Computer Science Enrollments Rocketed Last Year, Up 22% 137
alphadogg writes "A sneak peek at the annual Computing Research Association's (CRA) report on computer science enrollments at colleges shows that strong demand for technically-savvy workers is luring students in a big way. The full 2013 Taulbee Report will be published in May, but the CRA revealed a few tidbits this week in its Computer Research News publication. Among the findings: Among 123 departments responding last year and the year before, there was a 22% increase in enrollment for computer science bachelor's degree programs at U.S. schools. Degrees awarded increased 0.9% and new enrollments rose 13.7%"
CS is not IT / system admin (Score:2)
get out now and go somewhere with real skills before your loans get to high.
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Are there even any "real skills" fields left with a decent job market these days? Seems like I hear complaints from every field these days about not enough jobs for graduates, even in the medical fields.
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Seems like I hear complaints from every field these days about not enough jobs for graduates, even in the medical fields.
Which medical fields? How many unemployed doctors do you know? Their union does a good job of restricting supply.
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Nursing for one. It used to be that you could graduate with a BS in nursing, basically throw a dart at a map, and find 2-3 hospitals/doctors in that random town willing to fight over you. From what I understand, that is no longer the case, and a lot of nurses (particularly new graduates) are actually having to work to find a job these days. Article about it here [cnn.com].
Re:CS is not IT / system admin (Score:5, Interesting)
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give it time. They'll be another shortage within 3-4 years
The problem is that if you've recently graduated from nursing school, like my wife, when the next shortage rolls around, you'll get rejected because you're no longer a recent grad and you have little to no work experience.
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She has gotten some work from temp agencies, but even that has gotten sparse. Thanks for the NA idea though, even if it pays little it'd be worth it to keep her patient skills more up-to-date.
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Thanks.
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I know. My wife is a nursing grad who can't find a job for anything. When she started the program, it was pretty easy to get a job. By the time she graduated it was just the opposite. And it's not just her. She's kept in touch with classmates and they all say the same thing. It does seem to depend on were you are in the country though. Frustratingly, she regularly gets job offers from various other states.
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Frustratingly, she regularly gets job offers from various other states.
Oh. So I take that the relocation option is out?
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Forget Switzerland - there are plenty of nursing jobs in North Dakota. Seriously, it's because of the oil boom, and she's gotten job offers from there, complete with signing bonus and paying relo costs.
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She should get her NP, I can't see anytime in the foreseeable future where NP's won't be in high demand. With a push towards more universal coverage and no significant uptick in doctors choosing to become GP's a LOT of primary care is going to be performed by NP's.
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She should get her NP
She'd love to, bet there's an issue: $$$
We both agree that it's a bad idea to get into debt up to our eyeballs, and because we have kids there is limited cash available.
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Article about it here [cnn.com].
Dueling citations! Here's one from the same time frame that claims the exact opposite: Nursing Grads Have Lowest Unemployment Rate [moneytalksnews.com].
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Blame the bean counting MBAs running the hospitals and focusing solely on the bottom line - profit over patient care.
Yup, patient to nurse ratio is much higher than it used to be, or than it is in other countries. If you go through the numbers, you'll find that nurses are but a tiny part of the utterly obscene hospital bills you get these days. Of course the MBA's pinch pennies on the people who actually provide patient care, and lavish salaries on "administrators" like themselves.
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So why aren't there more or larger medical schools? "Overcrowding" does a great job of restricting the supply of doctors. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical schools, is mostly run by the AMA.
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It's not restricted at the "union" level - it's restricted at the school level.
There is no difference. As I pointed out above, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), which accredits medical schools, is mostly run by the AMA.
The local vet school, for example, strictly caps enrollment ... because veterinary medicine is a slow growth field, and they want to produce enough students to replace retiring vets and match growth without flooding the market, lowering wages, and making people with $200K in student loans unemployed.
I didn't realize vets have a good union too. In other areas of higher education, from computer science to medieval art history, schools will happily accommodate as many customers (oops, I mean students) as they can, enlarging departments to meet demand, and do it without any regard to the job prospects of their graduates. Curiously MD's, and as you say
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My master's cohort had 20 people in it.
I can't comment on your anecdote, since I've no idea what your cohort was, how many professors were involved, etc. Overall though the US graduates about 2x as many STEM people as the job market can absorb. I can't imagine how large the factor is for philosophy and medieval art history majors. Universities are businesses, and like all businesses they want more customers. That they're not-for-profit is immaterial. They don't care what you do with their product, so long as you buy it. It's more than a little s
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Not according to companies. If you listen to them, there isn't anyone who's qualified for their positions which is why they have a worker shortage.
Witness this article [yahoo.com] which claims employers are whining they can't find enough people to fill these ten positions which include the medical field.
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The real problem is they can't find qualified people to work the hours they want them to work for a paltry income.
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Sometimes there is a shortage. If you need for someone who's written accounting systems, device drivers and console games, on mainframes, smartphones and toasters, with 5 years experience in something that's only existed for 3, who plays the piano and is a Taurus or Aries they're a bit thin on the ground.
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Not according to companies. If you listen to them, there isn't anyone who's qualified for their positions which is why they have a worker shortage.
They mean a shortage of H-1B visa workers.
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Software development pays well, and demand is high, but it sucks to break into the field. It's the one dependable career though: every job that can be automated will (and should) be automated, but someone needs to write that automation.
There's no degree any more where someone will hand you a job just for graduating. Welcome to the adult world, where you won't be handed anything. Pick a field where there's high demand and most people can't do the work well, and you'll be fine in the long run.
yo dawg (Score:2)
What about when someone automates the automating?
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Don't worry, fully programmable self aware AI is 10-20 years away.
In fact, its ALWAYS 10-20 years away.
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Maybe it will help us develop nuclear fusion.
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That guy who automates the automating? Has a job. We won't run out of things to automate in my lifetime, and if we ever do get strong AI, it will likely demand higher wages than I will.
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CS/IT is about an oxymoron:
You need to specialize in something so that you have a skill not the average person coming from the degree mills possesses.
BUT you also have to not specialize so much that if/when that skill becomes not needed, one is hosed, be it COBOL, C++ programming, Java clientside applets, etc.
For example, certifications. It is good to have some in several different items because I've found that in previous jobs I've had, auditors will go through the server room, demand certification IDs fr
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For example, certifications. It is good to have some in several different items because I've found that in previous jobs I've had, auditors will go through the server room, demand certification IDs from staff, and if they are expired (or don't exist), said worker is fired on the spot for "failing to have the authority to operate the device."
Wait what?
I think your company's auditors are either morons or there's a couple levels of misdirection here and the employees were really being fired for something else.
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It's the one dependable career though: every job that can be automated will (and should) be automated, but someone needs to write that automation.
"Dependable career" is a nice theory - shame it isn't corroborated by reality.
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20+ years says you're wrong. I've never had a dependable job - it's not the 1950s any more - but I've had a perfectly dependable career. I stay on top of changes in tools and technology, don't get stuck in a niche, and see strong demand for my skills. When I want or need to change jobs, I just start responding to the recruiters contacting me.
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20+ years says you're wrong.
30+ years says you're overconfident. I've stayed in the field, was once out of work for 6 months, but other than that my longest unemployment was 3 days. It definitely helps to stay up-to-date, and just do a plain old-fashioned good job. However, I've known people who were at least as good and as up-to-date as me, but after being out of work for a long time (filled in with a few burger jobs and stuff) had to switch to another, often less lucrative career. There is a lot of luck involved, though some people
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Well, it's helps if you don't admit to "more" than 20+. :) Technically accurate, but gives less fodder for age-based hiring discrimination.
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My 26 year old nephew graduated an Electrical Engineering degree. He specialized in computer board layout. He spent four years working with his grandfather running an ocean going tug business before starting school. After graduation last spring he went back to the shipyard. He was installing the electronics and sensors needed for the new main engines being installed in a tug. The experience installing sensors was a plus in him getting hired to install and maintain sensors for a gas pipeline. $20000 moving a
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get out now and go somewhere with real skills before your loans get to high.
How about foreign languages? A working knowledge of Telugu and Kannada are probably the most useful qualifications these days for any work related to computers.
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Do they speak English or French in Kannada?
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Telugu person with a Kannada speaking spouse here...
Unless people are talking with their own friends that speak the same language at home about personal stuff (or they are bad-mouthing or saying "good but inappropriate" things), may people speak English. For almost all things computer related, I don't know of anyone that uses native language words.
This sort of venting definitely needs a native-language "MASK":
"This MASK(native-language based identifier of the colleague -- like tall guy, fat guy, etc) is a M
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native-language based identifier of the colleague
I'm not talking about colleagues.
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get out now and go somewhere with real skills before your loans get to high.
Then go back once you realize that no one wants to hire you if you don't have a Bachelor's Degree.
See, I took that route - instead of 'wasting time' on a four year degree, I jumped into the industry with both feet, spending the last decade gaining experience, learning to work on production systems that students only hear about, and recent CS grads only know in theory.
Yet I can't seem to get out of low-pay, entry level positions; why? Because I don't have a Bachelor's degree.
In the 20th Century, you could ge
Re:CS is not IT / system admin (Score:5, Funny)
HR departments are the bane of modern business.
"Sorry, sir, but we just don't feel that you're qualified for this entry-level programming position"
"But I'm Bill Gates!"
"Yes, and your application clearly shows that you dropped out of college before obtaining your Bachelor's Degree..."
"But I'm *Bill Gates*!"
"Sorry sir, please apply again when you have the required degree..."
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Yet I can't seem to get out of low-pay, entry level positions; why? Because I don't have a Bachelor's degree.
My experience is completely the opposite. Do you work for the government or something? Do you actually self-filter when the requirements say "BA required, MS preferred"?
Past my (crappy) first job, no one has ever cared. Wait, I take that back: there was one team at Google that didn't want to interview me once (but Google recruiters for other teams still pester me often). So once in 20 years someone cared.
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Yet I can't seem to get out of low-pay, entry level positions; why? Because I don't have a Bachelor's degree.
My experience is completely the opposite. Do you work for the government or something?
Not anymore - ironically, that was the one decent job that didn't require a Bachelor's, they were happy with an Associates in an unrelated field (matter-o-fact, that's how I got into IT to begin with).
Do you actually self-filter when the requirements say "BA required, MS preferred"?
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Are you saying I should send in my CV anyway, even if I don't meet the qualifications? Haven't had much luck taking that route in the past... at least, not in situations where my CV hitting the desk of some HR dweeb is the first contact I make with the company.
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I've only once been hired anywhere as a result of sending my resume directly to a company (well, a recruiter as it happened, so no HR dweeb). But yeah, that time there were degree requirements that I ignored. What a hiring manager wants is some evidence that you can solve the problem he has. Do you have enough relevant technical experience that it's worth phone-screening you? Those are the requirements that matter, not the boilerplate stuff.
Since LinkedIn emerged, keeping my resume up-to-date there has
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I've only once been hired anywhere as a result of sending my resume directly to a company (well, a recruiter as it happened, so no HR dweeb). But yeah, that time there were degree requirements that I ignored. What a hiring manager wants is some evidence that you can solve the problem he has. Do you have enough relevant technical experience that it's worth phone-screening you? Those are the requirements that matter, not the boilerplate stuff.
Sounds like maybe I'm applying in the wrong places...
Since LinkedIn emerged, keeping my resume up-to-date there has been enough for recruiters to reach out to me (sorry Dice, but you never managed that). In the US, the software jobs are fairly concentrated in a few cities (not sure where you are, but if you're using a "CV" and not a terse resume in the US, that's your problem). If you don't live in one of them, that could be your problem.
Ah, well, that could be part of it - I don't keep my LinkedIn profile updated. Of course, I'm not a "software guy" so much as a hacker-admin, so the concentration of good coding jobs in other cities isn't too big a deal for me.
As for the CV, I wasn't having a lot of luck with the traditional, American resume format, so I decided to try the CV just for kicks... honestly, it doesn't seem to be harming or helping, as my callback volume hasn't changed. Person
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As long as no one needs to read past the first page to discover that they want to call you, the rest probably doesn't matter. A resume gets about 30 seconds of attention - just make sure the graphic design of page 1 points attention at a couple of bullet points that say "I did X", where X is relevant and important. Or at least that's the best advice I can give.
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In the 20th Century, you could get by on experience alone. Here in the 21st, it seems that all employers care about is that little piece of paper.
It's a shame considering that, as usual, a decentralized approach would be far superior. We should abolish final exams, and institute entrance exams for jobs. That way how you come by the knowledge required to perform your job doesn't matter. Unfortunately, this wouldn't help the rich get any richer; Quite the opposite actually. Thus, I don't delude myself; As history has shown, what's best for society is rarely willingly adopted by it.
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I feel there is some good news in there.
Thanks to Big Data awareness (there is potential there even if we factor in all the hype), the focus of the curriculum in many CS schools will shift more towards math and algorithms (for databases, system resource considerations, etc. -- core math/science and engineering), instead of "pure IT" or "software/computer use" [e.g. teaching html markups, office suites, configuring networks, basic sysadmin, etc.]
Or, may be I am in my own bubble and we are going to see degree
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Fairly common for students that don't have the mental skills to master CS. I have known lots of such people.
It's arguably worse when you have someone with that mastery but little or no work experience to back it up. They're too smart to realize that they know nothing and too proud to ask for help. I know because I was that kid once and only now, looking back, do I fully appreciate how green I really was. If I could go back and give my younger self one piece of advice it would be this: do not be so proud that you overlook the experience of another, even one whom you consider less capable than yourself, because a c
Based on inflation, don't take less than $53K (Score:2, Interesting)
Based on inflation, don't take less than $53K starting. That's the equiv of $36K in 1997. Inflation is a bitch.
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Everyone's a comedian these days.
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Why? My starting job in 1997 was 36K which was modest in the dot boom. Some were starting at 50-80K back then. Inflation is the hidden wage killer.
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
If you aren't calculating for inflation, you are getting screwed.
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You said it yourself: that was in the middle of the dot-com boom. There was also a different kind of inflation going on then, and expecting that money to start (or it's equivalent in today-dollars) is ridiculous.
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Why is it ridiculous? Is there not enough demand? Supply too great?
I said it was modest during the dot boom, the high salaries were 80K+. 50K is a more than fair starting salary for a programmer today.
>Expecting that money to start (or it's equivalent in today-dollars) is ridiculous.
I expect the next sentence to be, "I can't find any good programmers."
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When it's your first day of your first job out of college, odds are strongly in favor of your not being a good programmer.
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Actually, that's pretty negative. I think you mean experienced programmer, not a good programmer.
You go ahead and continue to pay shit wages for programmers, and I'll continue to warn programmers not to take shit wages.
Re:Based on inflation, don't take less than $53K (Score:4, Insightful)
My starting coding job paid $18k. And that was awesome, because it was a real, full-time coding job.
Your apprenticeship will likely not pay well. That's fine, it's just for a couple of years.
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Exploited or not, if one is trying to start out as a programmer and nobody is willing to hire, what choice do they have?
I still see "Junior" level jobs requiring 3 to 5 years in every acronym under the sun.
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Yes, I was exploited (worse than you're thinking). So what? I needed to break into the field. I did. Goal achieved. The money I made for the first couple of years just doesn't matter now - it opened the door, and was way the hell easier than a medical internship.
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Funny. $53k was my exact starting salary 15+ years ago straight out of college. ./ claiming they make under $50k, I have to believe they're either making it up or living in a super low cost area.
Two years ago I was the hiring manager for a dev position and offered $90k to a recent college graduate with less than a year of contracting experience (I would have offered less but HR told me that was what the market dictated, and they're not known to spend money just for the fun of it).
When I see people on
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Based on inflation, don't take less than $53K starting.
According to prevailing wage for an H1B person, the fresh graduated person would get his/her salary at $56,597/year in New York, NY [ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/O... [flcdatacenter.com] ], $42,806/year in Boise, ID [ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/O... [flcdatacenter.com] ], and $72,613/year in San Francisco, CA [ http://www.flcdatacenter.com/O... [flcdatacenter.com] ]. So it all depends on where you live...
angry bird (Score:2, Offtopic)
0 5 * * 7 root release_a_new_angry_bird.py
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Ugh :( (Score:5, Interesting)
I love the idea of people who are genuinely interested gaining access to these careers but this reminds me too much of the last dot-com bubble. All sorts of idiots who had no business getting into technology jumped into the pool chasing lucrative salaries and making gigantic messes once they got hired. It took years to flush them all back out.
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It's the fallout from the "English Major? More like Fry Cook." response to how the economic crisis was screwing recent graduates. People see that and go "I don't want to be like that in 4 years"
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It's easy money (Score:3, Insightful)
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Most of that money went to management, not to the coders,
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Um, technically, that was a Canadian subcontractor, so blaming it on US tech workers is a bit of a stretch.
Outsourcing sucks.
Great News For American Technology (Score:3)
there was a 22% increase in enrollment for computer science bachelor's degree programs at U.S. schools
Great news for American technology! Of course it will take a while before those students graduate, so we'll need to "temporarily" increase the H-1B quota 3x. We assure you that this is being done only to keep the industry from completely collapsing due to the desperate shortage of qualified people, so that we'll be able to offer jobs to all those American students when they graduate.
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Why do you need a tinfoil hat? "STEM shortage" is shouted from every rooftop, by government and non-government people alike, and has been ever since Sputnik. Objective statistics be damned - we need people who can take a scientific approach!
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http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-wo... [ieee.org]
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Yeah, even the IEEE finally admits it. Don't expect them or the IEEE-USA to do anything though. IEEE is heavily dominated by academicians, who are all for cranking out more grads. Everybody knows where their bread is buttered.
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A degree is not the same as being hired (Score:2)
Get at least six months of work in the field before you graduate with your CS degree.
Oh, and based on what I've seen, a lot of the students taking that are from other countries.
Not to be confused with local students, of which there are many.
As to the supposed goal of increasing women in technology, I've noticed it's all about only direct entry first year in STEM targetted on girls in middle and high school, which is fine, but ignores all the women who graduated high school and started work in another field
I've seen this before (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember CS enrollment shot way up in the late 90s as the dotcom bubble was inflating. Now that we're in the late stages of the social media/apps bubble, and people are getting interested in computer science again, I'm guessing that's the reason for the spike.
Bubble or no bubble, there's always going to be demand for good, talented people in software development and IT. The H-1B and offshoring trends have cut salaries significantly, and have made employment less stable, but there are still jobs out there. If students are going into CS that have a genuine interest in computers, that's good. Chasing the money like they were doing in the 90s without the desire will lead to the same problem we had when 2001 rolled around -- tons of "IT professionals" who had no aptitude for the work and were just employed because of the frothy market.
I've managed to stay employed for almost 20 years now and I still really enjoy what I do. It's not as wildly lucrative as it was in the 90s when you could get 20+% salary increases by changing jobs every six months. The only things I've done consistently over this time are:
- Keeping my skills current (and yes, it is a tough commitment especially when you employer doesn't care.)
- Not begging for higher and higher raises every single time salary review time comes around (which requires saving and living within one's means...)
- Choosing employers who don't treat their employees like they're disposable.
I've heard lots of older IT people that they're actively discouraging their kids from following in their footsteps. I don't think that's necessarily good advice. Sure, there are crappy employers out there, and it's not a guaranteed ticket to wealth anymore. But if you're flexible and want interesting work that lets you use your brain and get paid for it, it's still a good move IMO. Look at the legal profession right now - the ABA sold out their members by allowing basic legal work to be offshored. Law degrees were previously an absolute guarantee of a respected, high-salary job, and now that profession is starting to see what we're seeing. My opinion is that as computers get more and more involved in our daily lives, a professional framework will eventually develop when things really start getting safety-sensitive and people stop treating computers like magic boxes and IT/developers like magicians.
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When I was at BYU in the late 90s, it was stated by several professors that CS was the most enrolled in and dropped out of major, so I agree that an increase in enrollment doesn't mean a whole lot. The meaningful number will be to see if there's a corresponding increase in the degrees awarded rate in 4 years.
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I tell them, "find out what you like doing, and learn it well, but keep flexible. Don't chase fads or short-term money."
IT is cyclical, unpredictable, and tends to eat the elderly, but so do many other professions. The work world is full of pointy edges and roller coasters.
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Yeah and given the lackluster employment options to our college-bound or recent college graduates, it's no surprise that more are looking into CS where unemployment is still relatively low. Absolutely correct on H1-B and outsourcing too.
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First time through, I read that as "parolees".
Why this is happening... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Now if we only had a 22% increase in CS Jobs (Score:2)
Prediction in 3-4 years expect lots of pain in CS/IT employment.
Engineering decimation (Score:2)
I would posit that this increase is caused by technically minded students seeing what has happened to engineering in the US and focusing on CS as the last viable avenue of technical study with a healthy job market. It's the only place where entry level jobs are readily available. I would find it hard to encourage any young American to pursue a technical career outside of software development. As it stands now, engineering schools largely serve a Chinese and Korean student base.
What inquiring minds need to know (Score:2)
Sure, that's a lot of applicants, but really the most important thing is DO ENOUGH OF THEM HAVE VAGINAS?
I mean, really, otherwise it's obviously sexism at work.
Graduation Rates (Score:2)
Why is so much emphasis put on enrollment rates, and not graduation rates? CS has a pretty high level of attrition (same with most STEM fields really), so I'd rather see numbers reflecting actual graduates.
Wrong title (Score:2)