from the everybody-wants-to-be-a-techie dept.
The bursting of the dot.com bubble in 2000 prompted students to reject computer science programs. Enrollments plummeted with the crash. But colleges are now scrambling to keep up with the major's year-after-year enrollment growth.
Take Stanford University. In the 2007-08 academic year, Stanford had 87 declared undergraduate computer science majors. That was near the trough of the great decline in computer science enrollments.
But since then, the number of declared majors at Stanford has grown in each year and by the 2016-17 academic year, Stanford counted 353 majors. This is now the school's top undergraduate major.
Stanford is not alone. Dartmouth College's computer science program has quadrupled, but that doesn't tell the entire story. Many students, who are pursuing a variety of undergraduate degrees, are making computer science part of their study. These students now consider data analytics and coding as fundamental parts of their field.
"I don't think anybody expected what we are seeing now," said Hany Farid, a professor of computer science and chair of the department at Dartmouth.
By the time they graduate, 75 percent of Dartmouth's students have either taken an engineering or computer course, said Farid. An introductory computer science course teaches a student how to code in Python. Students also study data structures to learn how to represent and manipulate data, as well algorithmic analysis that teaches them how to assess whether one algorithm is better than the other in terms of runtime complexity.
"I can tell you that 50 percent of accepted students to Dartmouth have expressed some interest in computer science – that's insane," said Farid.
This increasing demand for computer science education is nationwide.
Source: http://insight.ieeeusa.org/insight/content/policy/775982
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @10:06AM
s/t
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:01AM (17 children)
Enrolement varies by more than a factor of four? This makes me more inclined to hire people who study during the unpopular periods. The remainder have no passion for the subject.
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:43AM (13 children)
I'm okay with lack of passion as long as they don't lack skill and a work ethic as well. I've worked plenty of jobs I wasn't particularly thrilled about just because they were good jobs. It's the ones who take CS paths to get out of working that I have no use for.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:12PM (9 children)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:22PM (3 children)
Work ethic is hard, because it cannot be magically wished into it. I often spend my time thinking up different things to model economic patterns, and I came to the conclusion long ago that in business the most sought after quality in everything is consistency. Hence an employee who is not extraordinary in any other aspects but the fact they are 100% consistent in the amount of work and quality of the work they perform is the most useful. I seen people perform extraordinary feats for weeks, months, and then burnout or leave. Then I seen other people (though rare) who worked the same fucking job for 10+ years, did an adequate job, and never complained about it. I was really amazed by these people. They were extraordinary in their mediocrity.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:39PM
Fucking truth. I'd rather have someone who's just adequate but shows up on time every day than some absolutely brilliant guy who can't even be arsed to call in so I can tell him he's fired for not showing up while healthy.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:40PM
http://wiki.c2.com/?GreatLispWar [c2.com]
Hot-shot "cowboy coders" are great until they disappear, then you may likely have a mess to maintain, or something that's hard to find a maintainer for.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:27AM
Depends. If you're speaking of a cog in the machine type of job, consistency is very important. If you're talking about the people who create new ideas and new businesses, their very job is supremely inconsistent because it's something that has never been done before.
The thing is, if the primary thing all your employees do is consistency, then where are you going to get leadership and new ideas from? I think a common failure mode for managers is to take someone who is doing a consistent job in a stable environment and then promote them out of that environment into a management or big picture job that has a lot more risk and inconsistency to it. They weren't doing the sort of work that would prepare them for the chaos and responsibilities of their new job. Nor did you have a clue prior to the promotion how well they would do in the new environment.
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:24PM (4 children)
Wish I knew them. I mostly have to go on instinct and time spent unemployed. The latter is a dead giveaway though. If you haven't spent 95% of your working-age history employed, you're probably going to be someone I'll have to fire within 6 months.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:08PM (3 children)
That's nice for you, but will you be paying taxes to support the permanently unemployed underclass which your shortsighted prejudicial attitude has created?
No of course not. You're a selfish prick who wants to accumulate as much money as fast as possible and step on as many faces as you can while you do it.
You're just begging to be murdered, buddy.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:19PM (2 children)
It's neat that you can tell all that about me from one comment. You should market that skill.
And no, I'll be doing everything possible within the law to not pay the way of the long-term unemployed; or, as they used to be called, bums.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:29PM (1 child)
Thank you for confirming you are secretly the troll who hates the guts of Michael David Crawford. You know, MDC the resident bum on your fine site. Why haven't you permanently banned MDC? He's a bum and bums don't belong in your world or on your site. Get rid of the bum.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:01PM
MDC knows the score. Having problems doesn't entitle you to special consideration; not even in your own head. Everyone has problems. Nobody gets to use them as an excuse for failure.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:21PM (2 children)
The people who take a subject because studying it doesn't seem like work to them tend to be the best at that subject.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:01PM
Depends. Some may simply underestimate the work it means. Of course, those tend to drop out early.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:44PM
And the worst workers. I need someone capable of doing something they don't particularly enjoy and doing it every day. You know, working.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:32PM (1 child)
Great thought. But during depressions, funding is unavailable too. VC's dicks will have shrunk, and your local coffee shop will laugh at you when you propose to write them a phone app.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:48PM
I'd hope my local coffee shop laughs at a proposal to write an app because I'd laugh too. Unfortunately, an attempt to provide genuine value to all stakeholders makes funding difficult in all circumstances. [soylentnews.org]
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:48PM
Look at the other end of the socioeconomic scale for another perspective, arts, music, stuff like that.
Heck, even chemistry, this strays into STEM in some areas. I have a passion for chemistry and the 20% or so of chemistry undergrads who eventually obtain work as a chemist doing actual chemist work get paid very well, but I'd rather have good odds of eating and not living under a highway overpass so bye bye chemistry. I even considered minoring I was only 2 classes away, but why bother. I had sort of a similar thing going on with EE, lets see all the EE I know can't find jobs to work as an EE and instead work as coders, so why am I bothering with EE even as a minor, may as well go BS CS which is what I ended up doing. If the most likely job title for a EE grad or a chemist grad is "programmer" then I may as well learn as much CS BS as possible by getting a BS CS.
Another semi-orthogonal aspect to passion is nothing kills passion quite as efficiently as turning it into a job or education goal. So if you select on passion the vast majority of people claiming to have it are successfully BSing you. Which, if you're hiring for sales or marketing, is not necessarily a problem. If someone claims its been their life's passion to debug typos in SNMP MIB files or to reverse engineer access lists written by a madman or debug a semi-unreliable I2C microcontroller bus or any of that BS, well, they're probably BSing you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:26PM (1 child)
> Take Stanford University
Let's not. I looked at a map. Tell me if Iowa State or Alabama U is seeing a giant uptick in CS.
Using Stanford as a gauge of CS is like checking Bel Air or Martha's Vineyard's prices to gauge the US housing market.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:54AM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:37PM (1 child)
I wonder if they still teach BASIC there...
And if you think thats off topic thats because you're a noob
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:22PM
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