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New data show that the number of computer-science majors has plummeted in the last four years, leaving technology companies scrambling to fill vacant positions. In response, the National Science Foundation and some colleges are examining ways to promote the field, especially to women and members of minority groups. Should the college curriculum be restructured to attract more computer-science majors? If so, how? If the problem is not with the curriculum, what can colleges do to raise interest in computer science? Read more...

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[John Garner, Ivy Tech State Co]

I wish to address this part of the article...

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"Ms. Marchant blames the shift partly on what she sees as students' deteriorating mathematics aptitude.

"Information technology is the right home for an awful lot of students who do not have the math skills and do not really have the interest in becoming programmers," she says.

Jesse J. Rangel, a senior at California State University at Bakersfield who is a computer-science major, says some of his classmates avoid computer science because it involves advanced mathematics and physics. "The sad fact is that many students are not up for the challenge," he says."

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I think that mostly the fields of Computer Science and Computer Technology are used interchangably by those making their living outside of ducation in the computer world.

Computes literacy has so little to do with Mathematics and Physics these days that to require a student to demonstrate aptitude or ability these subjects to be a computer programming major is probably misdirection. Let us remember that Bill Gates dropped out of the Harvard School of Business to program professionally and probably has never had a Calculus or Physics class. If he did have one I would bet that he seldom uses the knowledge that he gained in these classes. Computers and business savvy has made him lots and lots of money despite the fact that he has only honorary college degrees. He surely knows a lot about computer programming.

Most of the e-business today requires that one be knowledgable with Local Area Networks (LANs) and the setting up of web sites.

My son, who is majoring in aviation management at a local 4-year university, has set up a LAN in our home and operates a website business from our home. He is using CATV access because it is more reliable and faster than DSL, at least in our area.

When CATV came to hook it up, not only did he know more than did I about it, he knew more than the CATV service engineer.  

He is so computer literate that it scares me. My undergraduate degree and graduate degree is in Physics and I have a Computer Science minor as an undergraduate. I can program in three languages, or at least I could at one time. I have used this skill very infrequently.

To be brutally blunt, the problem with the declining enrollment in computer science programs in some schools is due to curriculum and its relationship to what is happening in the world with computers.

Most of "science" is being done by companies such as Microsoft, Intel and others and it is being maintained as trade secrets. The advances in computer areas are not being made in colleges and universities. Higher education is no longer on the "cutting edge" in the computer world.

Other science applications are being done by multidisciplinary teams that include not only those well-versed in the so-called "hard" sciences but by people who have lots of practical knowledge in computer technology and hardware capabilities.

Most practical computer programming today is being done by module or in JAVA or similar languages and involves manipulation of web sites and maintaining LANs.

While the need for programmers is not going to go away, it is not where the lucrative jobs are in today's computer markets. This leaves most computer programmers frustrated without a job and with nothing to do but to dream up viruses.

There will always be a need for a limited number of computer science programmers, but currently, that is not where the money is to be made. Students are becomming more savvy about that sort of thing. That is why you are seeing a decline in enrollments in Computer Science programs.

Most computer science faculty at colleges and universities are not making a living in the computer world, they are making a living in education. However, in their defense, most faculty are doing something with computers to make money outside of their college faculty duties.

It looks like the large companies looking for programmers to pay by the hour are going to have to do the same thing that IBM did that made Bill Gates a rich man. Namely, oursource their programming, and not necessarily to a foreign country, although in cyberspace and e-commerce the boundries of countries are meaningless unless the government is regulating Internet access or attempting to collect taxes.

[George Wicks]

It seems to me that some of the people interviewed almost completely dismissed the impact of outsourcing.

For example, Mr. Rashid bluntly states that there are more computer science jobs to be filled at Microsoft than can be filled by the current crop of college graduates.

Excuse me Mr. Rashid, but I happen to know many computer hardware and software engineers who were outsourced but are now working at Home Depot, Starbucks, etc. Mr. Rashid, if you are looking for computer science individuals, might I suggest that you look at many of the individuals who were already outsourced and have sent Microsoft resumes?

I believe that the answer is that you have absolutely no intention whatsoever (and not just Microsoft, but many other U.S. firms) to re-hire American engineers for these positions. I am quite certain that you have every intention of continuing with the outsourcing trend, and now that you found a convenient excuse, you can always deflect criticism.

[Rebecca B.]

I am currently in the process of moving out of a 20 year career in information technology and getting a PhD in Educational Policy, and I have to say that the pipeline is empty for many many reasons....

First and foremost is that many students (rightly) look at the market, at the jobs that are growing, and quickly realize that a certification will get them FAR further than a degree.  The rise of IT Certifications, including certifications in many different programming languages, has made it far easier to skip the degree.  In industry, a comp sci degree is nice, but everything is about "what can you do for my business", and a certification is more likely to show an immediately applicable skill.

Second, in the years since the bubble burst most companies have been able to cherry pick their employees, taking only those with extensive qualifications and experience in the specific tool/language that the company wants.  Before 2000 a programmer was considered a programmer and capable of learning a new language if need be.  Now, between the level of unemployed people in the field, the certification mills churning out new people who know the specific language, and the foreign workers (either here or overseas) willing to learn the language first on their own time, most companies can pretty much write a laundry list of what they want and get it all.

Third, I believe there is a real disconnect in students as to what a degree in "computer science" is supposed to get them.  It used to be perceived as the only real way to get a professional job in the field, but frankly the "information technology", "information systems" and other such programs are churning out what most employers really want.  

Smart students go in that direction because they know that while there are some companies doing real computer science research/development (apple, microsoft, intel, etc), most want a competent programmer with the right certification and some soft skills.  They see the market as far larger there.  Whether this is a correct perception is irrelevent;  what is important is that they hardly know what comp sci is and rarely see job adds for a "computer scientist", and therefore don't see it as a viable career path.

(We can debate the transition of college from a liberal education to a trade school at some other time, but the fact is that is how students look at it.)

The technologies that are "hot" at any given time are generally not "hot" by the time students graduate, and given the focus on the pick-list of skills, students often don't see the point.  (Heck, I learned Fortran, Pascal and C in different classes before I gave up on comp sci for being years behind what people were actually working in.)

As a previous poster said, these kids are EXTREMELY technologically literate and know far more than most of us without taking classes in it.  To lure them to programs we have to change the curriculum to give them the skills that they need to build a career (project management, business accumen, super-current technology skills) and show them how they relate to real jobs out there.

The bottom line is that you do not now nor ever have needed a computer science degree in order to get a high-level programming job.  Most people that I know or have hired to work for me that had comp sci degrees readily admit that their degree has nothing to do with their work.  Relevence is an issue, and that means curriculum.

[Anonymous 0]

There seem to be three issues here:

1. Computer technology seems to be changing so rapidly that it is difficult for Computer Science departments to keep up with this change.  Some computer languages quickly become hot or obsolete in very short periods of time.  Since the types of programming skills that technology companies need change from year to year, professors need to learn new skill every year in order to "keep up" with changing techology.  This means that that computer science departments will always be in flux.

2. Computer companies (as noted above) are beginning to outsource many jobs that used to be available in the United States.  Because of this many students who may be thinking of computer science might take majors which they see as more "stable" than computer science.  Why would I train for a job that may not be available when I graduate when I could go into another field (like law or medicine) which is more likely to give me job opportunities?

3.  The lack of candidates could also be due to the 90's tech bubble bursting. During the tech bubble there was a glut of students taking computer science.  Now that the bubble has burst and other fields have become "hot", students have moved to these other fields.

[Frank W. Moore]

While there are several factors contributing to the decline of computer science, outsourcing and offshoring are the most important. The CEOs of the world, seeking to placate stockholders by boosting short-term profits and encouraged by visions of the multi-million dollar bonuses they will receive as a result, understand quite well the immediate cost savings resulting from hiring computer scientists and engineers from nations with lower wage scales.

Some of the first cracks in the dike appeared when American technology giants learned that they could reduce costs (especially those accrued through retirement liability) by outsourcing traditionally high-paying jobs to smaller firms; in the world of military contractors, these firms have long been called "beltway bandits".  Such companies provided financially attractive alternatives to in-house computer science research and development.  These bandits operated by winning contracts with low bids, hiring entry-level employees with few benefits, and charging huge overhead rates for their services.  As the contracts neared completion, management shifted the employees they wanted to retain (if any) to other projects, and laid off everyone else.  When the next contract was secured, they hired a new batch of entry-level computer scientists. Repeating this process had two key benefits: first, the new batch of engineers, fresh out of college, had skills that were more up-to-date, and potentially more in line with customer needs; second, these new employees could be offered a minimal benefits package, or even no benefits at all.

But outsourcing to beltway bandits has a down side: in particular, bandits have their own best interests at heart, not those of the company that contracted them.  Rather than rebuilding in-house competency, however, American corporate management -- hopelessly ignorant of the fact that the true driving force behind their companies' successes was the brilliance of their American technology workforce, blinded by the outrageous generosity of corporate boards of directors, acutely aware of the fact that computer scientists and engineers lack union representation, and infused with a twisted, self-serving, short-sighted, "me generation" business school mentality --  discovered that they could instead move their high end jobs ... to India.  Why not? Here is a country with a population three times that of the US, boasting a reasonably well-educated cadre of hard-working, relatively low-paid engineers. As an added bonus, they even speak English.

Although the first wave of technology jobs crashing upon the shores of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal may indeed have been the most menial, it didn't take corporate America very long to realize that high-end jobs were fair game.  Four years later, the dike has crumbled completely, and what used to be American technology jobs are now in free fall, cascading offshore to the lowest bidder: why hire Indians when Chinese cost half as much? Why maintain a data center in Ohio when it can be operated from Kathmandu for pennies on the dollar? Who cares whether Klingons are trained well enough to do jobs invented in Palo Alto, CA, as long as their long hours and poor wages help mask widespread corporate managerial incompentence by improving this quarter's bottom line?

American high school students aren't naive about what is going on at America's major technology firms.  These Internet-savvy kids have direct access to more data (if not more information) than ever before.  They don't believe the double-talk they get from Chairs of Computer Science departments. They read reports about outsourcing and offshoring. They are well aware that hundreds of thousands of tech jobs have been lost in the United States since 2000.  And they know darned well that the "great sucking sound" they hear isn't made solely by the clicking of keyboards at overseas data entry sweat shops.

The good news for the next generation of American computer science majors is that entertainment media, fast food, and sports probably won't be offshored for at least another five to ten years; thus, their path to success should be relatively clear, even after their unemployment benefits expire. On the other hand, why choose a major that requires far more hard work than a business degree, only to end up having the prima donna CEOs of the world ship your career to Malaysia?

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[Hugh Bonney]

The article overlooks, even now, the distance obliterating effects of the Internet. Since the US has no trans-border data laws like the EU there's no reason to even have the databases here let alone much IT programming to speak of. Indeed, we will see foreign governments and  businesses able to put information together better than it can be done here or in the EU, leading to an exodus of many marketing and other jobs as well. It will also seriously diminish the sovereignty of the US within its own borders and the competitiveness of US-based companies over time.

But students are not looking at that, they are trying to foresee their own prospects. Recently the number of grad students from China has fallen because most were going to immigrate - it's not just more opportunity  and improved schools at home.  US citizens and Green Card holders are at a disadvantage in the job market with respect to visa workers so the immigration path is cut off. They also perceive the US computing and general economic undevelopment as permanent.

It's not only the poor job market and all the stories of programmers required to train visa worker replacements before dismissal, there's another consideration. A career as a tech worker in the US is not possible for them. Most programmers will have to find something different to do in their thirties around the time most are starting to pay a mortgage and feed little faces. A civil engineer or a lawyer can have a career, a programmer cannot in the US.

CS departments need to emphasize teaching non-CS majors, especially in other engineering fields. For one thing their programming/design is widely used, ad hoc, and frequently awful.  Most of the people who made real money from programming were working somewhere else but knew enough about programming/design to use it for something new.

Note that industry lobbyists always play the education card. Until we educate more Americans, who are suddenly dummies, we need more work visas. But the more they get, the fewer US students will show up in a classic downward spiral. I think that 9/11 happened because we could not imagine it, like Pearl Harbor. We can't seem to imagine the way the US is undeveloping economically at the very time its debts are skyrocketing. The next generations will pay a very high price - there can't be a copy of Sun Tzu in all of Washington.

[2 More Cents]

It seems that few, if any, of those expressing views here concerning what computer science is or is not actually have CS degrees.  Just being able to write a program or hook up a home network, as many of today's kids can do, does not imply an understanding of how to program well.  

A good grasp of math is essential.  Physics may not be as important in general but if one is developing games or other "real world" simulators it, too, may be essential.  Understanding what types of problems can be addressed by a computer program  -- and how to best address them  -- make the difference between a professional programmer and a hacker (in the original sense of the word, not the criminal sense).  

As for Bill Gates, he has been successful because he is very good at what he does.  What he does, however, has next to nothing to do with computer science.  He has gotten rich by exploiting the market, not by advancing computer science.

[Patricia Schwarz]

George Wicks wrote:

> Excuse me Mr. Rashid, but I happen to know many computer
> hardware and software engineers who were outsourced but are now
> working at Home Depot, Starbucks, etc.

I was served a lobster burrito by an embittered former programmer just last year. It was a sad, scary experience. He had the sideswiped look of a guy who used to make 80k per year.

But from the latest job boards, it looks like tech hiring has picked up again, so maybe Rashid does have a case.

I'm not sure how we can make Americans want to do math. Make it illegal, perhaps. Warn against it in national ads. Call parents the Anti-Math. Blame math abuse for the decadence of the sixties.

Or get Paris Hilton to wear a black swimsuit and say math is hot. Whatever it takes. The situation must change!

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[anon]

or perhaps, the real problem is that computer science at most universities is merely advanced mathematics and has on face value little to do in students minds with the technological objects that they grew up with and use every day.  

i strongly suspect that those students with interests in computers are just going into information schools, information technology programs, engineering programs, and the like where they see the outcomes of their work much more clearly tied to the computers that they use.

in short, the problem is probably that the paradigm of computer science which as niel gershenfeld at mit said in a talk recently is stuck in the 1950's to 1970's.  

start a series of courses that teaches the material of computer science applied to a specific problem, like computer game development, and i bet you'll see your enrollments of qualified applicants soar.

[Sherrie Kephart, Educator]

While I am NOT a computer science major, I crafted a dual major in Applied Graphic Design Technology and helped write the on-line course work for Technology Applications accreditation at UNT for teachers in the state of Texas. If you are in industry on the production side of the media, you had better be not only computer literate, but savvy. And, the more knowledgeable you are in software, and various applications, the more marketable you become. That is the theory.
     However, THE REALITY is women are still regarded as dumb and not-acceptible to teach, set-up labs, nor repair equipment. The k-12 world has their "mens only" bubble where anything regarding technology is part of the good ole boys network............. maybe its Texas, maybe its the school district where I was working, I don't know. But, what I was doing to change curriculum (a curriculum rewrite to industry standards submitted to TEA in 1999) which I did per conditions of my employment, does not still seem to be accepted. The purpose of the rewrite being to suit the needs of industry to get my students employed (and I did get them summer jobs every year) was met with extreme resistance. The IT director and the district CATE supervisor were only willing to work with k-12 education and its needs as he & she perceived them, and not with what the needs of the students were for the marketplace.
     After 5 years of active resistance to their ever changing idea of change, I resigned, and the program I had built was promptly scrapped. I had built a three year program called Advertising Design, which was the study of Visual Communications.
     The first year was history of graphics, and pre-press desktop publishing on the Mac platform. High school students learned Illustrator, Freehand, Photoshop and Quark and InDesign. The second year was graphics in broadcast. The students learned broadcast writing, set-design, interviewing set & lighting, recording using different camera equipment, actual program production for the cable channel, and editing and special effects. They learned iMovie, Premiere and After Effects. The third year was basically portfolio production, and they learned animation using Director, Poser and Bryce, and some special effects softwares (sound & morph kinds of things). They had to produce a small animated story.
     We also did web related work as it applied to each years course work. When I left, the students were hung out to dry. I had even gone to the district superintendent to discuss how dropping or changing the course would affect the students choices for college work, and employability. While he understood "my passion for the course" he was unwilling to do what was right to help the students.
     The District's idea of a course revision was made convenient for enrolling more students and less actual learning. They cut the class time to 1 block ( it had been double block for actual production studio work) dumped the entire Mac lab ( software & all) for Gateway PC's and only offer a 2 year program of desk-top publishing. The students now only learn Illustrator, Photoshop and Pagemaker. The district also dumped the collegiate network I had built and the participation in the Federal Technology grant program with UNT I had gotten our school involved in.
     Why, after seeing what had gone on at our school, would most students be interested in anything relating to the computer industry? All they saw was some IT telling everyone his way or the highway........... and the power trip turns most kids off. And, while I recognize that what I am speaking about here is NOT programming... it IS technology training, and higher end computer use than keyboarding at middle school. Our students need to see what is available, while they are in high school, so they can make qualified decisions about their futures. Is that not what education is all about? Tekkie training is not only for progammers, it is also about creation. I think Speilberg, Lucas and Jobs would concur.

[Rebecca B.]

I don't necessarily disagree, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the programming jobs out there require only the hacking skills that many of us have acquired.  Another chunk (mostly games) are developing their own specialized training programs and the final small percentage is mostly DOD or low-level stuff that does actually require a pro.

But the people who write the code that makes the Oracle Engine function don't need a comp sci degree.  Perhaps the architect does, but not the day-to-day coders.  And most day-to-day coders are working on applications for simpler than that.  For every one person working on real comp sci work there are several who are writing VB on top of an access "database" to support a small office or creating java-based web applications.  Neither of these tasks requires a whole lot more structure than is implicit in the language.

When such a small percentage really requires the skill that the degree is providing and most of those jobs are going overseas, why bother?

[Chris Stephenson, CSTA]

As the Executive Director of the Computer Science Teachers Association, I watch the pipeline discussions with great interest but tend to take a slightly different view of the enrollment decreases. I think they are exceedingly worrisome, I just think that the problems begin long before students enter colleges and universities. Because students tend to make  choices about their educational pathways while they are still in high school, I would suggest that what happens in high schools is probably more relevant than the curriculum choices colleges are making.

As many other discussants have noted, students are very aware of the media reports about outsourcing, and in fact tend to have a highly inflated sense of the crisis. Also, I think that we, as professionals and educators, have done a very poor job of communicating to students that there are tremendous opportunities for careers that require a solid background in computer science, especially in the burgeoning  areas of the combined sciences. Take a guess at how much relevant and recent information about careers in computing is easily available to high school students. Not much? Right!

I also find it very interesting that although more people who have a computer science degree actually work in the field than is the case for any other area of science, we continue to battle for legitimacy in a way that other sciences are never expected to do. I would argue that given the increasingly technologically complex nature of our society, a fundamental understanding of computer science is as important to any educated person as is physics or chemisty. And yet computer science remains an elective course in schools (that is assuming there is a course and someone to teach it).

Of course there are cyclical adjustments in all areas of business and industry, but I truly believe that it is a waste of time to enter into a debate about the short term impact of outsourcing when we know that the long term economic viability of the country depends upon our ability to educate people to a level where they become, not the tool users of the world, but the builders of tools that the rest of the world uses.

[mandy]

It is highly unethical to encourage students to major in IT/comp sci/IS.  There are no jobs.  Alright, there're jobs for the top 1% but are you saying the rest of 99% has no right to make a living?  

Programming itself is not easy. It requires logic, abstract thinking, and spatial intelligence.  As a matter of fact, not many people cut it. But the entry-level programmers are paid peanut because they've have to compete with $5/hr in India.  It ain't going to happen.

In conclusion, if you're the top brain and currently study in comp sci dept. of MIT, Stanford, CMU, and such, I say, stick your neck out. Your a genius. Otherwise, GET OUT WHILE YOU ARE STILL YOUNG.

Take my advice to save yourself from years of misery.

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[CS Grad]

I am a Ph.D. student in computer science, so the issue is of some interest to me.

First of all, I would like to point out a major distinction between computer science proper and the plethora of other, related subdisciplines that it is sometimes erroneously lumped with.

Computer *science*, as others have pointed out, is a well-established rigorous academic discipline devoted to the study of computation. It is part mathematics and part engineering.

Computer *programming* is a skill, craft or trade; it  happens to be taught in introductory computer  science courses, because a basic background in programming is necessary for computer scientists. Therefore, many students who want a career in programming end up majoring in computer science. There is nothing wrong with crafts or trades, of course. We need programmers. However, saying that a computer *science* degree curriculum must be redesigned because it doesn't teach students the skills that today's employers demand sounds odd to me. A computer science degree was never intended as a purely vocational qualification, any more than a degree in physics, biology or chemistry would be.

Apart from computer science and computer programming, there are the emerging disciplines variously called "information  technology", "information science", "computing in society", and so on. They are also essential; problems such as user interface design, computer use in the arts, computer use in education, and so on, lead to rich research questions and beneficial practical applications. Again, they are related to computer science, but they are not the same thing.

I believe that all three of the areas above are equally important, and that we need to recruit people into all three. I work in the first area. I have a lot of close friends and relatives in computing, however, and they include programmers and people working in the emerging socially-relevant disciplines. All of us respect each other's work for what it is, and we believe that separate educational tracks are appropriate for each of the three directions.

I would point out  that the boom in undergrad CS enrolments in the dot-com years had a negative side, too. I did my undergrad at that time myself, but out of interest in CS proper rather than with the hope of a high-paying job. And there was nothing more frustrating than the constant pressure by the mass of vocationally-oriented students to dumb down the  curriculum (sorry, to "make the courses more relevant to what the employers are demanding. Like, all this math is hard, you know? And, like, totally, why do I need to learn the lambda calculus if all I ever plan to do is connect databases to web servers, real-world stuff, y'know?"). Again - I have no beef with vocationally oriented students, it's just that they are out of place in a computer science program. At least now, after the bubble burst, the undergrads coming to study CS tend to be actually interested in computer  science and don't object to a math class now and then.

As for recruiting - I think it makes most sense to recruit into the "information technology" disciplines. Computer programming, as a vocational field, is regulated by the market. Computer science, as any branch of science or engineering, always needs more bright, hardworking people, but it needs people who are dedicated and competent, not lured by the promise of high salaries.

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