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The Changing Face of Computer Science 493

Posted by Zonk from the go-to-school dept.
For another facet of CS education, HangingChad writes "MSNBC is carrying an interesting article on the changing demographics of IT workers and education. The upshot of the article is that older, working adults are taking IT related courses for advancement while comp sci continues to slide as a career choice in college, which the researchers in the article attribute to perception issues." From the article: "In fact, as the technology-dependent United States struggles to stay ahead of the Bangalores of the world, the Higher Education Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles found significantly fewer students at the college level -- 60 percent fewer -- wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000. "
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The Changing Face of Computer Science

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  • Trend (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:45PM (#13108370) Homepage
    I thought education and career are like stock exchange, you should always buy low and sell high, but most people tend to buy high and sell low.

    Now that everyone's talking about CS skill shortage, this is the worst time to start studying CS, because everyone will be doing the exact same thing, just like they did on "multimedia" courses in 1998/1999.

    If you started studying CS right after the dot-com bubble burst (around 2000, "worst" time to get into IT), you will be very popular right about now.

    • I agree! (Score:5, Funny)

      by ShaniaTwain ( 197446 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:52PM (#13108427) Homepage
      Obviously there is a much better career choice. [popealien.com]

      Choose wisely for maximum income!

    • Re:Trend (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:56PM (#13108466) Homepage
      I thought education and career are like stock exchange, you should always buy low and sell high, but most people tend to buy high and sell low.

      And most people that have been working for a while (I haven't worked that long, so I can't speak for the truth of it) say that you should find a job you enjoy. You are likely to spend 40hrs a week at work, if not more. Not including mundane tasks like commuting, eating, sleeping, housework etc., there's really not enough hours of spare time to make up for a job that sucks. Even if it pays well the best moments of my life were far from the most expensive ones. That (apartment, car, computer, tv etc.) is for the inbetweens. The best moments are made by people.

      • Re:Trend (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:11PM (#13108599)
        And most people that have been working for a while [...] say that you should find a job you enjoy. You are likely to spend 40hrs a week at work, if not more.

        I confirm this.

        I worked hard during the dotcom bubble and did good on it, both in terms of salary and stock, mostly because a wise person, older than me, told me it wouldn't last and that I should save the money I earned.

        With that money, I started studies in a totally different field. Now, I'm paid a lot less, but I don't have crazy hours, I don't worry about stress and future heart problems, I do a job that I like, and my quality of life is much better.

        So it is true what they say. Money isn't all there is in life. You can be a lot happier with simple things, like starting and quitting work every day at the same hours (instead of working insane overtime), having free weed-ends for the family, and (in my case anyway) having the satisfaction of producing things that people instantly appreciate, instead of hidden code that nobody cares about once it's compiled.

        And the pay cut isn't a problem, it's just a matter of understanding what's important in life, and leaving the world of silly consumerism behind. If the job pays the bills and leaves enough do have disposable income for the usual pleasures in life, and not worry about next month, that's quite enough for me at this point in my life.

        • Re:Trend (Score:5, Funny)

          by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:47PM (#13109441)
          You can be a lot happier with simple things, like starting and quitting work every day
          at the same hours (instead of working insane overtime), having free weed...

          Word.
      • The best moments are made by people.

        Shutup and consume you hippie.

        I agree completely. I've never understood the mentality of work to consume thing. If you hate your job, odds are you hate yourself too, and that attracts other miserable people in turn. Work is a part of life. The percentage of that part is up to you.

      • Re:Trend (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SeventyBang ( 858415 )


        In my undergrad days (early 80s), one of the systems analysis profs asked the class, "How many of you are in here because there will likely be a job for you when you graduate?" Of course, no hands went up. This is when I had my own client list during school breaks, could work any weekend I chose to, etc. And was constantly inundated with offers to drop out of school. It was a 50-50 proposition: job vs. degree. I had a lot of friends drop out of whereever they were going to school because the money was s

    • Woo! I'm popular! Yay me! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Eh, who cares, I'm going to grad school.

    • Re:Trend (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:31PM (#13108760) Homepage Journal
      I think more are not looking to go into CS not because there are not companies wanting to employ CS people, but because said companies want to employ CS people at unamerican wages.

    • If you started studying CS right after the dot-com bubble burst (around 2000, "worst" time to get into IT), you will be very popular right about now.

      Not really. I have friends who went in around then and still can't find a job. Yes, hiring is up, but this isn't 1998 again. People who know their shit and have experience are definitely in demand right now. People who have nothing significant to their name other than a newly minted bachelor's degree are not in demand.

  • Overall? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CypherXero ( 798440 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:47PM (#13108389) Homepage
    At my university, there's The College of Computer Science, and under that, you can major in CS (Computer Science), IT (Information Technology) or IS (Information Systems). So is it all of the included majors affected, or is it just the CS majors that are affected?

  • it's a shit industry (Score:3, Insightful)

    by timmarhy ( 659436 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:47PM (#13108391)
    thats why no one whats to work in it. low pay, high pressure and no job security.

  • Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dtolton ( 162216 ) * on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:48PM (#13108392) Homepage
    So the news in this article is that MIT, Cal-Tech etc don't churn out
    the most CS degrees? Did anyone even think that? Top tier schools
    have never been known for quantity, they are known for quality.
    That's what has always separated them from other schools, not how many
    graduates they produce. High quantity schools generally don't have a
    good reputation, why do you think the MCSE is worth so little, because
    everyone has it. So the fact that DeVry is churning out more
    graduates than MIT is hardly news worthy imo.

    Next they are comparing the number of people entering CS in 2000 to
    the number entering now? That comparison is farcical at best. In the
    year 2000 there were still many people entering the CS field because
    of the boom years, when working in the IT industry was the equivalent
    of the gold rush. Of course there are less people entering now than
    in the year 2000. A more legitimate comparison would have looked at
    the number of people entering CS during the pre-boom years rather than
    during the boom years.

    While I agree that we should encourage more people to enter IT related
    fields, I don't agree that using misguided statistics is the best way
    to go about it.
    • Those who have foresight, and who can see how employers are treating IT jobs, will decline to spend time and effort to become one of the disposable.

      There will continue to be some who are so driven that they MUST study computers, but most will count the costs and count the benefits, and go elsewhere.

      I'm not just talking about those in it for a fast buck (though I never despised earning good money for fun work), but everyone sensible who isn't driven.

      If you need a hi-tech work force, a good way to ensure f

    • Misguided, computer science, it is... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter&tedata,net,eg> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @08:12PM (#13109586) Journal
      So the fact that DeVry is churning out more
      graduates than MIT is hardly news worthy imo.

      I think the better point to make is the type of grad that DeVry is churning out. I don't think the authors of this article grasp what "computer science" is. I mean, take a look at the article for a second...

      Adults, many of them women and minorities, are realizing they have to go out and obtain degrees in computer science to advance or just keep up at the workplace.

      Wait a second, is the workplace suddenly requiring that their workers need to know the inefficiencies of a Bubble-Sorting algorithm? Are they expecting their employees to understand that it's a bad idea to short a +5V with a ground without putting at least some kind of load on the circuit? These are some of the things I learned in Computer Science, and I really don't see someone needing to study data structures and how to implement them in C++ or Java in order to succeed in the workplace.

      In fact, on DeVry's own list of Undergrad Programs [devry.edu], I don't see Computer Science anywhere. There's "Computer Engineering Technology" (also classified as "Computer Technology"), "Network Administration", and the one that I'm betting the article considers computer science, "Information Technology". The objective's page for IT lists the following concepts taught: "basic foundation in programming, systems analysis and design, database design and management, and networking... Incorporating a strong applications-oriented component...Integrating general education competencies such as applied research, written and oral communication, critical thinking, problem-solving and team skills." I doubt they get any more complex with their studies than what I learned in high school Computer Science class (one sem. VB, one sem. hardware / networking / research).

      The article's really twisting the true definition of computer science. Fear not, nerds of the universe, these "35-year-old African American or Hispanic women" tread not on our turf! I'm more afraid about my job being shipped off to India.
    • While it's true that the drop in numbers of CS students can be attributed, at least in part, to the whole Web explosion and subsequent collapse, there are fears that the problems are rooted deeper than that.

      I'm aware of some studies done at Glasgow [gla.ac.uk] which suggest that the drastic reduction in CS applicants year after year is a side-effect of the increased use of ICT in schools, and the increased teaching of ICT in schools. By the end of their secondary education, many kids think ICT is CS, they see ICT as b
    • I agree completely. Quality makes the MITs, CalTechs, and Stanfords go-round. I think the most ridiculous statement in the entire article is:

      Experts such as Malcom and Babco think some colleges should "take a page" off the for-profit, client-based institutions such as Strayer and DeVry, and make computer science more accessible, practical and less intimidating, to get more 18 year-olds to major in computer science.

      Now I'm for accessability and all that, but there is a serious problem when you start

  • Personal experiance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Umbral Blot ( 737704 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:48PM (#13108396) Homepage
    As an ex-CS major let me tell you one reason people are leaving. Even though I plan on going into a CS related field the courses offered by my college (UCI) were very poor. Also there was no way to test out of redundant courses. Many of my classmates left for similiar reasons, and some even abandoned CS altogether as they weren't sure they would be able to compete with outsourcing and get a job

    • Re:Personal experiance (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:26PM (#13108723)

      I can't speak to the specifics of what you found lacking in UCI's curriculum, but I was a CS major at UCI for about a year and a half, and I can say I found the CS curriculum more than adequate, even having done my first 3 years at UC Berkeley.

      However, I frequently heard my classmates complaining about the curriculum, because there weren't enough classes on hot new (at the time) technologies like Java or .NET.

      IMO, that's a sadly misguided way to evaluate a school's CS program. A good CS program should teach you CS fundamentals, which will enable you to adapt to any "hot new technology" that emerges. Sure, it's nice to leave school with some specific skills that will be readily applied in the workplace. But it will be a sad day indeed if/when solid universities like UCI cave under pressure and water down their CS programs to the level of a trade school education.

      If you seriously think a 4-year university program is inferior to a 3-year DeVry-style program, just wait until you have to work with a DeVry graduate in the workplace.

    • Ah, UCI.

      I remember the teraks running UCSD P-system. There was a large and obtuse Sigma 7. Some VAX thingy. And a great sea of monochrome terminals with not a single mouse, web page, or CD-ROM in the whole building.

      Good times.

  • Like that is a shock..... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nagatzhul ( 158676 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:48PM (#13108397)
    With all the jobs being shipped out of the United States and reports of massive lay offs in the IT sector. The recent announcment by HP is a perfect example of this.

    Why invest in a career where you have little confidence of supporting yourself?
    • Its not the folks with CS degrees losing jobs at HP. One of the great things is that nobody ever fires the engineers in R&D. They'll fire your help desk, sales reps, phone support, and sometimes even your in-house IT team, but actual engineers (as opposed to people who are just tangentially hitched to the IT bandwagon) are all but immune.
      • Bull. It's true in a way- but I've never had an R&D job last more than 2 years, and any software R&D project in the last 5 years was considered a failure if we weren't shipping in 4 months.

        The way that it's true is that in my experience, the R&D guys were usually the last to leave. At least 3/5 jobs that was true.

      • "but actual engineers (as opposed to people who are just tangentially hitched to the IT bandwagon) are all but immune."

        Heh...Dream on. I have been an electronics firmware/engineer always working in an R&D Departments, and I've got to tell you, I've seen whole R&D Departments laid off in the past 4 years (especially the engineers) while seeing the sales staff actually increase. In fact, some of my R&D engineer coworkers have been out of a job for the past 4 years. I was lucky though, I onl

    • Why invest in a career where you have little confidence of supporting yourself?

      Why do _anything_ where you have little confidence?

      I got a degree in Psych and a minor in Philosophy and bunches of Math and Physics/Engineering thrown in for geekness. I only had some minor difficulty in getting a job right out of school because of my education and skillset mismatch, but once the ball rolled, my career has been fine.

      I knew I wanted to work with Beowulf clusters years ago, now I do.

      Funny how successful peop

      • Re:Like that is a shock..... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Marxist Hacker 42 ( 638312 ) * <seebert42@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:06PM (#13109121) Homepage Journal
        Funny how successful people have a chronic case of good luck.

        Funny how you rewrite history to suit the outcome. OF COURSE SUCCESSFULL PEOPLE SEEM TO HAVE A CHRONIC CASE OF GOOD LUCK- because the people who have bad luck aren't successfull.

        In reality- when people have actually done studies on this- what you really have is two main things going on. Successfull children of successfull parents are usually successfull because of networking- a birthright. Successfull children of unsuccessfull parents are gamblers- risk takers who lose on about 2/3rds of what they try- but they keep trying and never quit, and thus become successfull because they raise the number of times they try. Unsuccessfull children of successfull parents are idiots for the most part- skilless wonders who never learned to fend for themselves to begin with. Unsuccessfull children of unsuccessfull parents have risk adversion tendencies- they want to be "safe" rather than "rich", and since they don't have the opportunities of the upper class.

        But I've also seen successfull people make mistakes- and end up bankrupt- so don't get to cocky.

  • Good riddance! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mixmasterjake ( 745969 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:50PM (#13108410)
    Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology.
    • My thoughts exactly. In my experience, the ones that were in it for the money were rarely worth their salt.

    • Re:Good riddance! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:59PM (#13108496)
      Not me. I'm in it for the chicks!
    • Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology.

      Me too. Working in IT will be much more fun when all the technical idiots who just went into IT for the money are gone. We should also be much more productive without carrying the dead-weight - people those of us who have the skills have had to baby-sit far too long, costing us more productive time.

    • In my "Computers and Society" class in CompSci (which I took in my junior year), the TA asked "Who is in Computer Science because they like to program?"

      I raised my hand.
      I looked around.
      I was the only one in a class of about 25 with my hand up.

      I dropped out around the end of that quarter, and went on to do what I love doing, and not wasting time with folks who were there for ... something else.
    • When did the tech bubble pop? I thought it was around 2000 anyway, so comparing stats against the dot bomb era isn't going to make the present look good, even though the bust was a much needed correction.
    • If you love technology, go sell it, make enough on commission to buy a bunch of it, and your zeal and knowledge will really be an asset. Computer science is for people who love math. Really weird and abstract math, like category theory and lambda calculus.

      Or were you talking about programming? Pssh. That's vocational school stuff these days.

  • It's not perception, it's real. (Score:5, Informative)

    by EnronHaliburton2004 ( 815366 ) * on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:53PM (#13108439) Homepage Journal
    attribute to perception issues

    It's not a perception issue. It's a real issue.

    90% of the people I know in the tech field have been laid off once in the last 4 years. I only know of one mid-sized technical company that hasn't laid off employees, and everyone there hates their job. I quit after 6 months.

    Granted, this is just from my own perspective. But look, the tech job world is slowly creeping out of a multi-year massacre, now the tech world is being run by business people who don't know what an IP address is, but spend a million bucks because IBM said it was good (and promised a trip to Hawaii!)

    Sure, there's opportunity here, but students are going to have a hard time competing with we techies with 6+ years experience.

    • Re:It's not perception, it's real. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Humorously_Inept ( 777630 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:44PM (#13108874) Homepage
      I can corroborate this.

      I work in Telecom and every few years one of the various companies that employ engineers, programmers, etc. in the area flushes its staff in a major downsizing or closes up shop entirely and the newly unemployed disperse and wind up in the same role elsewhere, if they manage to find work at all. A few years down the line the new employer will fire a chunk of its staff or close up entirely and the cycle continues. People may even be fired by and subsequently hired by the same company as its fortunes change. It creates a pretty wide network of nomadic professionals who all know each other, assemble in familiar patterns and relative positions at various companies and thus never seem to advance in job roles.

      It seems like every single person at my place of employment has had at least three jobs in the past ten years and that many have been unemployed for more than a year during that time period. I've been at the same place for around three years now and have managed to survive several "scares," which leaves me wondering whether I'm playing the role of Damocles. I guess you could qualify the past ten-odd years as anomalous and make a good argument for your case, but I'm not entirely sure.

  • We don't need as many computer scientists (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vijayiyer ( 728590 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:53PM (#13108441)
    Back in the day when code needed to be efficient at a theoretical level, when compilers and related research was at the forefront of technology itself, and when the computer was the target of research, there was a need for a lot of computer science. Nowadays, there is not as much of a need for true computer science as there used to be. Instead, there is a greater need for people who know other types of science/engineering and have the programming skills to use a computer to solve non-computer problems.

    • Re:We don't need as many computer scientists (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:39PM (#13109380)
      I feel this post being greatly disturbing.

      That's like saying "We don't need to teach the kids art in kindergarden anymore, because we already have had plenty of great artists in all of the different art forms, and now we need applied artists, like archetects". (excuse the downcast).

      Computer and Software Engineers THRIVE off the sciences created by Computer Scientists. Too many people think CS is all about writing source code, but really, it's just like any other science; it's research, research, research.

      Breakthroughs are still left to be found in all the fields, and new fields are just now being created (bioinformatics anyone?), and if we just give up on the science now, we won't have engineers implementing it later.

      Don't believe I don't see your part about needing other sciences to migrate to using computers, but who do you think design the algorithms for integrating other sciences into Computer Science, the Engineers who build solutions, or the scientists in other fields who haven't had the training in mathematics or the algorithms to make things more efficient. And before you give me that crap about "computers being fast enough and having enough memory these days to deal with shitty programming", think about this; the *simplist* of protein folding implementations requires hundreds and hundreds of CPU hours, even cutting a dozen off of it means massive cost cutting for the organizations using it.

      Face it; telling people to stop moving to CS is like telling people to stop moving towards Physics, or any other discrete science; it's stupid, short sighted, and just plain wrong.
  • At the career fairs I went to as a computer science major, everyone was interested in web development, flash, java, etc. The CS department at my university doesn't teach these things; a person can learn these through the Information Technology department, however. If all of the money is going to people that don't mind building websites and putting cute flash animations on them, why pursue a degree in computer science?

    • In my area (midwest), a lot of the positions requiring a CS degree are hiring for these same kinds of positions- at least as far as the J2EE stuf f is concerned. I'm not sure what they're thinking- I seriously doubt that a J2EE installation is going to be the site of a "next great enlightenment" where something technically obscure and marginally useful is going to be discovered.

  • The brutal truth is, (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:55PM (#13108460)
    "significantly fewer students at the college level -- 60 percent fewer -- wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000. "

    most of these younger folks think they were born gifted hotshots. Most of them think they don't need no steenkin education because they already know it all..

    There is a large number of young people that grew up with computers, someone 20 years old now has probably had a home computer all his life. Someone old enough to be his parent did not have a home computer when they were his age.

    • I am an electronic engineer, not a CS guy, and I can tell you that in the last 3 companies I have worked, the manager of the Software team has said that he'd hire an EE over a CS degree to do software any day of the week. Might sound like a flame, but in my experience CS degrees are looked at as lower than EE.
      • > Might sound like a flame, but in my experience CS degrees are looked at as lower than EE.

        That's because undergraduate CS is traditionally a blow-off crap curriculum. Intro to algorithms, data structures, a little assembly, C, Java, programming assignments. Maybe one Scheme course. There's schools that have solid CS curriculums, and any accredited graduate level CS is usually pretty heavy duty, but undergrad CS is little better than a high school diploma.

        EE on the other hand is freaking hard while

  • REAL ANSWER (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @05:59PM (#13108488) Homepage Journal
    WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANY STUDENT IN THE US EVEN CONSIDER SPENDING 4 FUCKING YEARS, $40,000+ DOLLARS, 1.5 YEARS OF JOB SEARCHING TO EARN $10.50 AND HOUR ON A LEVEL 1 HELP DESK!? THAT'S THE REASON YOU FUCKING ROCKET SCIENTISTS TURNED REPORTS!!!

    I've been in this shit for over a decade and I tell you this in very simple terms:

    Computer Science as an industry is following that of the TV and VCR repair men. When TVs and VCRs are expensive they get em fixed. When they're cheap, they replace them. Computers are less and less a science as the hardware and software gets easier to install and maintain. Even computer programming is becoming more and more accessable to people as the higher level languages become more user-friendly.

    Early on there was Computer Science. Now they have splintered into various factions like various specialized sciences following certain areas, (MIS,IT,DBAs,Programming, etc.) Because they is less and less need for the broad generalized Computer Science types enrollment would obviously go down. Just because TVs got cheap doesn't mean that electrical engineers demand went down or that scientists that research phosphates and optics are losing pay and prestige, but how many people in the last 20 years have a SMALL ELECTRONICS degree? Hell do they even offer that anymore?

    • Re:REAL ANSWER (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Coryoth ( 254751 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:34PM (#13108781) Homepage Journal
      Computer Science as an industry is following that of the TV and VCR repair men. When TVs and VCRs are expensive they get em fixed....Early on there was Computer Science. Now they have splintered into various factions like various specialized sciences following certain areas, (MIS,IT,DBAs,Programming, etc.)

      And then there are people who still do real Computer Science as opposed to programming or "Computer Related Work". There's a nice quote by Dijkstra to the effect that Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes. Computer Science is still going quite strong, and there is active and intersting research into a variety of fields.

      I am a mathematcian, so I am not really all that up on all the various interesting areas of CS are these days except for the odd bits that cross my path. One of those is Algebraic Specification, which is an effort to formalise the design and specification of systems (software) using algebraic techniques. In practice this could mean vastly more reliable software down the line. For now it means a lot of hard slog involving a lot of pure math (universal algebras, category theory, etc.) which doesn't involve a computer in any way shape or form. You can get some idea of the sort of thing they're doing here [ucsd.edu], or here [acm.org], or just google Algebraic Specification. It's pretty exciting stuff from the mathematician's point of view (some very lovely mathematics finding practical application).

      Don't misinterpret what CS is, and what it offers.

      Jedidiah.
    • The people making $10.50/hr on a lvl 1 helpdesk job do not have any kind of technical education. I've done training at a call center, so I speak from personal experience.

  • As someone who hires IT folks...I'm not sure that CS degrees actually correlate with "Computer Career" right now.

    Some of the best and brightest SAs/DBAs/Operators/Developers I work with have degrees in all sorts of completely unrelated things. For whatever reason, CS and related degrees didn't appeal to the same spark that makes them "good".

    On the other hand, some of the worst people have had MIS degrees.

    Whatever these chillun's are learning, the best prep for a career in computing still seems to

  • Why? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Bellum Aeternus ( 891584 )
    Why would I get a degree in IT or CS?

    So I can see my career go to India or China?

    Better off getting a degree in something useful and just knowing IT and CS. That's what I did, and I do development for a living (while it lasts); and I have a real degree to fall back on when my job gets outsourced.

  • In other news, research has shown that the latest trend is a Masters in Business Administration.

    Many people throughout the country are enrolling in MBA programs, with dreams of getting rich quick (at an $60,000 pricetag).

    I can't wait till these guys get out of school and find that the next logical round of outsourcing is to outsource many of the Business Administrators. It's a cost cutting measure, and fixes many of the communication problems that happen when the Managers live on a different continent fro

  • IT != CS (Score:3, Informative)

    by kidaxess ( 634347 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:03PM (#13108534)
    I think it is important to be accurate with with our language. IT is not CS. The terms are related, not interchangeable. A graduate of Devry does serve the same function as a graduate of MIT. Sometimes it is useful to talk about fruit, and sometimes we need to differentiate between apples and oranges in order to have an intelligent conversation.

  • Not Just CompSci! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    These articles keep focusing on computer science but the problem is much bigger than that. Here [reed-electronics.com] is a good article on China's rising R&D. Basically, enrollment in technical fields and funding in R&D are going down in the US, while at the same time increasing in China. This should be alarming to any American. The article I linked claimed China is already on par with the US in fields like nanotechnology. We're entering US' twilight. It won't be catastrophic, but the US won't be #1 for much longer

    It's

  • 4 Years of No Girls Just to Hear... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lord Marlborough ( 897605 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:06PM (#13108555)
    This is Rajesh. He's just replaced you.
    • "This is Rajesh. He's just replaced you."

      Apparently, this hasn't actually happened to you.

      The real downer is hearing: "You are being layed off. This is Rajesh.
      You are expected to train him before you exit the company.
      He will be replacing you."

  • PR moves (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MasterOfUniverse ( 812371 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:07PM (#13108562)
    This is complete bullshit. Look at how all the CEOs are complaining about lack of CS graduates here in US. Its quite simple. When they move the jobs to india/china they can say that they we dont have enough people here. Just look at the layoffs. This is a delibrate attempt by these people to keep putting out these kinds of reports.

  • Comparing it to 2000!?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by B11 ( 894359 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:08PM (#13108572)

    A lot of people were taking CS majors in 2000 because the perception (somewhat true) was that being a CS major alone was enough to get recruited, then you could quit school and make a load of cash.

    Now of course you have actually finish your course work, and even then there's no overpaying job waiting for you, even though I'm sure you'll find a job.

    A lot of guys at my school picked CS because they figured they'd get rich quick, they didn't love it. I've always thought that if you love what you do and you're good at it, you'll do alright in life.

  • Supply goes down.

    But even myself, I am looking towards getting a PhD in economics compared to furthering my career in computers. i know the skills to get work done, it simply doesn't interest me anymore.

    meh

  • What is computer science? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flabbergast ( 620919 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:11PM (#13108603)
    Is it the computer science I learned, ie how to turn an undergraduate into a graduate student? Where everything is theoretical because that's how they like their graduate students?

    Or are we talking about a DBA? Or someone to make sure your Exchange Server is up and running?

    Computer Science at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Berkeley etc isn't about learning how to be a DBA, its about acquiring the tools necessary to do research at a higher level. Who needs an algorithms class when you can just use the sort functions available in VC++? Or who needs to read a research paper about ISAM or BSTs when its already implemented and ready to use in SQL Server?

    I'm reminded of "Profession" by Asimov. Is the purpose of higher education simply to show people tools and how they work so they can have a skill or to teach people why the tools are they way they are and (hopefully) help them to make the tools better? To me CS has always been the latter.

    Note, this is not a put down to DBAs, sysadmins, etc. They have their own creativity and processes that I admire and respect.
  • I find it silly that multi-billion dollar corporations think that there's a shortage of creative people out there willing to work in Computer Science. I would think the answer would be obvious. CUT PROFITS, FUND SCHOLORSHIPS AND RESEARCH GRANTS YOURSELF. Don't wait for a government that you're already avoiding paying taxes to to spend taxes taken from poorer people on R&D. Don't expect that just because you can get a coder in Bangalore for $2.50/hr that you can hire somebody in Seattle for the same price. And if you want loyalty from your employees, you need to show loyalty to your employees- by banking their salary several years in advance so that you don't have to lay people off when you hit a rough patch. THAT is the cost of having good people- so don't come whining to us that you can't hire people if you're not willing to pay for the cost of educating them.

  • Misconception. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stelmach ( 894192 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:15PM (#13108626) Homepage
    I think the biggest problem is that the average high school senior actually beleives that going into computer science means that he is going to learn how to make web pages.

  • A little anecdotal evidence of why (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ShatteredDream ( 636520 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:17PM (#13108646) Homepage
    In one of my senior CS courses, the professor asked what the department could do that would make things better for the educational experience. He was expecting things like more course offerings, more focus on newer languages and approaches, stuff like that. The response that resounded with too many of the students was that the professors should do a better job at helping the students learn how to translate a project specification into code.

    Basically he wanted the professors to hold his hand through the process of learning how to code. Not just do a better job at explaining Java, C++, etc., but rather teach time and again the basics of actually reading instructions and writing a program that implements them.

    About half of our classes that use Java have a week of remedial Java. There is no "you ought to know it by now" in them. Consequently, I just skip the first week of my CS classes that aren't purely theory classes like ones on operating systems and algorithm design. We're talking junior level classes and people still sometimes struggle with basic Java and C++. It was a mind fuck for many of them to reach the operating systems class and have to *drum roll* LEARN C ALL BY THEIRSELVES except with a basic overview of the differences between it and C++ - which most of them never really learned at all in their sophomore year.

    Needless to say, my response was "we need a mandatory design patterns class for the sophomores" which caused several of the better coders in the class to agree with. People can make the excuse that CS is about a lot more than coding, but it really isn't. If you can't code worth a damn, you have no business being in Computer Science because you're either cut out for engineering, networking or nothing related to IT altogether.

    Seriously, I'm not a prodigy or anything, but I can code pretty well. It's disturbing when I see people with 3.9 major GPAs in CS who can't find less than a dozen ANSI C file I/O functions within 5 minutes of a Google search. I had to listen to one of our "uber-elite" female coders complain about how hard C is to learn for the first time, even though she had a 3.9 GPA and had taken probably 15-21 credits of classes that revolved around derivatives of C. Then I get called an elitist because my attitude is that since C is a subset of C++, and you have to take a class that uses C++ exclusively, that you shouldn't be spending hours learning the basics of C. It shouldn't be hard for anyone who reachs their senior year in CS, it's not like the projects were kernel level stuff. The most complicated project we did was write a "shell" that did little more than fork a process.

    The problem, I think, is that so many American kids want to have it all spoonfed to them. They don't want to learn stuff outside of class. Most of them don't even really like what they're doing for that matter! Let the numbers slow down, maybe it'll be good for those of us who, regardless of skill level, care about it and enjoy it. Mark my words, eventually India will have the same problem and the types of cheap Indian coders, who are not inherently any better than Americans, will resemble the US. There will be the legions of certificate holders who have no natural inclination or skill toward the field except their pay check and there will be those who do care. In the end, things will balance out... or American business will choose tons of cheap, shitty coders, get thrashed like they deserve and we'll get to say "I told you so."
    • In one of my senior CS courses, the professor asked what the department could do that would make things better for the educational experience. He was expecting things like more course offerings, more focus on newer languages and approaches, stuff like that. The response that resounded with too many of the students was that the professors should do a better job at helping the students learn how to translate a project specification into code.

      Sorry, but translating a project spec into code is not CS. Hell,
    • Though technically, C++ is an extension of C.

      Certainly C is the basis of C++, though I would not call it a subset given how integrated it is.

      Most of the differences between the two come from memory management, object oriented coding (though you can fake it in C), and the amount of GUI APIs available for C++ (eg: VC++).

      For the record, I have a diploma in computer systems technology specializing in information systems. aka: I know how to program, the theories behind it, the algorythms behind it, AND how t

  • Look at the job market (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Launch ( 66938 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:21PM (#13108677)
    As a recent graduate (okay, I graduated over a year ago) and as someone who works at a software company, I have to say that if I could do it all over again I'd do anything but CS. Most universities offer MIS programs, etc, that will put you into the tech field without nessicarly being a programmer, etc. But, heck, if I had skipped the four years of college I'd probably be a junior manager at walmart by now.

    With jobs going overseas, and the supply of programmers heavily outweighing the demand, I don't see any reason for anyone to be intrested in CS at all.

    When I hear Gates talk about lack of tallent within the US, I really have to say "who cares". The bottom line is that less than 1% of CS majors are going to be of the caliber of programmer that Gates is talking about, but what about the rest of us 99%ers? We have the joy of fighting tooth and nail for a job, then we have the joy of not getting the dream salaries that were touted in the 90s, and then to top it off we get to fight off competition for overseas that can do our work at a third of the cost because of living expenses overseas.

    Back in the day it use to be cool to be a programmer. Now when someone says that I have to feel a little bit sorry for me.

  • I'm confused... (Score:3)

    by ath0mic ( 519762 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:25PM (#13108711)
    Is the article talking about IT or CS degrees?

    As Dijkstra said, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

    I, for one, love working on computer science, but am only somewhat interested in working on computers.
  • Their Computer Science department acts like a bunch of elitest pricks when it comes to acceptence.

    (The following is true of when I was applying a year ago)

    Their applications form is SECRET and only available online for two weeks, during which you have to fill it out, answering all of their questions, and turn it back in.

    How selective are they? Stories of students with a 4.0 GPA not being accepted into the school (transfering from Community College) abound. I knew students with a 3.4/3.5 GPA who were not accepted. Insane.

    To have a snowballs chance in hell of getting into the department you had best have all of your math and science courses completed, the department apparently did NOT want anyone who would take any more than the minimum amount of time coming in there.

    Still with all of these rules and regulations in place the department "has to" turn down dozens of students (if not hundreds...) every year.

    Fuck, how do you EXPECT students to go into CS with that type of a bull-shit attitutude?

    Compare this to Western Washington University, go up there, hey look, the head of the department met with me, teaches a transition course for students over the summer (and offers to, for free, go over material online with students as well who are not yet enrolled but plan on doing so) so that they can suceed in the department, and all in all, the entire department treats their students like actual people rather than machines.
    • How selective are they? Stories of students with a 4.0 GPA not being accepted into the school (transfering from Community College) abound. I knew students with a 3.4/3.5 GPA who were not accepted. Insane.

      I think you need a GPA of about 3.49 to get in to the UW now for Grad School and of 15,000 applications to just be admitted to the UW (Bachelors) on 4,833 offers were made and 2,600 were enrolled last year. But the state increased the number of slots quite a bit, so you might want to reapply.



  • ...to provide a grammar error to demonstrate they understand most IT people: less applications (fewer applications). I'm somewhat surprised they didn't throw in it's|its, peaking someone's interest (piquing, root word = pique) to make the standard IT person comfortable with the article.

    More importantly, IT != CS. There are a lot of people who may have CS on their degree and have taken nothing but programming courses. (perhaps a little more) On top of that, they likely have seen a single platform and

  • Where does a CS degree get you? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Launch ( 66938 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:32PM (#13108766)
    What I find amazing is how little a CS degree gets you on it's own.

    Do a little search on monster.com or the liking, pick any tech related job. Look at the requirements. None of them are fufilled by a CS degree.

    The ammount of therory in CS is what is killing these programs. What is needed is job training. You can graduate from a school like WPI with a degree in CS without knowing how to write a VB app. It's pretty sickening.

    While I sure did enjoy Big O notation, learning how to write perl scripts would have been 3 trillion times more valuible.

    I'll be the first to agree that a solid education has it's roots in therory, a solid job in computers has it's roots in application.

    Why are we falling behind the Indias, etc? Because a bachelors in CS gives you no solid ground to become a good canidate for the types of programmers that are in demand these days.

    • Re:Where does a CS degree get you? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) * on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:12PM (#13109174)
      The ammount of therory in CS is what is killing these programs. What is needed is job training.

      I used to think that too, but I eventually figured out my professors' point. University is for learning things you aren't likely to teach yourself. Applied stuff is relatively easy to learn on your own or on the job. Theory isn't.

      Now, using a broad definition of the word theory, courses do need to do a better job of keeping up with current CompSci practices. Design patterns, testing, etc.

    • Re:Where does a CS degree get you? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xugumad ( 39311 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @07:57PM (#13109499)
      After a 4 year CS degree, plus 4 years industry experience, I still don't know how to write a VB app.

      But I can learn by Thursday.

      And that is why I'm worth hiring. I actually turned up to my first job with a book on the language the application was working on, was written in (Tcl/Tk). If having to learn the language as I went along slowed me down, certainly no-one noticed.

      Now, my degree did cover quite a bit of practical stuff (including programming in C, assembly and Java, database commands, etc), but also covered a lot of theory (big-O, algorithms in general, data structures, graph theory, social aspects of computing, etc.). I don't know how many CS degrees stick too much to the theory?
  • When they talk about Computer Science sliding are they including Software Engineering.

    It seems to me that if I were entering college and wanted to be a computer programmer these days, I'd take a software engineering courseload.

    Computer science, in my perception, is more academic, research oriented, ivory tower stuff while the real work is getting done in software engineering.

    Again, that's just my impression, but also my guess as to why computer science enrollment is dropping.
  • I've been in IT since part way thru my military years, and I've switched over to Bioinformatics and am now pursuing a PhD in Economics, since I already have a post-grad certificate in Data Resource Management and don't think IT has any real promise by itself.

    Fortune [fortune.com] agrees with me that what the US needs are PhDs, and probably not IT ones. You can either get on board a sinking ship, or you can start building a better boat.
  • When I went into College 1997 There were 2 Computer Majors. Computer Science, and Computer Engineering. Because I wanted to focus more in software so I took Computer Science. By the time I graduated in 2001 we had Computer Science, Computer Engineering, MIS (for business focus), IT (Which focuses on job based IT jobs, with Web Pages, and small programming, and networking). Then later on I see other Majors popping up In Administration, Networking, Computer Security. So for some of these people they ar
  • TFA isn't really about CS. Mostly they seem to be talking about IT work, and perhaps some programming. Neither of which are really the guts of CS, even if they do get conflated with it on a regular basis. The article makes a big deal out of the fact that DeVry and Strayer are churning out lots of "CS" graduates compared to traditional CS programs. But both of those institutions provide vocational training, and quite clearly cater to a different market than the 4-year colleges. I don't know about Strayer, bu

  • Do they really mean "computer science"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pheersome ( 116234 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @06:55PM (#13108992)
    Having recently graduated from a rather rigorous undergraduate institution with a degree in CS, and planing on going into the Ph.D. program at another well-respected school this fall, I find myself taking the "science" part of "computer science" pretty seriously. Somebody more famous than me once said, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes, or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes." That might not be strictly true, but it's the right idea. In my mind, being a computer scientist implies that one is engaged in real scientific research. A degree in computer science should come with an understanding of the history and theory behind the actual systems we use every day, an awareness of the open issues in the field, etc.

    Somehow I get the idea (and feel free to correct me if you know better) that a "CS" degree from DeVry might not match my understanding of the term. That's not to say that there isn't a place for this sort of education -- I'm all in favor of competent entry-level programmers, web designers, DBAs, whatever it is that DeVry actually trains one to be. But to use a (probably flawed) analogy to other disciplines, this sort of education is to CS as auto repair is to engineering. It takes a not insignificant amount of skill and knowledge to be a decent auto mechanic; I'm not trying to knock DeVry graduates. But I wouldn't expect a mechanic to be able to do fundamentally new things in the space of automotive design any more than I would expect a DeVry CS major to do real computer science.

    (Yeah, I have some idea of how pretentious and condescending that sounds. Go ahead and mod me down.)

  • Who needs a degree in CS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @08:05PM (#13109549) Journal
    "When I can make oodles of bucks speculating on the stock market and flipping houses on the insane real estate bubble?

    All that edjacation crap is for the birds - Ellison bailed, sodid Gates. Y should any 1 bother with collitch?

    Now I'll just fire up my laptop running speculation software I bought on an infomercial, short a bunch of penny stocks I've been pumping for weeks on my spam bots and roll up North in my SUV and take a long weekend where it's k3wl... and some CS grad can ask me about Fries or something like that."

    The above is not a troll - just illustrating the mentality of the good old USA, where corporations only exist to benefit stockholders, and people work for wealth, neither providing any goods and/or services to the public commonweal.

    RS

  • Here's the Cliff Notes' version... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2005 @08:54PM (#13109831) Journal
    In the beginning, most programmers had degrees in computer science and were relatively expensive. They worked in computer rooms and were treated with some degree of grudging respect (although companies never liked having to pay them well, they didn't make too much noise about it).

    During the internet boom, several things happened to not just turn over the apple cart, but rather smash it to flinders:

    1. Worldwide infrastructure was built out because companies knew they would be able to globalize the labor pool eventually, and they were willing to invest in this;

    2. Companies like Microsoft, perceiving both a need and a high demand, worked to make programming more "accessible" to lower-skilled individuals (InDUHviduals, as they are called in Dilbert);

    3. The Y2K panic caused all sorts of people who didn't have a strong CS background to jump into the field after totally inadequate training, and this trend virtually exploded when small internet companies started hiring anyone who so much as knew HTML and called them "Developers" and "Webmasters" (this totally devalued the Computer Science degree, as did the wholesale dropping out of school of company founders).

    Cue the tech crash. Then, cue 9/11 and the recession.

    Corporations now have the infrastructure to offshore whatever they want, and they have the H1-Bs and L-1's to replace people here. They go berserk, contracting out everything tech-oriented, and even start contracting out business functions, legal work, medical transcribing, you name it. If it's portable, it goes.

    A few years go by.

    Most people, not being totally fucking retarded, realize that they don't want to study computer science as a major anymore. They study something with better prospects, like art or medieval French poetry. A few students go Comp.Sci knowing they'll be unemployed, because they really dig it, and they'll go on to start the Napsters of the future (good for them, I say).

    Suddenly, corporations have a problem.

    Our colleges don't produce many computer scientists anymore. Those that DO go all the way to the Ph.D aren't Americans -- and they're going back to wherever they came from to start their OWN companies instead of being Good Little Immigrants(tm) and working for a corporation.

    Some suit, deep in his six-martini lunch, wonders aloud, "Hey, wait a minute; if all these guys are going home and starting their own companies, and they have access to a really cheap labor pool, and the infrastructure we built up lets him sell his stuff to everybody worldwide, and we trained him and everybody in his neighborhood back home in OUR core business... Wait, I had a thought... What was that... Oh, yeah, so, if this Indian guy Apu, or whatever, does that, then isn't that competition? Like, with US?"

    All lunch conversation dries up for a minute. The suits all look at each other.

    "Say, old boy" says the Yale Man, "Do you mean that by outsourcing our entire tech staff to India, we trained and prepared this new guy's -- Apu, did you say? -- entire company for him, and at a moment's notice they could all decide to stop working for us and compete with us instead, leaving us gutted without any technical staff at all?"

    "Umm... Maybe?" the first suit is starting to look a little green. Maybe six martinis were a little much. He eats a mint.

    "And," Yale Man continues, "As Bill mentioned, nobody in America is studying computer science anymore because we told them to study business and move up the food chain, so we'll be (as the locals say) shit out of luck?"

    "Uhh..."

    "Oh, dear. Perhaps we should have Fortune write an article, and inspire young people to study computer science and math again?" He looks around at the other suits. "Surely we can appeal to their sense of national pride, and their desire to not see their own country's corporations fall by the wayside?"

    And, here we are. What an interesting time this is...

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