US College Students Still Aren't All That Interested In Computer Science 306
itwbennett (1594911) writes "Despite the hot job market and competitive salaries, the share of Computer Science degrees as a percentage of BA degrees has remained essentially unchanged since 1981, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics' Digest of Educational Statistics. If history is any indication, it will take a cultural phenomenon to shift the percentage higher: Blogger Phil Johnson point out that there were 'two distinct peaks, one in 1985 (4.4% of U.S. college degrees) and one in 2002 (4.42%). These would represent big increases for the classes entering school in 1981 and 1998 respectively. The former year corresponds to the beginning of computers coming into the home and the release of things like MS-DOS 1.0, all of which may have increased interest in programming. The latter year was during the dot com bubble, which, no doubt, also boosted interest.'"
Why learn CS only to train your H1B replacement? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is just no way to compete with 3rd world wages. If a job can't be offshored, it will be filled by a visa worker - unless the job requires a top secret clearance.
I am doing contract work for IBM. There are barely any Americans left. And IBM is doing everything they can to eliminate what few US jobs still exist.
I am amazed any Americans want to study CS.
Re:Hot job market? (Score:1, Interesting)
More like fake job market.
No it is great if your from India and can qualify for a h1b1 visa then the market is full of opportunity. If you are causasian, east asian, or jewish, the big three racial subculture groups in the US most interested compsci than your going to be told "you don't fit their corporate culture" translated from HR bullshit speak "you won't work 80 hours a week for minimum wages and shit benifits".
----posting ac to avoid overly politically correct mods.----
Re:Not terribly surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that CS is less desirable and especially not less prestigious, it's that we had grossly inflated head counts in CS for a long time because degrees like software engineering didn't exist. Now that they do, the people who want to program and engineer code can go there, and they'll find that what they do is much more in line with what they expected to be doing. CS is reserved for a much more theoretical perspective, and I don't see that as making it the lesser discipline, quite the contrary in fact. It does however mean that a CS degree won't automatically net you a job at a big software company, since the skills learned in CS are at best parallel to what they require.
A good CS student will however be able to adapt quite easily and can even outperform a comparable SE student because of their better theoretical knowledge.
Re:Computer Science is not IT and at times not cod (Score:5, Interesting)
Try telling that to HR departments around the world. All too often I've seen jobs posted looking for LAN technicians saying they want you to have a Computer Science or related degree; a few of them pass on my resume when they see my degree is in Network Systems Administration (I'm not entirely sure if a person is doing it, because in these cases I get an email saying I don't meet the minimum requirement even though I meet ALL of their requirements listed, including their bonus/preferred requirements, just I don't have a CS degree, nor am I interested in getting one.)
Re:I have tried (Score:4, Interesting)
Some people would lose their minds at how hard it can be to get some new library to compile and I think they could see that coming.
Alan Kay and John McCarthy would lose their minds had they tried to compile C libraries. Fortunately, they were also very fond of removing accidental complexity from programming. The one of the crappy tool kind for sure, but not only that.