Universities Combat Decline of CS Majors
Georgia Tech was in the news today, along with other universities, regarding the national decline of students who pick computer science as their major. Georgia Tech was given $1 million by Microsoft to jump-start a new initiative to get students involved with computer science. One such way this is being done is with newer introductory-level classes that teach programming principles with a robot that students buy along with their textbooks.
The key to the class is the design of the robot. It weighs about a pound and is slightly smaller than a Frisbee, sporting three light-detecting sensors and a speaker that can chirp. And at about $75, it’s roughly the price of a science textbook.
That sounds a lot more fun than the introductory computer science course I took at Georgia Tech my freshman year, which involved programming in MATLAB (egh) and Java. From my experience, Georgia Tech has always been on the cutting-edge of new curriculum to keep things interesting. As an example, one my CS courses last year involved C programming for the GameBoy Advance as well as an upcoming course that my academic advisor has hinted at being taught with Ruby on Rails.
My current major, Computational Media, has only been around for about 2 years and it’s a program no other university currently offers. It’s comprised of classes from both the College of Computing and the College of Literature, Communication and Culture to cover everything from straight programming to design, video, web, animation, etcetera. I’m sure other universities will begin to offer such programs in the near future to get students interested in the growing tech field.
I wish the intro to cs course at UF was as fun as this looks like it’s going to be. The most “exciting” project in that course was a cli version of Mastermind.
I’m taking mechanical engineering at the UofC, but every first year engg student has to take a computer programming course (usually C++). Not a ton of people going into computer / software engineering though.
Sounds like those scare tactic stories of all those programming jobs getting outsourced to overseas is finally starting to make an impact on new undergrads?
Great posting considering that I was considering taking Computer Science in College. I am so glad that Microsoft has done this. Maybe it will be the start of a larger trend by major software companies!
I hope the incentives is not just given to the CS major but in general all science and engineering major ;) (maybe not given by MS, but other companies)
huh. Gimmicks! :)
You can have groovy teaching methods, but at the end of the day, the students have got to have the skills. And sometimes this is just boring!
Computer Science just isn’t the best basic computer related degree, and it certainly isn’t for everyone.
It seems to me that the place to start is with educating high school guidance counselors. Granted this was a while ago and at a fairly rural school, but not once was computer science (or any technology-related job except maybe engineering) mentioned to top students (or any students really) as a viable career option. Top students are supposed to become doctors, don’t you know?
Here in the UK there aren’t that many Uni’s that can cater for the kind of demands the industry has these days.
My degree (BSc Multimedia and Web Development) involved some useful module like Java and PHP MySQL. But there were some crazy ones thown in like management type modules. Which are not really the kind of thing most graduates will go into in their first job. Also some things were totally overlooked like HTML, CSS and Flash. Luckily I was learning these in my spare time.
I was ill prepared for my first foray into the web dev environment. I felt a lot of my lecturers lacked industry experience and really just taught from a book. I would love to go somewhere where they were more forward thinking
We have the same problem in the UK. People just aren’t taking computing degree courses anymore. However, there are similar initiatives being kicked off here to bring the fresh talent back in.
Offshoring/inshoring has done its fair share of serious damage to student morale.
I agree with Nicole’s bit on high school guidance. Sometimes counselors have to nudge students in the right way. (which I doubt mine will.) :(
my local community college is offering a 3k year (covers all tuition, fees, and a book or 2) for anyone who wants to major in CS or IT programs… seems like they cant even find people to go for free
Here in Colombia the numbers of computer’s engeneering is really smal, for instance in my university, Uuniversidad de los Andes, Colombia’s top one you can’t see more than 50 students coming into freshmen year per semester. In the other hand you can’t find 300 students in many other undergraduate courses.
Interesting how the trends go up and down. When I majored in CS in 1998, it was the cool thing to do. 80% of my class were kids who thought CS would look good on their resume and would land them a cushy job. To combat this problem, my school had CS 201 to weed out those not suited for the trade.
After the bubble burst, CS 201 got a lot easier as interest in CS dwindled. I wonder if this current shortage is short term or something that does need attention.