Fewer students major in computer

SAN FRANCISCO — The number of undergraduates signing up for computer degrees is falling fast, making IBM and other tech companies worry that there soon won't be enough skilled U.S. workers to meet demand.

New enrollment in North American computer science and engineering programs has dropped four years straight, falling 10% during the 2003-04 school year from the year before, says the Computing Research Association, a trade group for computer professors.

That's because good tech jobs have been hard to find, professors say. "Students are responding to the alarming rate that the job market changed (during the dot-com bust)," says Ohio State University computer professor Stuart Zweben. "They're also concerned about offshoring of jobs."

Ironically, that could lead to more offshoring. Many low-level programming jobs have already been sent to such countries as India and China. But high-level jobs combining technical and business skills are still in the USA. That could change if there's not enough workers to fill them.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-05-22-computer-science-usat_x.htm

Why would they train for a job that is rapidly disappearing due to.....

(drum roll)

Coroporate greed.

Companies can fill computer positions in India, China, etc. at a fraction of the cost in the U.S. :shrug:

Contract.

Large corporations have no one to blame but themselves for this problem.

If the companies are not willing to keep the jobs here, this becomes very obvious to all concerned and people shift gears.

low-level or entry level jobs in whatever profession they choose to use their degree for. Even the brightest and smartest are not going to have experience in managing people or projects. Companies aren't hiring college grads as project leads and managers. Most smart college students know this and they also know that they have to figure out a career path that will allow them to pay off their college debt. It makes no sense for them to go into any field where there is no career path. No change to gain experience and potentially earn more money.

...$100.00+ an hour and they both get offers weekly, so I don't know if I buy your logic. Still, lots and I mean lots of IT jobs to be had, and they're still paying very well.

they program in? I'm curious as to what is in demand these days. Talking to friends back home in Portland, Oregon, I gather the software programming market there is still not so good; somewhat better than several years ago but still kind of tough. Nowhere near what it was five to seven years ago.

The only high tech areas I've heard of that seem to be hot are bioinformatics, biostatistics, statistics in general, and actuarial science.

There are lots of 100+/hr contract positions here in NY, and companies are finding it rather difficult to fill them with qualified people. That said, a fresh college grad is simply not going to be experienced enough for a position that requires at a minimum a few years of real-life development in addition to some degree of subject matter expertise. The latter can't be taught in school, you have to get it at .. surprise .. the entry-level jobs that simply aren't available today for reasonable pay.

So it's a weird situation. Not enough engineers with good business experience to fill the advanced positions, not enough entry-level positions to raise a new generation of experienced engineers.

For people who have not done these sorts of jobs, the rates are
misleading. The rate includes the corporate markup. Either you do
it as a sole propietorship or as a corporation. There is no vacation
pay, no sick pay and no severence pay. There is no job guarantee
beyond a short period, and quite often the rate includes a cut for an
agent of 10-30%

Such jobs rarely stack up back to back, so the down time, called "on
the beach" is unpaid vacation. So take a rate like 100 per hour, and
divide it down by unemployment periods, paying corporate expensese for
accountants and corporate fees, and the rate drops significantly. You
are expected to carry your own liability insurance, unemployment,
retirement and medical, as well as paying payroll taxes etc.

Whilst you're working, you can make a comparison generally, that 100
per hour is 100K in permanent salary. The instant you're not working,
it's zero K. You get no training for that rate, and are treated like
a strike breaker on the site, as permanent employees hate you for
"making so much money"... If you ever wind up on the beach for a longer
period like 6 months to a year, you get no unemployment and are
generally screwed.

This independent contractor market is a corporate way to avoid any
responsibility for covering the long term costs of labour, and what
appear to be high rates, are often for short terms gigs, when the
net net results are not near so appealing. I've worked as many as
8 jobs in a year, llike having 8 permanent jobs, interviewing and
getting 8 jobs! some with not near as good rates.. And finally,
as you are a corporate supplier, some clients can take up to 4 months
to pay an invoice... so whilst on paper you've earned good cash, you
end up to your eyeballs in debt by the time you see any.

few (if any) entry-level programming positions to be had. Most IT resources come from off-shore companies, providing off-shore and on-shore resources. Of all the programmers I work with, about 5-10 percent are American citizens.

It was NOT this way 10 years ago. I wouldn't have my career if I had not had the programming opportunities on the way that no longer exist.

Your friends who command good rates are surely not entry-level, are they?

that has emerged since 9/11. A large percentage of these jobs were filled by foreign graduates of US Computer Science programs. Congress cut the number of H-1B professional worker visas four years ago, and it's been downhill ever since.

The best and the brightest students simply don't want to deal with the delays, uncertainty, and unwelcome scrutiny that's now part of the process of getting and keeping an F-1 Foreign student visa or an H-1B working visa. This has had a substantial impact in the declining enrollment in US engineering programs, and is forcing some US IT firms to partner abroad to fill programmer/analyst positions that used to recruited from US universities.

The immigration restrictionists are doing enormous harm to what was our most vibrant high-wage growth industry.

:bounce:

which spends its time teaching children to have high self esteem and to be creative (or just simply coping with discipline problems), but doesn't teach children strong skills in mathematics and science. So kids aren't prepared for science, math or engineering in college and end up majoring in things like marketing.

My son's 10th grade curriculum is packed with math and science.

Whatever kids do in K-12, acquiring robust skills at math doesn't seem to be part of the equation.

tutoring my kid last night I respond with a hearty, "There's too damn much math if you ask me!"

and excel at it. But somewhere in the K-6 level, this gets beaten out of people.

My son loves computers. He had taken several college courses in computer engineering in a special program at a local community college before graduating from high school. He is now in college and is majoring in bioengineering. He would have taken computer engineering but he felt the job market wasn't there and pay at the entry level was too low.

My brother made big bucks in the computer field before the INTERNET bubble burst. Lucky for him he made enough money he never has to work again. But he would like to work because he loves computer engineering. He cannot find a job in computer engineering that will pay him what he thinks he's worth. He's now working in real estate.

So there you are. I think when people feel they are not going to be compensated fairly for a difficult course of study or for their experience, they don't go after those jobs.

The big computer companies annually scare up a prognosis of shortages in domestic computer software engineers and IT professionals as part of their efforts to bribe our corrupt congress into continuing to extend the foreign worker visa program (H1-B) for 'critical skills'.

CS degree enrollments are indeed falling, as others have pointed out, as the work is hard and the career path these days is unclear. I rather doubt that there is a critical skills shortage.

this is just their way to pave more corporate greed

Why would IT companies pay thousands of dollars in government filing fees and legal fees for H-1B workers if there was a large pool of qualified, available US workers?

Don't tell me because it's cheaper. Quite the opposite, in fact. By the way H-1B visa is a category for "specialty workers" not "critical skills."

Basically, if you're a recent graduate with a BSCS or MSEE, or similar program, with good grades from a decent school, you're going to get hired. The prevailing entry-level wage in the DC area is about $50,000/year and people with Master's degrees or several years of experience get mid-sixties and up. That's regardless of whether you were born in Chicago or Chennai.

There are a lot of underemployed older workers out there with specialized skills (or older skills sets) that are looking for a vanishing number of middle-tier jobs paying $75-$100K year. These jobs have largely been off-shored to big, global multi-disciplinary consulting firms. The native middle-tier IT people have not been driven out of work by H-1B visa holders - there are only 65,000 new visas available each year, and that is split among all professional fields.

The IT stars -- people commanding $100,000 and up generally start their own firms and have skills that are off-the-chart. They'll get hired anywhere, anytime they want.

But please do provide any links at all that document your claim that H1-B employees are more expensive than equivalent domestic employees. And yes I've worked in the industry for 25 years.

Why? Have they run out Indian or Pakistani workers?

it's about time. They've been laying off computer science majors for years. Not to mention that a lot of the jobs are crap anyway. Frankly, I think it's criminal that they've been enrolling thousands of computer majors for as long as they have, given the decimation of this section of the workforce.

The idea that "computer science" is some growing category is fictional, IMO. The days of "computer science" as something special are over.

And while I still see some job ads that say "No CS people that built a few interfaces and think they can design, please", I understand where they're coming from with that attitude. My goal is to make functional and attractive layouts, and let someone else do the back-end stuff. It provides a somewhat quick turnaround for me and gives me a very visible work portfolio. In a couple months I'll have my BA in Graphic Design. Perhaps someone will come along and piss all over my strategy, but getting a job as a programmer or netword/database adminstrator was completely hopeless a couple years ago.

Not going to be people to fill the jobs that are open? Why not ask the people they've laid off (like me) to come back to work?

If..in the next 15 yrs...we do run out of oil and gas..there will not be the energy to run computers..or anything else..in this brave new world...appropriate vocational planning would have one majoring in farming..the old fashioned kind or homeopatic medicine.

However, we're a taxicab cooperative...