is restructuring their CS list into the deep freeze too. And even MS Press is putting its list, launched expensively a couple of years ago, on the block. Even venerable Pearson (ne Prentice Hall) and O'Reilly have become highly conservative (or is it market driven). But props to them both...at least they are still in the game. Last week, went looking for new books on UI design had a hard time finding anything written after 2001 on Amazon, never mind at the book chains. Any recommendations? I need a Strunk and White guide for my application design teams.