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[female CS prof]

I am getting sick and tired of this "let's specifically target women and minorities" cry that seems to surface every time universities can't get enough students.

"Promoting the field" is the absolute WORST thing to do. This is just more crap from the feel-good-let's-all-get-together band of social "scientists". I don't want to teach anyone who isn't interested in my field. And you aren't going to get that by someone who decided on a major because it was "promoted" in the right way. Slick packaging doesn't produce interested and prepared students.

[Betsy Pickering]

Patricia Schwarz wrote:

>
> 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!
>

Is this supposed to be funny? cute maybe?

It's thinking like this that has produced precisely the problem we face. Learning math takes mental discipline and mental ability. We need to
foster that. Things really went awry when we---read the radical left---decided that learning had to be fun and entertaining or kids won't learn. Well, now we have a bunch of kids who were entertained and wound up learning nothing.

Patricia's wisecrack remarks are exactly why we have arrived at a point where most people think girls can't do math. Make light of it. Make a joke of it. In the mean time we are losing our edge.

Well sorry Pat, but I don't find anything to joke about....

[Janos Simon, CS U of Chicago]

Re: Bill Gates and Harvard "Business School"

Gates did not drop out of HBS. He dropped out of the undergraduate program. He not only took advanced courses in Math,  he even wrote a research paper with his advisor, Christos Papadimitriou, "Bounds for Sorting by Prefix Reversal"
that appeared in the journal Discrete Mathematics.

So, while the argument that it is possible to do good work in the computing profession without a degree is true, Bill Gates is certainly not an example to bring forth for the argument "training in Math and academic CS is useless."  In fact, he has been making a tour of the top engineering scholls, trying to convince undergrads to major in CS.

[%sig%]

[anon]

When do we unemployed american high tech workers get to go to Washington and protest our apparent unemployability.

 I had a 20 year high tech career with a computer science degree after 3 years of looking I stopped and went back to school for a total career change.  Companies like Microsoft are just trying to set up for the next H1-B visa diluge. I don't buy it.

[%sig%]

[Rebecca B.]

"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."

This comment really resonates with me.  Perhaps part of the problem with recruiting now is not so much a drop in "computer science" majors as a split in the same population between "computer science" and "information technology"-type degrees.  I know that many major disciplines have a sub-major that deals with technology:  Education has educational technology, Business has management information systems, etc.  Maybe the comp sci students haven't so  much left as realized that what they really want to do is more applied and thus moved to these alternative types of programs....

Of course, that doesn't help the comp sci departments that are losing students and therefore face the danger of losing faculty....

[anony]

Well, while I am not in the CS field personally, I know many who are. I also worked as an IT tech through highschool and college.  My opinion as a recent college graduate is that there are a number of reasons for the drop in the number of comp. sci. majors. The first is the tech bublle bursting and the introduction of outsourcing. The second is that Comp. Sci. is a difficult degree and simply graduating no longer garuantees you a high paying job. Truth is there are better and similar alternatives out there for people. For example degrees in management information systems, graphic design, etc have pulled some away from CS. The truth is that even some CS majors choose to take jobs in these fields. I have a close friend that chose to take a job in MIS at a financial institution instead of in traditional CS. His reasons included job security and location. The third reason is that companies like microsoft have a bit of a reputation of being  slave drivers and firing older programmers in favor of younger ones. The truth is that a CS degree can have a really short shelf life, which is a major problem for many of the older programmers. I believe that CS may face a shortage of talent, however it is not the only field. Until you can promise bright, young people something a another career cannot (less of a need for education, more money, greater job security) they will not choose that path. You can see a brain drain in many of the sciences that way as well.

[Kirby Urner, 4D Solutions]

Chris Stephenson, CSTA wrote:

> 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.

This comment strikes a chord with me.  What's interesting
about the current high school curriculum is the emphasis
on climbing Calculus Mountain (pre-calc/calc), with the
"technology" being calculators (mostly TIs), while the
elective CS curriculum (again, high school level) bounces
around trying to figure out what language is accessible
enough to not be a huge turn-off (C++ was a disaster,
now it's Java, but a lot of us are suggesting Python'd
be the better choice...).

Without getting into language wars, my point is this:  why
don't we have an alternative math track that is more of a
hybrid of CS and traditional topics, but with a discrete math
focus?  Instead of so much emphasis on calculus, we could
do more with discrete math algorithms implemented in
some computer language.  

Examples:

Build a rational number class and implement continued
fractions with it.[1]  Study Euclid's Algorithm and
the extended version.  Make a conceptual grasp of
RSA a goal for senior year, instead of integration by
parts and double integrals.  This'd be an alternative
*math* track, but with a lot more CS input.  Some kids
might do both tracks, but the CS hybrid wouldn't be
2nd tier or "vocational" -- it's just an alternative, and you
can still get to calculus later.

I write about this a lot on the math-teach list at the
Math Forum.  Here're a relevant link:

http://www.mathforum.com/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1150219&tstart=0

> Take a guess at how much relevant and recent
> information about careers in computing is easily
> available to high school students. Not much? Right!

A lot of bright kids get their info direct from the net,
bypassing what's offered in school.  I've been mentoring
an 8th grader who is far ahead of any of his teachers, in
his understanding of LAMP for example (he customized a
blog for his principal, written in Python -- hosts on a 64-bit
Ubuntu out of his basement, rewrote Pybloxsom to use
Apache's mod_python -- 8th grade mind you).

> 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.

Yes indeed, but we should be clear on what "every layman
should know" versus what's too specialized.  For example,
an appreciation of what a database is, and how these are
wired to the web, is generic knowledge.  But knowing how
to analyze an algorithm to express its efficiency in
O-notation -- I think that's more specific to hard core CS.

Example of imparting basic/generic computer savvy:
http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/geoquiz.html

Kirby

[1] continued fractions using Python:
http://www.mathforum.com/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1153661&tstart=0

[%sig%]

[Dennis, Future Nurse]

Computer Science students have one of the toughest curriculums for a 4 year degree.  Consequently, people who would have majored in computer science tend to be pretty bright.  Being bright, they aren't stupid enough to waste four years of their lives on an education that will not help them find employment.

As someone with a BSCS degree, I can tell everyone that it simply wasn't worth it.  Go for a two year degree and no higher if at all.

I have over 25 years in comp. sci. / software engineering, have a high tech patent, and I am unemployable in that field soley because I'm an American.  After 5 years of solid unemployement, I finally decided to abandon my CS carreer for the medical field.  I'm in training to become a nurse now.  Why should a younger guy get into CS?  The answer is that he shouldn't if he's smart.

A friend of mine with similar experience applied for a local programming job and stated that he would work  for minimum wage (about $5/hr).  He was told that he wanted too much money.  The company hired an H-1B.

It used to be that in the US, you could go to college and be anything you wanted.  That's still true, but you probably won't get a job doing it if its CS.  If you major in computer science today, expect to master asking the question "Do you want fries with that?"

[LC Evans]

Although our daughter is a graduate of the NC School of Science and
Math, my husband and I were thrilled when she decided not to study
programming or engineering in college. We know from  firsthand
experience what is happening with those careers in this country.

American employers want cheap labor. Offshoring and the H-1B work visa
and allow them to have it.
Like the majority of Americans, I used to believe it was illegal to
import cheaper labor on work visas to take American jobs. Then my
husband and his co-workers lost their computer programming jobs to
programmers  brought in from India on work visas. The Americans had to
train their replacements in order to receive severance. We discovered
from the LCA sheets that the Indian programmers are earning about half
what the Americans had been earning.

At that time, I naively believed that our elected officials care about
this country and the American workers who made it great. After
numerous calls and letters to Washington, I admitted the sad
truth--they've sold us out to the highest bidder. Their collective
response to my contacts was "Americans need training and education."
My husband has training and education. He still lost his job.

 Our lawmakers made the H-1B
and the outsourcing laws and, as long as the "campaign contributions"
from American
corporate leaders keep pouring in, they're not about to change things.

So I wrote a satirical novel about tech workers losing their jobs to
cheaper imported labor. I used part of my husband's severance money to
publish the book, Jobless Recovery.

You may not agree with the main character that American corporations
ought to value
American workers. You may not agree with him that it is unconscionable
for American corporations to expect Americans to fight and die in the
U.S. military to protect business interests, when these same
businesses won't hire Americans. And you may not agree that he
should fight back after he loses his computer programming job to
cheaper imported labor.

But if you read the book, you will learn what it's like to
lose your job and everything you've ever worked for while you watch
the managers at your former company become richer than you ever
thought it was possible to be.

[jgo cybernetic praxeologi]

In tracking these things over the last few years, and reading others' comments, it's plain that there are a number of issues:

* math ed -- Stop making it more difficult and painful than it has to be. Teach a little math history.  These notions didn't generally come forth in rigorous form. Seeing the reasonable process in which they were developed brings understanding to many for whom the rigorous approach produces only snoring. When you introduce a new idea, show how it connects to previously taught concepts.  Give the students time to digest those connections and combinations, to really internalize them.  And remember that hardly any programmers nor even software architects need to be mathematicians; merely having one with whom to consult suffices in even the most difficult cases.

* difference in interest between the sexes - People are different.  Interests are different. The physical neural wiring of male type people is different from that of female type people. Let each take advantage of those differences.

* hiring -- From what percentage of the thousands of colleges and universities is M$ (I seem to recall the number 26) or Apple recruiting?  What percentages of new computer engineering, computer science, MIS, and IT grads get interviews?  What percentages get offers?

* pickiness -- Articles going back to at least the mid-1990s note the increase in brand-name specificity of job requirements.

* hyper-credentialism -- I hesitate to mention this in a bastion of academe, in which churning out more credentials is part of the game, but many jobs do not actually require the sorts of credentials we've been seeing in job ads these last 10-20 years.  As someone else pointed out, a bright 8th grader will often do quite well.  I've seen HS interns, with guidance, turn out whole commercial software products.  I've seen college sophomores do complex econometrics, and juniors porting statistics packages & debugging complex rocket simulations for NASA engineers, analyzing various loads on office towers and their skins...

The science and engineering and computer programmer and nurse "shortage" propaganda has been trotted out too many times to be effective.  A sufficient number of people have become wise to it as a means for shifting costs and effort away from the propagandists, and subsidies into their pockets... and driving down compensation for those in the targeted field.

This site will give more of a flavor of the historical trends:
http://www.kermitrose.com/econ.html

Of special interest is some work done by RRivers of the American Engineering Association, showing trends in employment for engineers since the 1960s.  Also worthy of note is the work of Dr. Norman Matloff of the UC Davis Computer Science department, in tracking these issues.

[Sally Jo, Waikato University]

>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.

Anon, do you have a reference or pointer to this talk?  It's something that my department has been struggling with recently, and I'm hunting around for discussion on this point.

[SC]

The reason the pipeline is empty is that there are no jobs for 99% of American CS grads.

While I'm proud of my CS degree, I will never be able to work in tech. I was not able to find a tech job when I graduated and now I have been out of the scene so long I wouldn't hire me. It costs too much to stay current when you don't have a job that pays anything.

My advise don't major in CS, it is a waste of time for Americans, go into nursing, they haven't figured a way to outsource that "yet".

[Female Grad Student]

Oh the humor-less

Perhaps its the fact that math and Physics are being presented by humor-less, boring and dry people... but I doubt you see yourself this way.

We need more Dicks in academia....as in Richard Feynman that is.

Go Patricia!  Physics is Phun!

[gene_chase]

Psychologist Kurt Lewin said that there is nothing more practical than a good theory.  If Computer Science theory is taught well, then it opens connections between concepts and it provides big ideas that outlive mere technology.

This explains why the companies that are succeeding in today's marketplace (like Google or Brightcove or Microsoft) have the following attitude toward new employees:  "Send us your best, and we'll figure out to do with them when we get them."

Although as compared with Computer Science there may be a much larger need for technicians who can assemble computers from components or can populate helpdesks with knowledge of current technology, such technicians are soon obsoleted if they are merely certified in the latest technology.

The empty pipeline in Computer Science is cyclical.  (See Fig. 1 of http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may05/vegso for a 35-year view.)  Market forces will turn the tide.  What about declining mathematical ability?  Oh, you meant "The empty pipeline within the United States"!  Then we  have more to worry about than empty pipelines.  We will need to learn to be good citizens of a global economy.

Having educated computer scientists since 1965, I'm confident that motivated students can succeed in Computer Science even if they come with deficits in mathematics.

As for emphasizing project management, without knowing thoroughly what one is managing, the world becomes more Dilbertesque.

[dogvomit]

I find it easy to believe that there are a ton of PHD computer scientists out there.  I have spent the last couple of years on a search committee for an asst. prof in computer science.  We are a small school.  Nearly every applicant is from either the middle east or the far east.  I can count the number of "american" applicants on one hand.  This tells me that american PHD computer scientists are making plenty of money and gainfully employed or they would at least apply for our vacancies. 

Before I get slammed for a misunderstanding, this is not an attack on non-american or minority groups.  We have hired these in nearly every round and have no complaints!