<p>For various reasons, I’ve been looking at a lot of Common Data Set info lately. One of the things I was surprised to learn is that at most colleges the percentage of Computer Science grads is sitting around 1% of the degrees granted.</p>
<p>Why is this? With all of the Computer Science related jobs out there I would have thought this percentage would have been a lot higher. Part of the reason could be that the MIS majors are categorized as Business majors at universities. However at most LACs they don’t have a business major but the number still is around 1%.</p>
<p>Is it because this is a really tough major and most don’t either declare the major to begin with or don’t see it through? Thoughts?</p>
<p>Part of the issue is that CS has been a fad major. There were a lot of CS majors in the late 90’s, but after the dot-com bubble crashed, the number of CS majors plummeted. There is an uprise in CS majors now with the rise of online and mobile applications.</p>
<p>In the case of LACs, the reason they may not have many CS majors is since they don’t really attract students who are interested in CS.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The tech bubble crash caused a loss of interest in the major in the mid-2000s.</p></li>
<li><p>The CS major tends to require mathematical and logical thinking skills, which many students are not good at or do not like. The CS major thus competes for the limited pool of mathematical and logical thinking students with the majors in math, physics, engineering, and philosophy.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>MIS is not really the same as CS. MIS is more for managing computers and software, while CS is more for designing computers and software.</p>
<p>As I understand it, this is at least part of the reason. There’s been a debate in the comp sci community about this - some think that they should make programs easier to increase the number of grads (and to some extent this has already happened) and some don’t think it makes sense to do that.</p>
<p>Even starting at the high school level, it’s not as intensive as it was- College Board did away with AP Comp Sci BC a few years ago because so few students were taking it.</p>
<p>CS is, quite frankly, very time-consuming, difficult, and can be very frustrating at times. If you don’t really like it, you will have a hard time finishing. If you’re not the type of person who “gets it”, no amount of hard work will really force yourself to get it.</p>
<p>The labs and projects in CS can be brutal. That with a lot of esoteric math that can seem pretty abstract and general math and science courses that can keep students very busy though the semesters.</p>
<p>It’s a lot of work. And a lot of the time you are competing with kids who caught the bug early. My son took AP Comp BC as a freshman, and said he should have just taken the exam because he didn’t actually learn anything new in the course. He spent the next three years of high school teaching himself even more. Kids who haven’t that kind of prep are at a real disadvantage when they start from scratch. I know at Carnegie Mellon a fair number of people discover it really isn’t for them.</p>
<p>Not everyone is cut out to be computer scientists. Also, many, who do enter, are unaware of what computer science actually consists of. Many think it’s just programming, but they are dead wrong. Programming is a tool that computer scientists use. AP Computer Science class does not show what computer science is actually like. CS is a lot of math. That’s why I am preparing myself very rigorously right now by studying stuff for class that’s taught at a Junior level in my college. Lots of theory involved. I certainly have the practical side down, as I have been programming since I was 11.</p>
<p>And, yes, I am being very condescending right now. Unless kids do this kinds of stuff on their free time, they really won’t survive for long.</p>
<p>One reason is that CS is HARD, and many students change majors. Another reason is that many students interested in CS end up at techie schools with a engineering/CS emphasis and more course selection.</p>
<p>Many/most software engineers likely do not have a CS degree. As I understand it, most start-ups do not focus on the degree but on the actual accomplishments of potential hires. My son has an aeronautical engineering degree but was hired as a software engineer. Like a poster above said, it’s more about the natural talent and focus than on just having degree coursework in CS.</p>
<p>While true that many do not have CS degrees, most I have encountered do. Most of the rest do have degrees in math-intensive fields like engineering, math, or physics. The low cost and high accessibility of computers means that self-education is more feasable in CS than in many other subjects, while licensing and degree accreditation is not generally an issue in employment except for specialties like patent agent or lawyer.</p>
<p>12 years ago, during the dot-com boom, if you could spell komputor you could get hired to write code. That ended with the dot-com bust. Now almost every listing wants a CS degree or equivalent, and they really mean a CS degree or else.</p>
<p>There was a thing on NPR recently about the huge shortage of CS grads for jobs available in Seattle, and the fact that U of Washington has not increased its quota of CS majors since the 90s. Perfectly qualified candidates just cannot get into the program.</p>
<p>One reason given was that it’s an “expensive” program, as most engineering degrees are, because of the labs & equipment requirements. Well, they could charge more for those majors. Students will make it up in salaries later.</p>
<p>Is it really labs and equipment, or the difficulty of recruiting and retaining faculty against industry competition, that makes CS an “expensive” major to offer?</p>
<p>Can’t imagine a bunch of computers to be that expensive compared to the labs, plants, and animals used by the biology department(s), which are often much larger. But faculty are probably easier to recruit and retain in biology.</p>