News
Computer Science enrollment figures slump
Ed Fear Mar 27 2008, 10:28am
Comments (5)
US institutions report significant drop in applicants
Forget the recruitment crisis - according to NPR, it's an enrollment crisis that's threatening the future of our talent pipeline.
The news outlet is reporting that the number of students enrolling in computer science degree courses in the US has dropped significantly in the past few years. As an example, the piece points to the University of Maryland which had 2200 computer science students enroll the 2000, a figure which dropped significantly to 600 this year.
The slump is blamed on the burst of the internet bubble several years ago. It is said that computer science numbers were at their highest during the bubble due to the perceived massive employability of comp. sci graduates - but as the bubble burst, suddenly a huge amount of graduates were left scrabbling over few jobs.
Another problem, says the National Science Foundation's Jeanette Wing, is the perception that computer science degrees result in dreary lives writing code. To combat this, the foundation is funding courses across the US in order to rejuvinate their comp sci programmes to show the breadth of possibilities open to graduates.
It's an issue that some within our industry are working on - speaking at the Develop Conference last year, Microsoft's Chris Satchell elaborated how the company hopes that, by partnering its XNA game programming framework with academic institutions, it can help make computer science an attractive prospect.
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Comments
“Me”
Posted by: Tashi - Mar 27, 5:56pm
I'm a Computer Science major. I'm actually in a computer science lab right now. I got to Rochester Institute of Technology and there are a ton of Computer Science majors here. Oh, and the XNA stuff is attractive to me.
“Me”
Posted by: Tashi - Mar 27, 5:56pm
I'm a Computer Science major. I'm actually in a computer science lab right now. I got to Rochester Institute of Technology and there are a ton of Computer Science majors here. Oh, and the XNA stuff is attractive to me.
“Re: Me”
Posted by: Another computer science student - Mar 27, 6:03pm
I think the point is that we're in a minority.
And posting it twice doesn't bump the number of people doing comp sci ;)
“Re: Me”
Posted by: Andy - Mar 31, 11:04am
"computer science degrees result in dreary lives writing code".
Yup.
“Re: Me”
Posted by: Brian - Apr 14, 9:29pm
Is anyone really surprised? "Business" people keep telling us we're too expensive, that its a global economy and we should "move up the value chain". The unspoken assumption is that johnny foreigner is happy to do the grunt work but is somehow incapable of high level design. Rubbish.
Move the "grunt" jobs offshore, and the "high level" jobs will follow. And then Tata and Mittal take over the rest of the native business.
Bye bye Jaguar.
My lad wants to get into the industry, I'm advising him against, but what the hell is left? Our corporate leaders are only interested in making their companies profitable this quater so they can be sold off. They dont care who the buyer is, as long as they get their "incentives"