{"id":18091,"date":"2017-06-02T16:03:04","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T20:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=18091"},"modified":"2017-06-02T16:03:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T20:03:04","slug":"why-do-so-few-people-major-in-computer-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/02\/why-do-so-few-people-major-in-computer-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Do So Few People Major in Computer Science?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Wang<\/a> (via Tyler Cowen<\/a>, Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

That means that the share of people majoring in computer science has decreased<\/em>, from 3.76% of the all majors in 2005 to 3.14% of all majors in 2015. Meanwhile, other STEM majors have grown over the same period: “engineering” plus “engineering technologies” went from 79,544 to 115,096, a gain of 45%; “mathematics and statistics” from 14,351 to 21,853, a gain of 52%; “physical sciences and science technologies” from 19,104 to 30,038, a gain of 57%; “biological and biomedical sciences” from 65,915 to 109,896, a gain of 67%. “Computer sciences and information technologies?” From 54,111 in 2005 to 59,581 in 2015, a paltry 10.1%.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It might be true that being a software developer is the field that least requires a bachelor’s degree with its associated major. Still: Shouldn’t we expect some correlation between study and employment here? That is, shouldn’t having a CS major be considered a helpful path into the industry? It seems to me that most tech recruiters look on CS majors with favor.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Wow, the number of people graduating with CS degrees is really cyclical. The first peak in 1985 corresponds to the release of the IBM Personal Computer. The second peak corresponds to the 2001 dotcom bubble. I agree now that the ’01 bubble explains a lot of the decline afterwards; people graduated into a bad job market and that scared many students away. That year, however, may have been the worst of it; by 2005, Google had IPO’d, Facebook was spreading on campuses, the iPod was a success, and the iPhone would be released two years later. Those companies drew students back into studying CS, and we can see that from the rise again in 2009.<\/p>\n

This is a neat story, but still I have to confess some surprise. Should it take 15 years before the popping of the bubble before we see that college students are graduating with the same degrees again?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I found studying computer science to be very helpful and greatly enjoyed it. However, lots of people, including people who knew at the time that they liked tech and programming, seem to dislike it and perceive it as unnecessary or not relevant.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Wang (via Tyler Cowen, Hacker News): That means that the share of people majoring in computer science has decreased, from 3.76% of the all majors in 2005 to 3.14% of all majors in 2015. Meanwhile, other STEM majors have grown over the same period: “engineering” plus “engineering technologies” went from 79,544 to 115,096, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[263,235,937,71],"class_list":["post-18091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-theory","tag-education","tag-hiring","tag-programming"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18092,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18091\/revisions\/18092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}