CS Degrees Low in 2007 But Bouncing Back

An anonymous reader writes "The number of undergraduate computer science degrees awarded last year hit a new low with the Class of 2007. The degrees awarded, 8,000, as tracked by the Computing Research Association, is only half of what it was five years ago. In 2003-04 — the high point of this decade — 14,185 students were awarded bachelors degrees in computer science from the 170 PhD granting universities tracked by the CRA. That said, after a decade of severe declines, the number of students at top universities declaring themselves as computer science majors is finally seeing an increase. Though it's only a small increase, it's an increase nonetheless. Experts attribute the shift to changes in job market, and also to changes in curriculum and the marketing of comp sci programs."

FTA:

Our students are getting sexy jobs. Computer science is the new sexy.

How did this not make it in to the summary?

Re:FTA:

> > Our students are getting sexy jobs. Computer science is the new sexy.
>
> How did this not make it in to the summary?

Truth in Advertising laws. Consider this billboard [livejournal.com], for example. Much more accurate!

Re:FTA:

There's a difference between "use a computer" and "strip a computer down to the bare hardware, rebuild it, install three obscure operating systems in a multi-boot scheme, and interface it to your toaster"......

People with a CS degree tend to fall into the second category.....which still isn't sexy. (But it sure is fun).

Layne

Frankly....

That's not exactly bad news.

I started computer science in 1994, when the boom was not yet there. Most people then were passionate about computers, maths and programming. When I graduated, a friend of mine stayed as a PhD candidate. The classes enlistment had then quintupled compared to our class, and one thing was clear: those that were there, were not passionate about the subject. They were there because it promised a golden career. They had also really trouble getting people to actually pass the first year.

So, I hope that computer science graduation is down because those that belong there are attending. Not those that just want to make big bucks because it's an "in profession".

Completely agree

Do we really need quantity? I'd rather have quality. Ten fuckwits easily negate the positive impact of one good programmer/cs guy.

Re:Completely agree

nitpicking, i know, but really what you've described are the virtues of a good software engineer, not so much a good computer scientist.

i see software engineering as an answer to "build the solution" whereas computer science is more about answering "what is the solution". then again, i have a fairly old school "c.s. is a combination of applied applied math and applied discrete math" world view.

Re:Completely agree

I don't know if I'm biased (I'm in the CMU camp), but I think that's one of the big differences between the MIT vs CMU approach. At CMU, CS was created as an offshoot of the math dept, while at MIT it was an engineering discipline. I think they've converged a bit, but there's still adifference in approach there.

Re:Frankly....

i think you're right.

i graduated with my first c.s. degree during the peak 2003-2004 and i can tell you that about half the people that i graduated with have since burned out and moved on to new careers. i would estimate that an overwhelming majority of the people that i started out with thought that majoring in c.s. would help them earn lots of money. something like 80% of the people that started in c.s. at the same time i did switched majors because they realized that c.s. wasn't for them. about half the people that were left were people that realized, too late, that c.s. wasn't for them but they were so far down the road that switching majors wasn't an option. most of them ended up having to take the upper division theory classes a few times before barely earning a passing grade, and then got out as fast as they could. they were uniformly miserable.

i stuck around to work on a m.s. in c.s. and i noticed a similar, although less severe pattern there --- again, about half the people that were in my grad foundation sequence classes (compilers, operating systems, algorithms, and a.i.) washed out before they managed to finish the sequence. an informal survey of people in my o/s class showed that about 60% of them were there for the money. just like undergrad, the people who washed out were miserable.

by way of comparison, the people who survived to take the "fun" grad level classes (computer vision, intro robotics, image processing, etc.) were a lot more fun to be with and generally a lot more excited about what was going on. classes went from enrollments of 45-60 to 10-20, professors were markedly more relaxed, and i felt that, in general, i got a lot more out of those classes than i did anything else in my education.

in the long term, i think that c.s., like most of the math / science / engineering disciplines, is extraordinarily demanding and unless it's something that a person really enjoys doing, i don't seem them surviving in a c.s. related career for very long.

Re:Frankly....

I started Computer Science in 1986 myself.

So much of the CS market is flooded with wantabes and posers that barely know how to use a computer, much less program or troubleshoot one. I recall working for a community college in 1990 in one of their computer labs, and people with BS, MBS, and PHDs in Computer Science went to the community college to learn what they missed in Four year college and I worked as a tutor and educational assistant for some of them. I also subbed for the debugger as she didn't know C, Pascal, BASIC, Assembly as well as I did and I got the hard to debug programs.

Businesses went from hiring programmers like me who do quality control built into design, towards hiring kids right out of college with no experience who can write programs "good enough" to work and get the job done even if it crashes their servers a dozen times a day. Microsoft certification doesn't work either as they earn it and learned the answers on the Internet and got certified anyway.

While I earned A's and B's, and eventually earned all A's and graduated with honors, a lot of these other CS majors barely graduated but know how to schmooze their way up the corporate ladder and bullshit their way into high paying jobs that they don't deserve.

I went back to college and took up Business Management, because I don't think there is a future in Computer Science anymore, most graduates don't take Computer Science seriously and are in it only for the money, plus a lot of computer jobs got offshored to India and China, and the government keeps increasing the cap on H1B Visa applications and foreigners can come to the USA and work for minimum wage in computer jobs, legally. Hard to compete with that.

It's the non-CS courses causing drops

The programming courses are so simple, but you have to take courses like Calculus IV and Physics II.

I'm doing fine in my math and science, but I'm betting not everybody is. I'm not quite sure why you need all of this excessive math and science (except when the Computer Science is in the School of Engineering--but not all colleges are like this).

I've been programming for years--with code in many Open Source projects like Nmap, Metasploit and the Linux Kernel--but I did this without the courses at my college. Other people are probably realizing they can do the same and picking different majors to avoid the higher-level math and science.

But, hey, I'm just a CS major bored in my classes.

Re:It's the non-CS courses causing drops

I'm not quite sure why you need all of this excessive math and science (except when the Computer Science is in the School of Engineering--but not all colleges are like this).

Because it's computer science, i.e. the science of computing. A CS degree, for better or worse, is not a programming apprenticeship.

Re:It's the non-CS courses causing drops

Saying CS grads don't need "excessive" math and science is sort of like saying doctors don't need "excessive" biology and chemistry. After all, doctors have dosing guidelines, medications approved to treat conditions are all indexed, and the labs do the blood/urine/other analysis and red flag measured traits out of bounds.

Personally, I think the science needs to stay in Computer Science not because of what you're going to do today, but what you're going to do tomorrow. Higher maths and hard (as opposed to soft) sciences mercilessly teach problem solving and deduction, shake the foundations of any man foolish enough to ignore simplification, and demand understanding not so much of HOW things are done but WHY things are done in that way.

I'm not saying someone without that experience can't code well, not at all. Some people are just naturally gifted at thinking through problems and algorithms and following the natural order of things. Others, plain and simple, struggle. Hard corequisites force the sort of muscle memory one needs to properly apply the science to the practice.

I know I'd much prefer to drive an engineered car than one plodged together by a mechanic.

CS and the Game Of Life

For the majority of prospective students, a CS degree is no longer a smart choice in the game of life. Those who want long-term stability in a profession will likely choose another field.

- you may have a high salary but when you divide it by how many hours you work, you could be making more money per hour and having fun doing something else

- companies send the jobs to somewhere in the world where employees are cheap, executives who do the cutting get gigantic bonuses on top of gigantic salaries

- companies talk about hiring "superstar" programmers when what they really need are good processes and tools to help people communicate and design good products; few organizations invest in people, many waste time trying to find Code Messiahs

- hiring good managers is much more than just promoting "technical" people into management

- open-source is cool and changing the way people think, but unless your a member of a certain kind of company, you'll need a day-job too (o:

Architects...

I have no idea why we would need so many Computer Scientists... at least the company I work for needs developers, and writing good software is NOT what you learn at a university. That's not the focus of a university degree: the focus is to create scientiest or maybe managers, but not "workers". But you just can't run a business with 10 managers and 1 worker.

I don't want to say a CS degrees is worthless, au contraire. But I think the focus should shift more to other means of computer education. Most companies don't need people who know all the math theory you can find in The Art Of Computer Programming, but people who can write solid code for the small everyday software development tasks that make up the majority of a software project. They must know their tools (softwares and APIs) and need to know the common mechanisms (e.g. what's a linked list and how does it work, what's a singleton pattern, etc. pp.). For most of this stuff you really don't need to study to understand them, IMHO :-) When you build a house you need one or a few architects but you need a lot more construction workers that actually implement the architect's vision. And I think in the software industry we don't have enough of these (trained) construction workers as the focus seems to be almost exclusivly on the architects.

Re:Architects...

When you build a house you need one or a few architects but you need a lot more construction workers that actually implement the architect's vision.

They're called compilers. Your metaphor is busted. Engineers come up with the plans, and then workers construct it. Within software, it's trivially possible to construct from a well done plan, but nearly impossible to find the right plan. A more appropriate metaphor might be found somewhere closer to engineering, like EE or ME. Where you have teams of people working, prototyping and constructing a final plan to pass off to some poor factory to implement. Sure, you have a Principal Engineer, ultimately responsible for the project, but it's not so clear that they alone design the plans.

FTA: Bill Gates

...but the general enrollment trend is often cited as an argument for increasing the H-1B visa cap, which is used by skilled workers. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has cited declines in computer science enrollment as a reason for opening up the U.S. to more skilled workers and will likely make that argument when he appears March 12 before the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee.

Pure Truthiness. Bilbo has it backwards. H1-B's are causing the decline in CS enrollment. Lifting the cap will cause further decline.

He must still be bitten by the entire anti-trust fiasco, and now uses the gov't as his tool, after ignoring and being dumped on by it.

Re:FTA: Bill Gates

Based on my recent recruiting experiences I'd have to say that H1-B visa limits are _not_ responsible for the decline in enrollment. In fact, if anything, at most of the universities I visited students on an H1B or F1 visa are all you can find in the CS department.

Most of them can't get hired after they graduate because companies are increasingly unwilling to sponsor visas, but it's sure not keeping them from coming to school here.

If you're looking for the reason for the drop in enrollment you don't really have to look any farther than the .com boom. Notice that the peak of enrollment is just about 4 years off of the peak of the .com boom. I certainly saw a lot of students in that time period who thought that a CS degree was an easy way to get on the gravy train.

Being one of those....

I came from a class of 3 that graduated last year.

Honestly, the courses were too easy or too hard. I think it was just that Math or business was just easier to work with, since your pencil and paper never require manipulating executive files and messing with header files.

I think that perhaps, it's not that it is too low or that students aren't hearing about the major, but rather not many like having to beat their heads over learning Dijkstra, Euler, and what the Big O's of the typical data structures or whatever weed out subjects are.

What I think would be more interesting is seeing how many minors are being sought by other disciplines for CS and what CS majors are taking for a minor

Either way, I was put on contract before graduating then another one a few months later. I'm pretty happy so far, but wonder if I'll be content once I look for a bit more permanent job (if such things still exist)

My Advice To Those Thinking About It

Things to consider:

- the IT field is one of the hardest hit in case of a recession; this means that when things go bad they go really bad
- if it isn't a passion of your you will not enjoy it; it's long hours and crunch time exists almost always
- most programmers I've seen in my 12 years of programming have burned out and done other stuff instead. They would have been better off studying in a field they liked because now it's too late for them to tackle their true career of choice
- money isn't all it's cracked up to be in the IT field but it varies more than with many other jobs. For example someone passionate with great talent can get paid twice what another senior gets. In some parts of North America the salary is as low as 35k/year.
- if you want to hit the higher salaries you have to specialize into something and become a well known expert. This means blogging about your skill and doing presentations at conferences.
- your brain deteriorates with time and you can't code as fast as you could when you were 10 years younger. Getting old in our field is worse than it is in others. Even venture capitalists expect to invest in young talent. This means your window of opportunity is small.

You must answer a resounding yes to the following questions:

Do you code one week ends? Do you write software for fun? Do you enjoy sitting down and thinking really hard for long periods of time?

If that suits you then take the blue pill.

Don't Come Back

Am I the only one that wishes that it WOULDN'T bounce back? Less CS graduates means less competition for the rest of us.

Science yuk. Give me play.

I didn't take `Computer Science` because I couldn't see a course in the entire world that I found interesting. I found what was on offer too theoretical, and programming everywhere. I didn't want to study computers, I wanted to have fun using them.

So I took Geology.

Science = The collective discipline of study or learning acquired through the scientific method; the sum of knowledge gained from such methods and discipline. A small and specialized subject.

I hope something comes out where I can play. Because play is natural learning.

Interest in Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0

The prospect of a career migrating web scripts between Python, Ruby, & J2EE definitely doesn't have the appeal that 1st generation dot coms offered. It's not the student interest as much as the fact that Web 2.0 isn't the completely new territory that Web 1.0 was.

There might be new interest from the latest surge of robotics, but that's mainly done in Europe & once Dubya is gone, there won't be any more military robots h.e.r.e...

Silicon Valley is slow & stodgy about new territory. It's going to be Web scripts for a long time.

PhD-granting universities

That ignores all the second-tier schools that only offer bachelor's and master's degrees. I hold a BSc in CS from such an institution, and not including these schools is pretty poor statistics.

Obligatory

Computer science isn't a science, and it isn't even about computers.

I'd like to welcome you to this course on Computer Science. Actually that's a terrible way to start, Computer Science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, it's not a Science. It might be engineering or it might be art, although we'll actually see that Computer (so-called) "Science" actually has a lot in common with magic. And you'll see that in this course

So it's not a Science. It's also not really very much about Computers. Computer Science is not about computers in the same way that Physics is not about particle accelerators and Biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes.

-- Hal Abelson, professor MIT - Lecture 1a: Overview and Introduction to Lisp

Re:Computer Science in HS

Now you're just being rude. What you're saying is that future mathematicians should start out with number theory rather than addition. Let him learn his programming 101 in high school, and after he can successfully edit, compile, link and run "hello world" from memory, then we'll start in about DFAs and Lambda Calculus.