Posted on 04/23/2005 8:30:02 PM PDT by anymouse
Survey results from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles (HERI/UCLA) show that the popularity of computer science (CS) as a major among incoming freshmen has dropped significantly in the past four years. Alarmingly, the proportion of women who thought that they might major in CS has fallen to levels unseen since the early 1970s.
The percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating that they would major in CS declined by over 60 percent between the Fall of 2000 and 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than its peak in the early 1980s (Figure 1).
Freshmen interest levels at any given point have been an accurate predictor of trends in the number of degrees granted four to five years later. It therefore seems likely that there will be a sharp decline in the number of bachelor's degrees granted in CS in the coming decade. Results from CRA's Taulbee Survey of Ph.D.-granting CS departments reinforce this: the number of newly declared CS majors has declined for the past four years and is now 39 percent lower than in the Fall of 2000. Enrollments have declined 7 percent in each of the past two years (see www.cra.org/info/taulbee/bachelors).
Figure 2 provides a sense of changing interests among incoming freshmen. The majors included within the groupings can be found below.
The upcoming drop in CS degree production will highlight the field's inability to appeal to incoming female undergraduates. Overall, interest in CS among women fell 80 percent between 1998 and 2004, and 93 percent since its peak in 1982.
Although newly-enrolled women have always been less likely than men to indicate CS as their probable major, the gap between them remained relatively narrow through 1980 (Figure 1). During the surge and drop in interest that occurred in the 1980s, however, the difference between men and women more than doubled. While their interest levels continued to parallel each other, it was at this time that CS appears to have lost its ability to attract incoming undergraduate women. During the second surge of interest in CS that occurred in the mid- to late 1990s, women's interest in the field did not grow at the same rate as men's. As a result, the gap between men and women who thought that they would major in CS tripled between the early and late 1990s. Although the difference might appear to have narrowed in recent years, this is because the percentage of women interested in CS was low to begin with, whereas men's interest levels have had room to fall.
Unsurprisingly, freshmen women's dwindling interest in CS has affected degree production trends (Figure 3). Unlike most other fields, which have seen women's representation increase over time, the portion of CS degrees granted to women fell in the late 1980s and has yet to return above 30 percent. With a fall in degree production looming, it is difficult to see how CS can match expected future demand for IT workers without raising women's participation at the undergraduate level.
Sources and further information:
HERI/UCLA's "CIRP Freshman Survey" is an annual survey of the characteristics of students attending colleges and universities as first-time, full-time freshmen: www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/freshman.html.
National Science Foundation data on degree production are available at www.nsf.gov/statistics/ and on CRA's website at www.cra.org/info/education/us/
Fields included in Figure 2's groupings:
(Computer Science is categorized by HERI/UCLA in a group called 'Other', which was not included in this article).
Arts and humanities
Art, fine and applied
English (language and literature)
History
Journalism
Language and literature (except English)
Music
Philosophy
Theater or drama
Speech
Theology or religion
Other arts and humanitiesBiological science
Biology (general)
Biochemistry or biophysics
Botany
Environmental science
Marine (life) science
Microbiology or bacteriology
Zoology
Other biological scienceBusiness
Accounting
Business administration (general)
Finance
International Business
Marketing
Management
Secretarial studies
Other businessEducation
Business education
Elementary education
Music or art education
Physical education or recreation
Secondary education
Special education
Other educationEngineering
Aeronautical or astronautical engineering
Civil engineering
Chemical engineering
Computer engineering
Electrical or electronic engineering
Industrial engineering
Mechanical engineering
Other engineeringPhysical science
Astronomy
Atmospheric science (including Meteorology)
Chemistry
Earth science
Marine science
Math
Physics
Statistics
Other physical scienceProfessional
Architecture or urban planning
Home economics
Health technology (medical, dental, laboratory)
Library or archival science
Medicine, dental, veterinarian
Nursing
Pharmacy
Therapy (occupational, physical, speech)
Other professionalSocial Science
Anthropology
Economics
Ethnic studies
Geography
Political science (gov't, int'l relations)
Psychology
Social work
Sociology
Women's studies
Other social scienceTechnical
Building trades
Data processing or computer programming
Drafting or design
Electronics
Mechanics
Other technical
This is good news for current CS pros like myself. Makes my services that much more valuable.
who can blame students for not wanting to go into CS when every day more and more jobs are going to India and China.
Sometimes I question the value of a strict CS degree.
And we should care, why?
(Speaking as a female with an M.S. in CS...)
It might have been more meaningful 20 years ago, but now a lot of those problems are solved.
You know most of the greats on the pure research side did not have CS degrees at all - Knuth, Kay, McCarthy. A good many of them ended up with Turing prizes.
Well, it is a discussion...
"Is CS really that rich of a "science" to spend 12 years getting a PhD? "
Yes, it is, and that is why such comments are so sad. We have left our profession to the MBAs. 99% of the software out there is junk and very poorly designed. Well, it isn't really designed at all. It happens by accident.
BTW, a PhD is about 7-8 years total, not 12. No Masters required.
A good student will need no more than 5 years to get a PhD. Those taking 7 to 12 years are in the humanities where the whole point is to avoid real work and to stay in college as long as possible.
"Is CS really that rich of a "science" to spend 12 years getting a PhD?"
As a PhD in CS, er ... yes. Theoretic CS (algs to applied Math), to CAD/VLSI algorithms (designing solutions to automatically solve complex IC design tasks), to computer architecture and engineering (ie architecting the most complex creations man has made), to AI (ie understanding the concepts of thinking, memory etc.), to software (which by itself covers large ground, ie optimization to computer languages to ).
CS is the most knowledge-intensive field one can think of, actually, since it touches on so many other fertile areas from cognitive sciences to math to electrical engineering.
" Is it really a science at all?"
Most of CS is really a form of Engineering, which is why they are generally in schools of Engineering, and the better programs are "EECS or "ECE" (electrical and computer engineerings) depts (eg how U Mich. and Berkeley does it), and not a CS dept in the Liberal Arts college.
But "Computer Engineering" is a narrower term, ie engineering of computers. Computer Science has been defined as the science of anything to do with computers.
" I have seen some pretty silly doctorial work; comparable work in Physics or EE would not really be allowed, at least in the big schools."
dang, you read my thesis, have you? :-)
"You know most of the greats on the pure research side did not have CS degrees at all - Knuth, Kay, McCarthy. A good many of them ended up with Turing prizes."
Cheap shot. They were educated *before* CS really took off as a field (which was in the 1960s and 1970s).
Nevertheless, CS touches other fields so there is oppty for someone in other fields/depts to contribute to CS and vice versa. E.g. any good applied mathematician can work in theoretical computer science and/or algorithms, if they want to study those problems.
As one of my applied math profs used to say:
"Whats the difference between CS and applied math?"
"About $10,000 a year" (more for the CS profs)
"Yes, it is, and that is why such comments are so sad."
yes, it was a sad comment ... and not too well-informed either.
OTOH, what drives the volume of people getting BS degrees is if they can get a good job ...
"We have left our profession to the MBAs. 99% of the software out there is junk and very poorly designed."
... and likely there is a relationship between
your statement and the decline in CS interest.
Somewhere along the line, software development itself
become commoditized so much that there is a decline in the value of CS (you can hire in India), and a vicious cycle
where professionalism declines in the field.
baut the error may be that the job of "software developer" and "Computer Scientist" are distinct things. I am lucky to be in the one area - EDA software and IC design - that actually utilizes many parts of what you learn to get a CS, or in my case EECS degree.
That is the problem. Anyone with a liberal arts degree, an IQ above 125 and a willingness to learn can become a passable programmer in under a year. they wont have a clue about runtime complexity, may be weak on SW engineering, and have no inkling about P vs NP, but they can hack SQL or Visual Basic just fine.
((SW Job != SW profession)
&& (SW Job != Computer Science as a field))
It's a pity, because Moore's Law is rolling down the track like a runaway train, we have computers 1,000 times faster than 20 years ago.
... and software has barely evolved !!! ...
... the best OS out there (LINUX) is basically the same danged OS that was banged out in berkeley 20 years ago (UNIX BSD). In 1990, I figured UNIX would beat out the pathetic MS DOS cr*p. boy, was I wrong. by 1995 Win95 took the world by storm. same year I started playing with LINUX.
10 year later, and *still* MS is not as good as UN*X.
Huge development teams only seem to create dinosaur code.
more people notice LINUX these days ... now that it has become less of a hacker's innovation, and more of a 'commoditization of the OS'.
Maybe we can do better.
My thoughts exactly.
Looking at the graphs... What happened around 1982-83 (besides of the recession). A very similar trend as now.
My #1 daughter is finishing up her CS degree at a top 10 CS school. Her comment was that they intentionally decimated the field with three killer gateway classes during which 2X as many women dropped the major compared to guys. In a couple of the 400 level classes she has been the only woman taking it. The good news is that she thinks nothing of it.
The bad news is she wants to go into testing vice development. Thats good for the world in generally (we need more software testers), but bad for me since it dramatically lowers her chances of becoming the next Bill Gates and I will actually have to work long enough to retire.
What's tragic is the amount of work done today by people who don't seem to have ever read Knuth.
BTW, I find it interesting that the original Pentium bug occurred in long-division with some immensely-complicated circuitry that was needed to do two bits at a time. I came up with a simple method for doing many bits at a time (turns out someone else came up with it to); someone who read Knuth would have gotten a clue to the method, though Knuth (at least in 1969) didn't take it all the way.
What's the difference between hardware and software?
As time goes by, hardware get smaller, faster, and cheaper.
Software gets bigger, slower, and more expensive.
One of the things I like about my job is that I program for micros where size and speed actually matter. A typical machine I program for has less than a millionth the RAM of a typical desktop machine, and runs at about a thousandth of the speed.
Maybe they should get Larry Summers' take on this?
I wonder if we will see some of the Computer Science departments start shrinking their faculty? If the incoming number of students goes down precipitously, I would imagine that many Computer Science departments would feel some pressure to reduce the number of faculty, even if the grant money was still rolling in at full pace.
It matters in other areas too, it's just that CS colleges are cranking out graduates who are taught that it doesn't. Typical grads today produce some of the most bloated, inefficient, and resource hungry crap code I've ever seen.
J2EE/Java = a plot by Sun to sell more hardware.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.