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ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has released the highly anticipated report "Retention in Computer Science Undergraduate Programs in the U.S.: Data Challenges and Promising Interventions"(pdf)
[...] The computing field is experiencing exponential growth, both in terms of current and projected job openings, as well as students majoring in computer science (CS). Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor projected that between 2008 and 2018, ¼ million computing jobs opened in the U.S. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, however, in 2015-2016 only 64,405 students received computer science degrees. the main source of preparation for these jobs. Additionally, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that employment in computer and information technology occupations is expected to grow by 13% in the next decade.
The interest in computing is also reflected in the numbers of incoming students pursuing Bachelor degrees in computing. A report by the Computing Research Association (CRA) highlights that US undergraduate enrollment in computer science is higher today than at any other time. Additionally, the CRA report outlines a 185% increase in CS undergraduates at large institutions since 2006, and a 216% increase of CS majors at smaller institutions during the same period.
Despite these trends, the challenge of retaining more women and people from underrepresented minorities (African-American, Hispanic, Native American) has been a persistent challenge in the field for decades. According to the National Science Foundation's Engineering and Science Indicators for 2016, despite the fact that women earned 50% of the Bachelor degrees in science and engineering, they accounted for only 17.9% of Bachelor degrees in the computing sciences. Additionally, data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that for CS Bachelor degrees granted at doctoral-granting institutions in 2015, only 8.4% of degree recipients were Latino and only 4.3% were African-American.
[...] it is an economic imperative for the United States to have a large and diverse tech workforce. Better solutions are developed by teams with a diversity of people and perspectives. Retention in college computing programs is foundational because if we are not attracting and retaining a diverse population of students in Computer Science programs during the students' academic careers, we will not see a diverse workforce in computing emerge.
The article enumerates several areas of interest:
- Data Collection and Analysis
- Promising Interventions
- Give Students a Better Understanding of CS
- Meet Students' Varied Backgrounds
- Increase Helpful Collaboration
- Increase Sense of Belonging and Build a Safe Learning Culture
The report concludes by emphasizing that there is no silver bullet than can transform an institution into an inclusive and equitable learning environment for all students, and that the work to create an inclusive environment is not a temporary effort. The ACM Education Board Retention Committee notes that because these constructs change very slowly, issues of equity will continue to be pressing in all fields -- including computing -- and therefore will require continued vigilance and determined effort.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:23PM (2 children)
Could someone check the proofreading on the propaganda? Not trying to be harsh but someone typo something.
The argument seems to be that a quarter million IT jobs opened per decade, and 64K students get a degree per year so we have a "problem". They're trying to convince us that 250K is larger than 64K so we have a big problem but obvious 250K per decade is about 25K per year vs 64K per year I'm not seeing a problem?
Sounds more like the K12 Education degree in the state I live in, where they graduate roughly twice as many kids as there are jobs because they make a lot of money off edu, so who cares if half the kids can't get a job?
Then there's a long weird rant about how everyone knows human biological differences exist WRT various intelligence measurements along with the "g-factor" and IQ in general, but we can't talk about that under PC censorship, so we'll pretend that we're totally mystified why given the average IQ in Tanzania is 72 that they don't produce as many if not more programmers than the hated white males produce. "I donno why high cognitive load jobs that only whites on average can do, are on average mostly staffed by whites, its sooooo confusing almost like how weird it is that the average basketball player is really freakn tall for no apparent reason"
Also you'll note they carefully don't mention Asian men who are also very high IQ on average and generally nice people to work with, and that's because their stats wouldn't fit the narrative of white male hate. Google indicates 5.6% of the usa population is Asian, so you'd predict 64K*5.6% or 3584 CS grads to Asians. Some place named datausa.io has a CS degree section reporting 4959 Asian CS diplomas earned in 2016. Must be those fucking white males discriminating against and holding down our yellow brothers, oh wait, shit, their quota seems to be 3584 but they achived 4959 which is a vast over-representation. Huh maybe the whole SJW narrative is complete bullshit after all...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday December 06 2018, @02:45AM
The big question here is whether the reported national IQ levels are real or an artifact of cultural bias in the IQ tests. I found a study ( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0969594X.2016.1194257 [tandfonline.com] ) that appears to be aware of these issues and investigated whether there might be better tests than the traditional so-called western ones.
And perhaps the Tanzanian culture inhibits the kind of learning experience that enables success with western IQ tests.
They came up with "dynamic" tests, which seem to measure learning ability rather than already learned abilities. Although there was too much information for me to conclude much in an unfamiliar field of study, it did seem that these dynamic tests provided better outcomes than the older static tests. I didn't get the impression that they accounted for the entire depression of IQ scores from 100 down to 71, but they did suggest that the situation isn't as dire as that statistic indicates.
Still, overall economic outcome depends on achievements and not potentials. Changes in cultural patterns, such as better education, may improve the situation markedly. How markedly remains to be seen. I probably won't live long myself enough to see the outcomes decades hence, but some of you may.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06 2018, @05:28AM
The problem is not just new jobs, but also backfilling old jobs and leaving room for expansion, plus all the people who end up not working in the field. Once you reconcile that, 64K isn't really that great.
Mind you, they'd probably get a lot further by establishing computer tech field apprenticeships (apprentice coder, journeyman DBA, apprentice networker, master sysadmin, and so on and so forth) but the universities would never ever suggest anything that would remove their aura of special or their delicious subsidies regardless of how closely their courses resemble trade schools.