March 6, 2008
Computer Science Enrollment Is Down by Half Since 2000
Reports are trickling in about the latest enrollment numbers in computer science from the Computing Research Association.
The latest Taulbee Survey—set to be published in full by May—says that in 2007, undergraduate enrollment in computer-science programs had fallen to half of what it was in 2000 (15,958 to 7,915, to be exact).
However, there’s an inkling that enrollment will stabilize, as the new enrollment numbers flattened in 2006 and increased in 2007. —Hurley Goodall
Posted on Thursday March 6, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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How can anyone not be surprised by this trend? After earning an MSE in Computer Science in the early 80’s, I thought this was a great field to be furthering my knowledge. With all the out-sourcing and down-grading of technical IT positions in the U.S. this is no longer accurate. As someone who has been in IT for over 30 years – always in technical positions, not management – I would urge anyone thinking about an IT education to strongly consider other alternatives. I hate saying this, but IT does not have the future it once did in this country.
— Gary Mar 6, 12:57 PM #
While outsourcing may be an issue, part of the CS enrollment problem seems to be due in large part to the curriculum at most computer science departments. Technology evolves so quickly that students view CS courses to be outdated and impractical. Why sit in a classroom learning old programming language?
— Dan Mar 6, 01:09 PM #
“Results from the Taulbee Survey should be compared with data produced by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which surveys all institutions that grant CS degrees (where Taulbee is a survey of the doctorate-granting departments only).”
— Stephen Mar 6, 05:15 PM #
I started a computer science degree in the 90s because I loved computers. I got a job while going to school and quit, because the coursework had no relevance to the real world… I thought. Turns out I have used the concepts from my programming classes, and the mathematics, with surprising frequency in my later years as a technical manager. If they had been teaching real-world languages (there were no courses that covered Windows APIs, and the next year they moved to an all-Java curriculum) I would probably have kept going. I just couldn’t see the relevance. Computer Science must do a better job of linking the academic if it’s going to sell.
— Debbie Mar 6, 05:21 PM #
I’m not surprised by the results either. Debbie and Dan point out a larger and more troubling issue for universities. Unless the approach to curriculum development and delivery is radically changed to a more dynamic, real-time environment, computer science AND business schools are going to continue to suffer the same fate. I spoke with a colleague in Executive Education who said that, when polled, businesses felt that business schools “just don’t get” the real world of business and the constantly changing issues. Same can be said for IT.
— Tom Mar 6, 05:59 PM #
Although I do agree with everyone comments here I still find it very disturbing as a ’03 Computer Science graduate. Although I admit I can’t really relate any of the specific curriculum that I learned to my current job, but doesn’t having a degree in Computer Science carry some weight to students? There are multiple occasions where I get impressive looks when I say that I majored in computer science as if it’s some holy grail or extra hard to achieve title. Maybe that isn’t the case and I definitely don’t feel special about it, but it does carry value in the form of higher paying jobs out of college.
— Kyle James Mar 6, 08:05 PM #
I’m not surprised. I graduated from a very prestigious school only to find no jobs in a field I thought would be my salvation. Thankfully I didn’t have student loans. My first degree was in History and that was a blowout. I’m going for my 3rd in Accounting and I’m hoping that the 3rd times a charm.
— Drew Mar 6, 11:36 PM #
The headline is misleading; see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/05/compsci. Enrollment trends are a complex story and there is no question that the field is changing, but ask Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and lots of other companies who are getting desperate for good graduates.
— Peter Mar 7, 07:00 AM #
I’ve been in and out of business IT for 35 years+. My BA is in economics, and I while I didn’t use much of the specific content in most of my IT jobs, I did use the thought processes and quantitative skills. As a manager hiring and supervising programmers, I learned to look for some programming courses, plus a right-brained interest (my best indicator was music). A single-focused CS degree was a negative — no creative ability. As for changing technologies, expect that you’ll have to spend the equivalent of 2-3 weeks in (re-)training every year. Forever. I have.
— Rick Mar 7, 07:22 AM #
Seems to me from the responses that sometimes people tend to confuse education with training and training with education. Training is specific, and of course quickly becomes outdated. The last courses I took were in COBOL and Assembler, twenty-one years ago; changes is nothing new in computer science. The last course I taught was FORTRAN. I doubt any of my students are using that any more than I am, but I bet the extra-credit problem stuck with them: calculate and print pi to two hundred decimal places, using any of half a dozen formulas. Definitely not training.
— Dan Kirklin Mar 7, 08:24 AM #
At Northeastern, we try to cover all bases. Out basic courses teach the underlying concepts of programming languages that apply to all languages. Our student ACM group teaches short courses on the latest, hottest topics, e.g., Rails. They also bring in speakers from industry who are on top of what is happening today. We do all this because we are acutely aware of all the many issues in the Taulbee, NSF, and other surveys, and because we know how important the foundational concepts are. This is my 50th year of programming and I’m learning new things every day, often from my students. An important part of all of this is our co-op program that puts students in real-world jobs by the second year of our five year program.
— Bob Futrelle Mar 7, 08:56 AM #
Just to be clear, I am not any of the Dans that have already posted.
Several other posters have it right. The idea of any CS program being kept ‘up to date’ is a fallacy. It can’t be done. Who can predict what will be big in technology 3 years from now?
My CS program taught me how to program and how to learn languages. I was taught primarily in C++ and Java, and have not used either of those since graduating. My first position out of college, my boss casually mentioned that they had just installed a PHP app on the web server and wanted to customize it. No sweat (especially seeing PHP is so C like). From there I moved to other web tech that I had never used before.
Of course, now I primarily use SQL, which has been around since the 70s.
— Dan Mar 7, 09:17 AM #
At the University of Washington, demand for our Computer Science and Computer Engineering majors has always outstripped capacity, by factors of two to four. Our introductory course enrollment is up by 25% in the past 3 years. Enrollment of women is up by 40%. Graduates go to law school, medical school, business school, the biotech industry, the software industry, graduate school … Students choose the field because they can change the world, but it’s also the case that entry-level salaries for our Bachelors graduates at major software companies were between $70K and $90K 18 months ago. (I don’t have last spring’s data; the numbers were surely higher.) Why on earth would a student major in anything else? See http://www.cs.washington.edu/whycse.
— Ed Lazowska Mar 7, 09:24 AM #
I would like to see what types of institutions this study focuses on. If we are looking singularly at four year universities here, they might not take into account that some of those students who they claim have been lost, or once chose to attend those campuses may actually be attending online colleges. It would be something to look into.
— Seckman Mar 7, 11:00 AM #
My car broke down in the desert one time, and I left the highway in search of food and shelter. I must have wandered several hours before, in total exhaustion and near delirium, I collapsed by a solitary socorro. When I awoke I was in a darkened cave, surrounded by scruffy, wild-eyed men and women, dressed in ragged clothes. “Welcome stranger,” the leader said, handing me a canteen of brakish water. I gulped it down anyway, and wiped my mouth. “Is this some sort of hippie commune?” I asked, my voice still parched and weak. “Nope,” one of them answered—a balding man with bushy sideburns. “We’re a Cobol shop.”
— marci Mar 7, 12:01 PM #
However, Northeastern’s continuing education section offers nothing of the sort, which I find depressing. How are full-time employees supposed to further their education of these concepts and languages when some of the courses offered are on mainframe programming, and HTML?
— Christopher Mar 7, 12:06 PM #
Ed has hit the nail on the head though UW @ Seattle isn’t the only paradise in town: (1) Demands is strong. Northeastern’s co-op program reports much more demand for co-op students than there is supply. (2) The field is always growing and introducing new exciting ideas. Keeping up keeps your mind alive and entertained for a life time not just a few years. (3) When you do pick a CS program make sure you choose one that emphasizes principles over current technologies. Principles empower you to pick up new technologies. Teaching old technologies only prepares you for the graveyard of employment. Of course, it is up to you to stay current in the field, but that’s the fun of it. See above, but — oops — that might put you in an infinite loop.
— Matthias Felleisen (NEU) Mar 7, 04:46 PM #
As a person who successfully starts software companies, I can honestly tell you that enrollment is down in CS, because it isn’t cool with the kids. There is great work and high pay, but the work is hard and the hours long. We have a society of 20 year olds that want to wear a white shirt, and have the little people do the work. Of course, there are great people out there, but that farm raised work ethic is long gone. We are talking about the brains to run the biggest area of business in the world, but it isn’t cool? I could go into IT people who can’t get jobs, or the value of learning C first, etc, etc, but we know those answers already. In the end, if you have a BS in CS, you have the tools to do great. If you don’t have those tools, you aren’t going to do as well. You can easily learn those skills outside of college too. Hopefully, America will get scared and have a return to math and science education (like the 1960’s), and we will develop the brains to do the next big technology wave. If only there was a TV show about how cool it was to be a geek, kind of like CSI for computers, maybe this would work itself out in a less painful way. By the time they reach college it is far too late to redirect them away from the lightweight subject matter that is seeing rising enrollment these days.
— Peter Gregory Mar 7, 09:14 PM #
I was a theoretical computer scientist by training and as a professor. Through some twists of fate I find myself a CIO today. Am I up on all of the current trends? No. Do I know as much as the people who work for me? No. Do I add value to the enterprise? You bet. I can ask the probing questions, I bring project management skills that I never learned but which seem natural given the disipline I learned as a computer scientist.
Constant curriculum review and revision is as important to CS as ever. I think we need to put more effort than ever into understandting our students and into making our subject and the way we teach it appealing to them.
— Debra Mar 8, 09:11 PM #
Can’t they do this crap in India while we concentrate on the “higher value jobs?” That’s what the globalists said we could do and nobody from business or academia complained then. So, why all the teeth gnashing now?
I find it especially ironic that the complaints from business are about needing specific skills. We’ve been told for years that programming was low level grunt work that could be shipped overseas. All we really need now are project managers, right?If you are a prospective college student, just avoid all this uncertainty. Major in medicine, law, finance, business, or marketing and you won’t ever have to retrain in the lastest language and you won’t care how many H1B visas are issued every year, or that the Phillipines, or Viet Nam, or Egypt, or eastern Europe, or China, or sub-saharan Africa etc. etc is the “new” India for low cost tech skills. Stick to something where you only have to compete cost-wise with other Americans. Your life will be much easier and after 20 years, you will have 20 years experience in your profession intead of “outdated skills”.
Set up Google alerts on “outsourcing” and “computer science”, then sit back and observe for a couple of months and see if you still want to major in computer science.
— Sam Mar 10, 02:58 PM #
Sam is absolutely right. As long as CS/EE -related programming projects are seen as something you outsource, there will be no motivation for young Americans to study it in school – even if they are interested in it.
— stefanie Apr 1, 01:26 PM #