Computing's Lost Allure

khendron writes "An article in the New York Times, describes how the number of students majoring in computer science in university has dropped off with the rest of the hi-tech economy. The bright side: the students who are enrolling are doing so because they love computers. Not like a few years ago when students were enrolling because they wanted to make a quick buck. I'll take quality over quantity."

Full Text of the NYTimes Article

[Anonymous Coward]

BERKELEY, Calif. -- ON a sunny May afternoon, Brian Harvey's introductory computer science class at the University of California convened for the last time before the final exam. By the time Dr. Harvey was full tilt into his lecture, reviewing recursive functions and binary search trees, the cavernous hall was lightly peppered with about 100 students, backpacks at their sides, a few legs slung over the backs of empty seats.
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Sparse attendance is, of course, an end-of-semester inevitability. Many students viewed the lecture by Webcast, if at all. But more significantly, just 350 students signed up for the course this spring, in striking contrast to enrollment in the fall of 2000, when the same lecture hall was engorged at the start of the semester with 700 students sitting and standing in every available pocket of space.

So full was the room the first few sessions that a fire marshal showed up to size up the situation as a potential hazard. "Even the corridors were jammed," recalled Dr. Harvey, who has taught the introductory course for 16 years. The following semester was little different, with 600 students hoping to enroll in the class.

Today, empty classroom seats, like the vacant offices once occupied by high-flying start-ups, are among the unmistakable repercussions of the dot-com bust.

At the height of the Internet boom in the late 90's, computer science talent was in such demand that recruiters offered signing bonuses to students who agreed to drop out of school. Now, spooked by layoffs and disabused of visions of overnight riches, many undergraduates are turning away from computer science as if it were somehow cursed.

"They overreacted to the boom, so why shouldn't they overreact to the bust?" said Anne Hunter, an administrator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who tracks application and enrollment figures.

Berkeley's experience is mirrored elsewhere. At Carnegie Mellon University, applications to the School of Computer Science for next fall are down 36 percent from their peak in 2001; applications to Virginia Tech's computer science department have declined 40 percent since 2001. At M.I.T., renowned for its computer science curriculum, 20 percent fewer freshmen declared electrical engineering and computer science as their central focus this spring than did in 2001 or 2002.

"People aren't seeing the glory in computer science that they used to," said Nirav Dave, 20, a senior and an electrical and computer engineering major at Carnegie Mellon who has seen the ranks of his fellow majors decline. "It used to be that you would do this and you would be a millionaire."

Shaun McCormick, 19, who will be a sophomore next fall at the University of Texas at Austin, started out in computer science but switched at midyear to communications and plans to focus on advertising.

Not only was he daunted by the difficulty of the coursework, Mr. McCormick said, but his job prospects also worried him.

"You have to be a very good programmer with lots of experience under your belt," he said. "Even if you have a good G.P.A., it's hard to get a good job."

If enrollment in the field remains sluggish, some computer scientists warn, technical progress could be jeopardized.

"Our department will be hurt," said J Strother Moore, chairman of the department of computer sciences at the University of Texas, where interest in the field has also diminished. "But more importantly, when the economy recovers, we're going to need computer programmers, and many more of them than we'll be producing at the current rate of input. It's a serious problem for the national economy."

Still, in the absence of a recovery, opportunities in the computer field are contracting. In 2000 Intel hired 2,378 recent college graduates. Last year it hired 566, one-fourth that number. The chilly job market has had a converse effect on graduate school enrollment: applications to computer science graduate departments have risen sharply over the last two

Re:Preach it brother

[xYoni69x]

You can tell who is in it for the money. They are the ones working on a programming assignment the night before it is due.

Not completely true. When I was in the introductory course, the programming assignments took about 5-60 minutes each. Being somewhat of a procrastinator, I did most of them the night before they were due. This worked just fine, at least for me.

Re:Quality?

[greg_barton]

Because I am not really a much at calculus, which is necessary if you want to be really good at Computer Science.

Woah, there! I'm not sure what computer science you're talking about here. Calculus? Try logic, algebra, discrete mathematics, and number theory. Trust me, you don't need to know a lick of calc to excel in CS.

Re:Preach it brother

[Irishman]

Someone earlier stated this fact that many CS programs do not actually teach you to program beyond a first year course on programming. I was taught I in my first year, but in order to finish my degree I had to learn LISP, Prolog, Smalltalk, C++, Perl, Awk, shell scripting, assembler and a host of other languages I can't even remember now. None of these were taught, they were all assumed. When you solved the problem and got something wrong or didn't do it as well as possible, the marker gave you pointers on how to use the language more appropriately.

What my degree did teach me was how to analyse a problem and not always go with the obvious solution. I have never met a self-taught person who has done an order analysis of an algorithm or searched for an optimal mechanism to implement beyond the obvious.

I am not saying that a self-taught person cannot be as capable or moreso that a university experienced person. What I am saying is that on balance, the number of very poor self-taught people far outweighs the number of very good self-taught people.

Re:Preach it brother

[0x00000dcc]

Sadly enough, I've had the opposite experience. Most CS grads in the past few years have been complete idiots

Interesting post. I'm sure that it depends on the school sometimes, though. I have spoken with some from other colleges who tell me that they could turn in programming assignments that did not compile. That would never fly at my school [cofc.edu]. And while I sure did question some of the theory classes that I had to take, later on I realized their importance.

A couple of weeks ago a fellow graduate friend of mine told me of someone with whom he works (who's graduate from another college, not our program) had him look at some code he had written. One of the things he found was a for-loop in which the author had on a certain condition break out of. My friend responded to this, stating how this was not a very elegant way of writing code and was not true to the form of the fuction of a for-loop, since the idea is that before the iterations begin you state exactly how many times you will iterate. The guy's response was "Well, it still works."

Re:Preach it brother

[kien]

I don't believe that you deserve to be flamed for stating your opinion and observations, Irishman, but I think you should widen your scope.

What my degree did teach me was how to analyse a problem and not always go with the obvious solution. I have never met a self-taught person who has done an order analysis of an algorithm or searched for an optimal mechanism to implement beyond the obvious.

My experience has been different, or perhaps my perspective differs from yours. I have found self-taught programmers to be very practical when it comes to solving a problem. I don't mean to disparage your degree but in a crunch, I prefer a programmer that can address the issue at hand over one that requires time to perform "an order analysis of an algorithm". When it comes to long-term-analysis or development, I'll give more weight to a CS degree. But when I need a fix _right now_, give me a hacker that knows the system and damn the torpedoes...full speed ahead! :)

I am not saying that a self-taught person cannot be as capable or moreso that a university experienced person. What I am saying is that on balance, the number of very poor self-taught people far outweighs the number of very good self-taught people.

I can understand and agree with you on that point. But I happen to work with a very intelligent person with a CS degree that could not install a network printer in Windows 2000, so I think the opposite might also be true.

I am self-taught and I tried college. I gave it up because I got tired of teaching the computer classes and I couldn't afford to quit my job to pursue my dream of studying at MIT.

I don't base the worth or ability of anyone upon a degree because I have learned that it's the person that matters more than their credentials.

--K.

Please...

[ath0mic]

If there is one thing we should always remember, computer science != programming.
I think anyone stuyding CS will agree with this statement.