Universities see sharp drop in computer science majors

[NashVegas]

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060925/BUSINESS01/609250334

Computer science majors make some of the highest starting salaries for college graduates in the country, at about $50,000 a year. Computer science and computer engineering jobs are some of the fastest-growing occupations in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
...

This fall, Vanderbilt University's computer science department is less than half the size it was in 2001. This year, enrollment fell again, to 61 students from 78 a year ago. Computer engineering has dropped as well.

At universities across the country, the picture has been similar. Fewer and fewer people are enrolling in university computer science programs, just at a time when employers say they can't find enough qualified employees.
...
Some university professors feel students and their parents are still scared off from computer science because of the dot-com bust, combined with a fear that an increasing number of jobs, especially programming jobs, are being sent offshore to places such as India. Others think universities haven't done a good job offering the latest skills and that students are turning to technical schools and career colleges as an alternative. Career college enrollment almost doubled between 1998 and 2003, according to data compiled by the Career College Association.

There are interesting comments from readers at the bottom of the published article, online

My own thoughts: why should anyone lay out $30k-$80k for a college degree in a field where people are getting outsourced up the ying-yang, and where experience and trade schools can give them the skills they need at a fraction of the cost. Add onto that: how many people in upper management and the boardrooms have engineering degrees? Hmmmm?

It's a racket.

[kurth]

1. Computer programming is just a white-collar McJob

easily outsourced to India and Eastern Europe.

No responsible parent should waste money sending their kid to college for such a career.

[sugapablo]

6. Actually....

what I do (web applications dev) is not easily outsourced.

If I was to work for one client 24/7, then yes...but I service perhaps 100 clients, sit down with them, talk with them, custom tailor applications for them, and take car of all their web/database needs.

There are plenty of good tech jobs that can't be easily outsourced. I'm doing just fine with no chance of being pushed aside by someone in a foreign country.

As for "McJob"? If you can find someone working at McDonalds who makes more than I can in a year... :)

[Show_Me _The_Truth]

13. "But I have people skills"

Sorry, the line from Office Space just popped into my head.

[XemaSab]

91. "I deal with the damn customers so the engineers don't have to!"

:o

[BlueJackal]

37. It sounds as if you have a consulting business, so that's not a fair deal:

--what I do (web applications dev) is not easily outsourced.

If I was to work for one client 24/7, then yes...but I service perhaps 100 clients, sit down with them, talk with them, custom tailor applications for them, and take car of all their web/database needs.

There are plenty of good tech jobs that can't be easily outsourced. I'm doing just fine with no chance of being pushed aside by someone in a foreign country.

As for "McJob"? If you can find someone working at McDonalds who makes more than I can in a year...--



You sound as if you have some sort of a consulting business.(you mention numerous clients) Which I assume demands a graduate degree and/or extra certifications, no? I think the reason why that one person called it a "McJob" is because the only 2 ways anybody in the computer science/comp. engineering field can get ahead is by either highly specializing(as in a Ph.D.) and/or by getting a consulting certification and being able to do things for companies that ordinary "CSers" can't do.

I have an engineering degree myself but I simply make more money with my own small business so I've switched careers. And my degree is in the "highest paying engineering field" of chemical engineering.(with an emphasis in environmental and gasoline production) It simply doesn't pay enough for it to be worth it. Fuck, when I first started working at a mere 52K a year, the feds came in and took over a third of my check away.

I was left with attempting to pay back on over 50K in college loans and juggling car payments, rent(notice I wasn't even capable of attaining a mortgage), paying past credit debt for my parents(both of whom were and continue to be irresponsible with their money and lifestyles), and also helping out my elderly grandmother with some of her monthly bills. Not to mention food/drinks, gasoline, and all the other basic shit you have to have just to live. All this bullshit on just what: 35K a year at best? And that was in a good year. Usually it was more like 30K. And since I was salaried they fucked me for all the hours they could get out of me. So that pretty much ended any possibility of getting an extra side job to help pay some of the bills.(as if you can find one to match your hours)

My meager entertainment budget of about 3K a year left me with the only real entertainment I could afford as being a bi-monthly trip to a strip club and going to the movies twice a week to help relieve some of the tension and stress from work. And they wonder why so many American kids don't go into medicine, engineering, or science fields. It takes too fucking long to pay your loans back. A friend of mine is in his 60s and he told me that when he was my age(middle 20s) that the City College of New York still actually gave in-state education FREE to its students. Imagine trying to do that now. This country is fucked with greed and the only way to get ahead is to play the cutt-throat capitalist game and be the most vicious employer out there.(thankfully though the only worker I have on my payroll is me)

That's the problem with our economy, it's becoming too professional. People forget that the enormous costs of education quickly bankrupt a family/individual attmepting to advance themselves or say a child in that family. Outsourcing is the deathnail for the American worker. People who spent tens or even hundreds of thousands in college loans in the 80s and 90s are now seeing the fact that they have to "reorient" their careers to fields that are booming such as health care.(the insane nursing shortage)

The teacher shortage also comes to mind but I know quite a few people who I went to high school and college with who after meeting up with them in the past year or so have told me that after only a year or 2 of school they gave it up. Nobody wants to put up with little brats for a salary that's only two-thirds that of the federal poverty line. It fucking isn't worth it.

When our government stops selling us out(and President Clinton joined with the Republicans in 1994 in backing NAFTA for all those who forgot, I remember the Larry King interview) and expecting us to all become doctors or movie stars to help offset the loss in good-paying union jobs then we'll see a truly healthy economy.

Most of the "jobs" that Dubya spouts in his and Faux News's "the economy is doing great" pep speeches are usually service and construction jobs that are either filled by illegal immigrants or simply don't pay enough money for it to be worth getting up in the morning.

I'm sorry but with gas at 3 bucks a gallon I'm not getting out of bed for a job I have to travel 10 miles one way for(and not even bringing up the cost of food and drinks while at work) and it doesn't even pay 7 bucks an hour) I'm left with the option of either working for under minimun wage after taxes are taken out and I've compounded all the expenses of the week I incurred for food, drinks, and gasoline, and not to mention wear and tear on my vehicle, or simply receiving a welfare check. And you wonder why so many people on Section 8 "don't work" as the Republicans frequently cite - maybe it's the fact that there are no jobs worth doing like there used to be when you could just work at a factory or mill and actually get by.

Think about it -- I'm paying over a third of my salary every year out in *federal* taxes and then the state and the city and the county come with their hand out....yeah....imagine that. And all the Republicans are worried about is making sure Paris Hilton doesn't get hit with the inheritance tax -- as if she needs the extra 2 mil to open another 2 nightclubs she'll never even visit herself.

[KurtNYC]

7. Yeah - who would want their kid pulling down $150K+ doing

computer modelling or multi-variate analysis?!

Many of these jobs can't be outsourced and there are more servers, terminal, networks than ever. More security and forensics work than ever.

edit to: add the stat may reflect the ratio of male to female in college enrollment now which is leaning to the female side. Women are generally less interested in IT careers.

[BlueJackal]

41. Good point kurtnyc, but you miss the fact that......

most of the jobs you mentioned require hoards of education and not everybody in this country(like myself and most Americans) has a rich daddy to bankroll their college "career." I had to take out nasty loans that ruined my credit and bogged me down for years in debt. You mentioned:

--computer modelling or multi-variate analysis?!

Many of these jobs can't be outsourced and there are more servers, terminal, networks than ever. More security and forensics work than ever.

edit to: add the stat may reflect the ratio of male to female in college enrollment now which is leaning to the female side. Women are generally less interested in IT careers.--

All the things you mentioned above require tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in loan money for individuals to attain. What happens once somebody starts making 150K anyway? The feds take 50K and the state, city, and your country take another 10-25% depending on where you live. So you may "make" 150 grand a year but after taxes(I am including gas, car tags, car inspection stickers, mandatory insurance(which is just as good as a tax), property taxes, sales taxes, etc.) and bills, you may only be lucky to pull 25-30K out of a 150K job for the first several years of working. An individual may have to work for 8-10 years just to pay off their college debt. That's the problem.

[alcibiades_mystery]

46. Becoming a lawyer or a doctor also requires massive loans for most

What's your point?

First year lawyers are lucky to land a corporate job at $125,000, and they have massive law school loans, often up to $100,000. The same can be said of doctors, and even dentists. This is the educational investment. The idea is that in 10 years, the loans will be paid off, and you'll still be getting paid well. I don't understand why this is a mystery to you. It is standard practice throughout the professions, and has almost nothing to do with whether one has a "rich daddy." Moreover, I'd say that it's even less the case in computer science, where you can find substantial stipends and assistance for teaching in most Masters and PhD programs - something that is almost impossible for law and medical students.

You took out loans and didn't pay them back? This is a structural problem for the field?!?

[BlueJackal]

47. My point is.....

"What's your point?"

My point being the economy is in desperate need of a massive infusion of capital. Economic growth is stated to slow to 1.5% on average over the next 3 years according to the Federal Reserve. The longer people have to waste paying off loans the longer they can't get their lives together and invest money back into the economy to help kick-start job and industry growth. For instance, if somebody has to pay back college debt for 20+ years, that's like attaching a 3-ton anchor the back of a car when the point of government creating the road is for the car to go fast and to accelerate so to speak.

We're going to have a massive epidemic of people who will not be able to pay their debts or who will simply refuse to. As Baby Boomers retire, the tax revenues generated from the federal income tax will dwindle more and more every year, and eventually, as good paying jobs are outsourced, they'll be taxing a large pool of angry pissed off mainly minority workers(and voters) who are enslaved in low-pay shit jobs because they have to support the medicare and social security of the Boomers. It's not going to be pretty for these kids coming up nowadays.

"First year lawyers are lucky to land a corporate job at $125,000, and they have massive law school loans, often up to $100,000. The same can be said of doctors, and even dentists. This is the educational investment."

Bullshit. That's the wrap that universities, banks, and loan companies spout to justify their outrageous tuition rates and loan interest rates. That's how they make their money. There is no such thing as an "educational investment" in this chaotic economy of ours. That's archaic speech from the 50s when the primarily Northeastern educational establishment decided to start shifting emphasis away from science and tech fields and more towards the arts and offbeat social science specialities that have no real marketability outside of a university's walls. And no, I'm not bashing art or the social sciences(we obviously desperately need both) but we have put too much focus on fields that do not generate shit for revenues for the average worker in those fields. Show many how many social workers or painters are multi-millionaires or upper-middle class wokers in comparison to the number of those in tech or science fields.

You'll see over time that it's not worth so much as they say it is - especially in scientific and tech industries that are going to either outsource or go belly-up. And how are lawyers and doctors going to continue to get business if they have to cater to a customer base made up of primarily service workers who can't even afford basic health insurance? They can't nationalize health-care - that'll only make the tax burden worse. Price controls on how much dentists and doctors can charge are the only solution I see to that problem and look at how well those work.....

"The idea is that in 10 years, the loans will be paid off, and you'll still be getting paid well. I don't understand why this is a mystery to you."

It's not. I understand the theory, but that's the way it worked in the 80s and in the 90s when we actually still had quality economic growth. Our economy is maturing and job prospects are starting to dwindle. What's the point of paying off your loans when your in your late 30s if you then have to take out an additional 30 year mortgage for a house? You're an old man/woman before you have anything of value or a comfortable life and who knows even if by that time if the United States is even a nation any longer?

"It is standard practice throughout the professions, and has almost nothing to do with whether one has a "rich daddy." Moreover, I'd say that it's even less the case in computer science, where you can find substantial stipends and assistance for teaching in most Masters and PhD programs - something that is almost impossible for law and medical students."

Stipends for grad students? Most of the so-called "assistance" I've seen offered to engineering students involves basically them going to school again and maybe teaching a few courses to help the old fat professors ease their work load(as if it were busy in the first place in terms of teaching, which I thought was the reason for universities to exist in the first place)all for a meager salary that barely covers books and tuition and the other expenses that life confronts people with like rent and electricity bills.

"You took out loans and didn't pay them back? This is a structural problem for the field?!?"

I'm almost done paying them back - but that's because I've taken a job that pays more than what my field has to offer. You can't expect an individual to have to wait until they're half-dead before they have enough money to live a comfortable life. That's typical neocon jargon where all those rich pretty boys who went to Harvard and Yale on daddy's money get to tell all of us who really work that we have to "pay our dues" before we can live a good life. Sorry, but I along with several million other people my age say fuck that.

[alcibiades_mystery]

55. Hoooo-fah...what a rant

People can decide whether they want to go to universities. As for the price of a university education, yes, it is high. Universities are in fierce competition to attract faculty, and hence, more students, and they are complex economic organisms in their own right. If you think fat cats in the university are siphoning off economic productivity, I suggest you haven't been around a univeristy in a while. It's generally not a place where people get filthy rich. As for the supposed conspiracy whereby Northeastern elites turned the universities into mysterious arts and social science factories, that is equally false. The major cash cows for universities continues to be busines and techno-science majors, with the arts serving primarily a service function. The number of English majors has remained more or less constant since the 1950's, for example, with the exception of a short spike around the early 1970's (from the constant 4% to 7%! WOW!!!). Besides, much of the added expense of such departments comes from industry and business/techno-science departments demanding particular programs (like the service courses in business and technical communication, for instance). The liberal arts can make an argument for continued productivity, although most involved in them wouldn't pose it that way. If you think a literature class is just about the snobbery of spouting off deconstructionist approaches to Moby Dick at your Northeastern elite cocktail party, I can't really help you, but 2300 years of liberal arts education has assumed that such classes do have a real function in a society other than that. I'll stick with Aristotle, Emerson et. al. on this point rather than the huffing anfd puffing internet ranter, thank you very much. I won't speak to the social sciences, since I don't know their stats, but I expect that people who DO want to be social workers aren't primarily motivated by their overall contribution to the GDP. It's a ridiculous assertion and only demonstrates the poverty of your criteria.

Yes, stipends for graduate students. Yes, they are meager, and always have been. And yet some of us manage, even with kids, to pay the bills, eat, complete our degrees, maybe work an odd job, maybe take out some loans, and even sit down and have a few beers now and again. But the point is that advanced degree students in computer science get at least that, which generally can't be said of law students or medical students. Maybe you should have been paying more attention in that economically useless reading comprehension course?

[jaybeat]

96. Hang on there, pardner...

Many people consider a quality, affordable college education to be something that should be available to everyone, regardless of financial status or the "marketability" of a particular major. In fact, this was once the official policy of the United States Government.

When I was a senior in high school, this was the deal. You applied for whatever schools interested you and that you thought you could get into. Those were supposed to be your only criteria. When you got accepted, and chose a school, your financial aid was supposed to be calculated so that you would be asked to pay the same amount out of (your parents') pocket, *regardless of the cost of the school." The rest was supposed to be made up with a combination of grants, work (usually jobs on-campus designed to be compatible with studies), and loans. As the only child of a single-parent household, raised on a public school-teacher's salary(!), I had almost no loans when I graduated from a highly-regarded private liberal arts college.

Fellow graduates have gone on to become professors, doctors, lawyers, environmental scientists, and lots of other decent paying professions, without the crushing debt that *everyone* I know who went to college in the '90's or later has. The dismantling of financial aid started with Reagan and is one of the worst assaults (of many) perpetrated against the middle class.

College is not an automatic ticket to a well-paying job. But it shouldn't cost so much that it has to be. Equal opportunity isn't if only the rich or those who look at college from the standpoint of ROI can afford to go.

[trogdor]

42. You gotta start somewhere.

Problem is, where are the entry-level jobs going? While it's true that someone who does computer modelling or multi-variate analysis or whatever is far less likely to lose his or her job to offshoring than someone who churns out C++ code all day, you usually start off doing this relatively menial task before being considered for bigger and greater things. You don't start off making $150K doing some hot-shit job that requires ten year's experience.

We're not only fucking over new college grads, we're fucking our national security over by making ourselves dependent on other people (some of whom we might not like) for everything from chips and boards to software. If we suddenly lost China (for example) as a source of trade, we'd be back to the slide-rule era pretty damned quick.

[jimbot]

102. Hate to pester but...

It's multivariate not multi-variate. And who cares if it is multivariate, univariate or bivariate analysis? The simple issue is that we had a great boom in the 1990s where folks were paid well for CS/IS/Engineering educations, then the market went bust and we simultaneously added competition to the labor pool which adversely affected salaries. There may very well be many opportunities in CS still today but the pay differentials between CS and other degrees has decreased from where it was five years ago, this simply makes these degrees appear somewhat less attractive to students. There has also been a flight in education away from all things quant, and the president essentially saying "kids, you too can get C's and become president" doesn't help.

I happen to not think that we are screwed as a nation, and there are still plenty of opportunities but if we continue to fail to attract talented men and women to all sciences, we will continue to lose our competitive place in the world.

--JT

[LivingInTheBubble]

49. not true

In many ways.

"McJob" isn't really accurate as you can't flip a burger thousands of miles (it would be too cold to eat ;-) ), barrier to entry for jobs is not low (like MacDonalds) and pay is much higher.

"Easily outsourced", most things are - but are they _successfully_ outsourced? My company is scaling back on its Software Development outsourcing.

Parents financing their childrens studies should make it clear to them that getting a certificate on its own is not good enough and they have to actually become good at what they do and gain experience.

[Pavulon]

74. I work

on computer controlled machining equipment. I do creative cutting edge creative work.

It is not a mcJob and you cant outsource a guy on the ground with experience and business experience.

I did engineering and took some computer classes.

Well worth the time.

[sendero]

76. Truth is..

... there is only a small subset of programming chores that can be successfully outsourced.

Immigrant competition is a reality, and more of a concern than the proverbial "shipping it to India".

Most real projects require a lot of teamwork. That doesn't work that well with folks who are offsite and don't speak/understand English all that well.

OTOH - I don't blame kids for bailing. Being a really good programmer is really hard work, and it requires an aptitude that only a fraction of folks are born with.

In any event, I don't care - the fewer new grads are just less competition for me, and BTW I never set foot in a college and I'm damn good if I say so myself- college really is not the best way to learn computer science IMHO.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

88. Way to insult an entire fucking profession, dude.

Are you in software? If you are, and whatever you do can be easily outsourced to India, then you didn't try very fucking hard at building a skill set.

[ChromeFoundry]

89. Yep, I take that as an insult...

But I also realize that companies outsource positions because of a bean counters ROI estimates all the time.

This, often times, has nothing to do with the skill set of the outsourced. I hope I read YOUR post wrong and YOU didn't just say something like.... Because that would be about as accurate as saying... .

For the majority, the projects fail, go over expected budget and are nearly always press out beyond timeline. There really is no cost savings in the end.

[Joe Bacon]

90. but "Stenography", er "journalism" is where the big money is

All you got to do in "journalism" is sell out to the highest bidder and cry all the way to the bank like Wolf, Ad Nags, Milbank and KKKatie KKKouric do!

[dionysus]

106. nominated for the most ignorant post of the day

guess you're not in IT, eh tool?

[goddess40]

2. Makes sense since those are the jobs being shipped out

Why spend the time to get a degree you have to move to India to use - for slave wages too.

[AngryOldDem]

56. Bingo

If I had a choice between basket weaving and computer science, basket weaving would win, hands down. And as a wife of such a computer professional, companies that are now whining at the lack of "qualified" CS specialists can all just go kiss my ass. "Qualified" definitely has its own specific definition in the IT world, as we have come to find out.

[mntleo2]

3. A-F-ing- men!

Take it from a network adfministrator ~ there ain't no jobs out there and what there is they want you to be Master Of The Universe of something ~ webmaster, running 50 servers, tepelphy, TV, you have to know it all. It is ridiculous and a waste of time.

Cat In Seattle

[BlueJazz]

12. Yep..You're right. I'm a MCSE and A+ and all that but the Jobs in...

.my local paper want a MCSE, A+, Cisco Diploma, know EVERYTHING about every office product ever made....know how to program 4 languages, Assembly language experience PLUS about 6 things I've never even heard of!...

I mean, Christ..DATA..(From Star Trek) would have a hard time filling the damn position.

[Marnieworld]

33. Know all that and get paid less than you are worth too

My hubby is looking for a job in IT now with virtually your certifications. He discovers the same problem but with the additional bonus of expecting ominipotence but paying entry level wages. No one knows everything. It's just some manager's idea of what to expect or HR. Answer the ad anyway.

[pushycat]

38. Yep. You may train yerself too, then expected to do perfect work!

[BlueJackal]

44. You have A+ certification and you're an MCSE and you can't find work?

Where do you live? I know a MCSE who's also a system's administrator(it took him shitloads of training) and who's also a Novell guy and he makes low six figures with his consulting business. Where do you live? Maybe your market is flooded. You may wanna consider a move. As sad as that is, it may be your only option friend.

[BlueJazz]

52. Oh..I look in the paper just to see what's out there. Actually, I ......

...started a little home business about 2 years ago by putting an Ad in various "Flyers"
I charge 35 bucks an hour and probably work 5 hours a day plus some home work. After a few months, I built up a pretty good Base of people who trust me and all that....
I don't make 6 figures but I don't have to answer to any boss other than myself and if I want to
sleep in on a certain day I just make sure I don't have any customers until 10:00.

I love it!

[BlueJackal]

53. My father knows a guy in Florida(who I mentioned in the previous post)....

who's managed to somehow get several small businesses but what he did was he got some casinos to use him as their system administrator. So basically he's cashing in on the gambling boom in the New Orleans/Mississippi area and also with some of the tribes in the region. That's how he makes his dough. Just trying to offer some potential customers. Good luck.

[Pavulon]

75. Their are plenty

of jobs in the RTP area for people with less alphabet.

Proven time in helps.

Stuff like I built a cisco based san with 9509 MDS switches and netapp jbod with VM ware consolidating server counts helps.

[mcscajun]

21. Exactly right. When I first left my old IT job after it was outsourced

I looked at the job listings, and the Jack-of-all-trades at entry level wages or slightly over that was the common theme: multiple skill sets, a vast array of responsibilities, and low pay for all that.

Miracle workers on call 24/7.

[skids]

63. Tell me about it.

I have a very wide array of skills, and a very good performance record.

The idiots that would hire me, if they do get my resume passed on from the idiot that received it in the first place, expect you to have first-hand knowlege of every platform they support. It doesn't seem to matter that in my line of work you regularly learn to support one new system every month or two. They don't ask any questions about my general employment record (e.g. to determine whether despite skills I might be a screw off), don't do squat to evaluate my problem solving abilities, won't look at my APRs when I offer to show them, wouldn't call a reference if you put a gun to their head, and really just do not seem to care that I worked seven years in one place and my salary more than doubled during that time due to merit increases -- as if that happens to just any random hack job.

Skillsets over solid faculties. Computers are a dead industry, killed by its fascination with buzzwords and certificates and its inability to remove the dysfunctional from its own ranks.

Anyone who would pay to school up into an industry so entirely hostile to merit is making a big mistake (though I must say, not a bigger mistake than many of the things you will see your future bosses do every day.)

My career advice for advanced tech degrees: physics and organic chemistry. It will always be in demand.

[sugapablo]

4. For what it's worth...

I'm a web and database application developer. I went to college for art.

Now don't take this as "tooting my own horn" but...

I find my skills much greater than many I come across who've graduated with CS degrees, with the exception of many that come out of CMU (I'm in Pittsburgh).

Even some who come out of CMU though...my cousin was a student there, and asked for help from time to time with work she had. I found numerous mistakes and problems with the TEACHER'S code and lessons. Often correcting them. This is at CMU!

CS is one of thos fields where, IMHO, experience is the best education. I was self-taught and find that if you can google well and rtfm, you can go as far as you need to, at least in the programming world.

Not to mention the world of routers and switches, where my buddy didn't finish his CS degree and instead worked for a local ISP and has skills sufficient to pass the CISCO cert exam. He saved a bunch of money on his last few years of school.

Come to think of it, ALL of the best techs I know did not get a CS degree.

In fact, as a programmer, the one degree I wish I had that would best compliment my skills would be a BUSINESS degree! :)

</random musings>

[kamtsa]

15. I hope that Boeing will not listen to you ...

... when they pick the team to design their next flight control system.

I would prefer to fly in a plane with a control system that was developed by CS and Math majors from CMU rather than by graduates of college for art and network administrators.

Some tasks require significant analytical skills and deep theoretical background and there is that much that one can do just by experience and courses in a 'college for art'.

My son and his friends are now at a career decision making age and my message to them is not to fall for quick solutions that seems to pay well after a year or two of training.

K.

[sugapablo]

18. Actually....

I doubt CS majors would be working on Boeing flight control systems. Engineers and physicists would be. Those fields do indeed require significant study.

If any CS major would be used to program something the above could not, they would not be required to have any specialized knowledge in the calculations necessary to operate the system. They would be given the calculations the system would need to calculate by the people mentioned above. The programmers job would just be to implement them.

I've done programming for medical, vehicle engine, mathemetics applications, all without having the knowledge in those fields. Hell, sometimes I have to produce programs in several languages (spanish, german, etc.) that I don't know. It's not the subject matter that the programmer needs to know, just how to get the calculations other people want to work within the system they want.

[w4rma]

26. Computer Science is an engineering degree.

Computer Engineers

There is usually a buisness school varient (Information Technology?) that is not an engineering degree, however.

[bleedingheart]

27. industrial engineering is the "business" engineering

although my speciality is simulation and I do more consulting.

[w4rma]

29. I'm not referring to folks who work outside of the computer industry.

I'm referring to the other computer degree type.

Large universities usually offer two types:
An engineering computer degree that requires at least Calculus and a bit more.
A business school computer degree that is closer to what a vocational school would teach: basic networking, widely used applications and C++ and/or Java to program with.

[bleedingheart]

32. I work for a software company...

and I have an IE degree....all of our programmers are

Electrical Engineers
Computer Science (Engineering Schools or Computer Science Departments)
Industrial Engineers

[AngryAmish]

64. My girlfriend works in advertising

Her firm employs several Industrial Engineers. No one can figure out yet what they do. I guess they are supposed to design systems to get the advertising out. Who knew?

[bleedingheart]

65. in my job I find a lot of them in defense and banking

kind of strange since initially we were more "manufacturing oriented" however the folks I know are doing the same kind of stuff but in the service sector...

[cap]

100. actually I've worked for Boeings competitor on flight control systems

and on GPS and major satellite systems... a whole lot of those employees arent CS or EE majors!!! I was actually bid on doing QA for the whole FAA air traffic control system and I never took a college level CS course. I've architected key components... Yup can do 5 9's reliability 24x7 uptime guaranteed.

[Warpy]

5. US corporations are cutting the nation's throat once again

by discouraging the very people who should be educated in engineering, computer science, and a dozen other fields by shipping the jobs offshore. Why go into debt for an education that will allow one to get the same job that a high school grad can get, but not the job one trained for?

This country is reminding me more and more of a big soap bubble. There is nothing supporting it but hot air.

[LiberalEsto]

8. My husband is a database administrator

who went to a very good computer school at night for 18 months and earned a certificate. Then he got an associate's degree, and that was all we could afford. This was in 1981 when the computer field was red hot and everybody was being told to get into it.

He's worked in computers for 25 years and knows he is lucky to still be employed. His company takes advantage of that to make him work long hours and weekends while treating him like crap. Many of his co-workers have been replaced by low-paid consultants from India. We know many computer people who have been out of work for a long time, who have tried to switch careers, etc.

American computer professionals have been swept aside like garbage by the corporations, just like the corporations did with factory workers, automakers, engineers, etc. And they continue to whine to Congress that the H1B visa program needs to be expanded to let in more foreign tech & computer people, because there's a "shortage" of American tech & computer workers. Shortage, my foot!

Anyone who goes into computers these days is a fool. The question is, what career is safe? Are there any?

[FormerDem06]

9. I think they're finally looking for quality...

Your husband must be good because he's still employed. I've been in this business for 12 years now. In the mid-90s every idiot with an English degree was trying to program Visual Basic. Now they only want folks who can do 3-4 different things well and I qualify only because I dedicate a lot of my free time to personal education.

I am a consultant who is paid well, and I am paid well because I spend a minimum of 10 hours a week of my own time learning in addition to the 55 hours I spend working.

It's crazy really, the days of 40-45 hour a week IT jobs are gone.

And nope, no career is safe. They're working on ways to outsource healthcare (certain tests are read by Indian doctors now) and Legal (busy work done by Indians as well) now. Even those jobs will no longer be safe. It is going to take herculean effort to keep them.

[LiberalEsto]

14. Thanks

He IS good, and he does work 9-12 hour days. I think he stays because he's a workhorse. He is usually in charge of 6 or 7 applications, while his immediate co-workers have 1 or 2. He often does other people's work because they don't know how.

Tax returns are also being done in India now.

I have daughters aged 23 and 20 who have no idea what they want to do in life. One's finishing a history major and thinking of teaching (she originally wanted to be a Unitarian minister but grad school is financially out of reach). The other hasn't declared a major and hasn't got a clue. They both work as waitresses.

[FormerDem06]

93. My sister-in-law is in the same boat....

She has a degree but she answers phones in an office. Not really sure of what she's going to do with herself because there just aren't a lot of good jobs out there now (at least in North Carolina). It's scary now really. I'm 34 and I can get an IT job anytime I want so far. New kids starting out are struggling. Most of the good work is going off shore.

[Porcupine]

113. Behold the perfect example of why comp sci can't get students!!!

65 hours a week to work and maintain skills. I've read post after post over years from comp sci types who bitch about the vast knowlege sets they are expected to have.

My brother in law made a minor fortune working for a startup that sold to Cisco. He says "If you don't show up Saturday don't bother showing up on Sunday 'cause your're fired."

My older brother committed suicide this summer partly from issues regarding job availability in computer science. He had a masters in computer science and a teaching position at a JC but was denied tenure. He refused to rubber stamp slacker students.

No Thanks. Some people want a life.

[cap]

114. you have got to be kidding

they are MOST DEFINITELY not looking for quality....

There has been a DECREASE in quality since the heydey of computers in the 1990's. I have worked for managers who are telling me that they dont want smart people -- they want a good fit.

Just wait till you are over 40... Have you ever pondered the reason why there are no programmers with white hair? Not everyone stopped keeping up with their field.

"Software is a commodity". You will have a bit of a run until age 45 and then you are toast. Plan on it.

[mcscajun]

22. Is your husband already looking around for a second career?

I'd advise it. The handwriting is on the wall, and one day, he could be unceremoniously dumped out into the street. There are no safe careers anymore, none. A move at right angles is a good bet: look at unrealized dreams from years back and see what else he'd like to do that could be worked into a second career or new business.

I hope your husband doesn't need to do this, but it can never hurt to prepare for all eventualities.

[LiberalEsto]

23. I agree

but he is exausted. They're working him half to death.

[NeoConsSuck]

68. Well put!

I'm in the field also, and I'm lucky to have a job, I guess. Haven't had a raise in over 2 1/2 years, because management knows there is no place else to go, and if there was, they ain't paying any more than my current job is.

I would advise anyone contemplating entering college, to consider a trade school instead. You can't outsource plumbers or electricians.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

111. learn a trade

construction, plumbing, woodworking.

I guarantee they'll come in more useful in the future than running a network. :(

[bluestateguy]

10. That will only result in more foreign CoSci graduate students in the US

Who come here, get their educations, then (most of them anyway) go back to their country and use the skills that we provided for them here.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

59. You mean the skill that you SOLD.

Not all of those get full scholarships, I'm sure.

[mike_c]

11. colleges should not be job training mills in the first place....

If students and employers think that's the purpose of a university education then it's no wonder that there is a clash of expectations after graduation. Adding to the confusion, many university administrators are buying into that view. Job training is what vocational schools do-- it's what they're good at and it's a legitimate and necessary role. And there's no reason that good university curricula shouldn't turn out highly qualified job applicants-- it's just that that's a side benefit of their proper role: teaching folks to think critically and-- hopefully-- to be creative within the framework of concepts that is current in a discipline. A good CS department should be much more than a programmer mill. It should turn out graduates who are broadly knowledgable about computing issues, problems, and solutions, who can solve problems creatively, and who incidentally know a bit about english literature, biology, and history as well. A university education isn't a product with an end point-- it's a process that ideally continues well beyond graduation day because graduates have the skills and curiosity they need to continue learning throughout their lives. Viewing such an education as a job skills production line is guaranteed to produce a clash of expectations for all concerned.

[54anickel]

45. True, but seeing how many of the advisory boards that drive the curriculum

are from "big business", I don't see it going back anytime soon. I served on the advisory committees of a local tech college and a state university. The schools are asking the businesses what they want/look for in college grads...then they'd adjust the curriculum to match. A lot of the advise truly sucked big time. I got fed up when business was giving input into the creatice thinking and business ethics classes. It's the "re-edumacation of Murika".

[BlueJackal]

51. People don't go to college to learn, they go to college to get jobs.....

I hate to be so blunt but that's the way it is with probably 70+% of all college students/grads including myself. I mean sure, I wanted to learn a lot but that didn't mean that was why I went to school. I wanted a job to get myself out of semi-poverty. Only people from privledged backgrounds tend to worry about learning for learning's sake. It's more a hobby for them than anything else. Those of us with bills to pay worry about putting food on the table - to us that's the most pragmatic thing to do.

[mike_c]

67. I don't know whether to be insulted or not...

...so I'll just attribute your comments to excessive zeal and leave it at that. For what it's worth, my background is decidedly blue collar working poor. I'm the only person in my family to complete college-- despite never finishing high school. While a community college student I once begged in a municipal library to raise money for a calculator-- I was an adult with a family to support and we were too poor for my books and other academic materials. Twenty five years later I have a Ph.D.-- and a pile of student loan debt that it will take me the rest of my life to get out from under-- and am a university professor so I know a few things about what university social roles look like from an academic perspective AND I can assure you that education is much more than an expensive hobby for folks like me. It is my life and my livelihood. My dissertation was dedicated to the Martinsburg WV public library.

I would do it all again in a moment if I had to. Nothing comes close to the satisfaction I've had through education. Certainly not the paychecks-- although, in fairness, I'm paid a lot better for being a prof than I was paid back in the day when I was starting out as a student. :rofl:

[BlueJackal]

50. Nice idealism Mike_c, but I think you're sadly dreaming

"If students and employers think that's the purpose of a university education then it's no wonder that there is a clash of expectations after graduation. Adding to the confusion, many university administrators are buying into that view. Job training is what vocational schools do-- it's what they're good at and it's a legitimate and necessary role. And there's no reason that good university curricula shouldn't turn out highly qualified job applicants-- it's just that that's a side benefit of their proper role: teaching folks to think critically and-- hopefully-- to be creative within the framework of concepts that is current in a discipline. A good CS department should be much more than a programmer mill. It should turn out graduates who are broadly knowledgable about computing issues, problems, and solutions, who can solve problems creatively, and who incidentally know a bit about english literature, biology, and history as well. A university education isn't a product with an end point-- it's a process that ideally continues well beyond graduation day because graduates have the skills and curiosity they need to continue learning throughout their lives. Viewing such an education as a job skills production line is guaranteed to produce a clash of expectations for all concerned."


The real world sadly doesn't see a university education in such a romantic light. To corporations a university degree is a job certification certificate and nothing else. I'm also a bit puzzled - why should one learn about biology, English literature, and history as well when these probably will have nothing to do with the engineering and scientist students' lives or careers?

We need people to think critically about politics and history to a point but they shouldn't necessarily be semi-scholars in the field. And I'd advice against learning English lit. With the way the demographics are shifting, one will want to learn Spanish lit and the Spanish language because half this country will be speaking Spanish in 50 years or so and it will be important to speak Spanish in order to adapt to that clientele.

[jaybeat]

101. It depends upon the school and the student

I went to a small liberal arts college. Many fellow students were very "career oriented" and have become lawyers, doctors, scientists, professors, etc. Most of us, however, bought into the idea that "an education in the liberal arts and sciences prepares you for a lifetime of learning." You learn how to learn, rather than a fixed set of facts, skills or techniques required to perform a specific job function. It's worked out pretty good for us, too. I've done things I never would have dreamed I could do, that weren't even *invented* when I went to school. I had one career (on the back burner now, income-wise) that I picked up through an extra-curricular activity. I know a religion major who's a computer programmer. A dance major who manages development for an e-learning company. A German lit major who makes documentaries. An anthropology major who is a foreign correspondent for a major news service. Etc., etc. None of them had a *clue* they'd be doing anything like what they are doing now.

Two things made that possible then, and make it much harder now:

The first is, after we graduated, if we weren't going to graduate school, we couldn't really get work for much more than minimum wage, or a little more. That was OK, because we could get by on it, while we figured out what we really wanted to do. (WTF does anyone really know when they are 21, anyway!) We could pick low-paying jobs that were at least a little related to where we thought we might want to take our careers, and pretty soon we were working our way up (or over, or sideways), because we could learn fast, knew how to manage time and workloads, prioritize, communicate, etc.

The second is that financial aid was more than just loans, so even folks like me (single public school-teacher mom) could graduate from an excellent private school with very little debt.

Now, of course, six-figure debts are the rule, even at state schools, and even without that debt, there's no way you can live at minimum wage while you "figure out" what you want to do. You're shackled to that ball and chain before you even toss your mortar board up in the air.

Unless, of course, you're rich to begin with. Then you just need to use money to make money, and if you don't know how, you can always hire someone who does, who needs to pay off *their* student loans. :banghead:

So now, instead of learning to learn, you learn to earn. And you don't learn how to apply yourself to any new challenge that comes along (not as well, anyway, because you were too busy learning skills you can sell ASAP), so you are much more vulnerable to downsizing, outsourcing or unfair labor practices kicking you out on your ass with few options and still that mountain of debt. So you are more vulnerable. You speak your mind less, take fewer risks, do what is asked instead of what's needed, etc., etc. And you're living in fear that the one thing you learned how to do might not be enough to pay back the "investment" it took to learn it in the first place.

Not only is the middle class less secure, but we're no longer as productive, innovative, "nimble" and pioneering as we used to think we were.

We can't afford to be.

[central scrutinizer]

16. At my school it is one of the most difficult majors

which may partly explain the numbers. I meet many students who want to be Computer Science majors but bail out after a short time because they can't get through the math required: three terms of calculus, three terms of discrete math, three terms of physics, then upper division electives in math and that doesn't even count any of the actual computer science classes.

[trogdor]

60. Physics?

Damn. What school is that? I went to SUNY IT Utica/Rome, and I didn't need all of that.

[NeoConsSuck]

69. Another graduate of Suny IT Utica/Rome!!

I graduated in 1997! Great school!

[bleedingheart]

17. My nephew is graduating in CS this fall from CMU

and he has offers in the pipeline...but he is graduating from a well known school and he is very smart (Dean's list..etc)...

However..a number of his classmates expected that they would be making 6 figures a year and some are finding out that even CMU graduates aren't going to make that kind of moola unless they are truly geniuses or unless they go to work in an area where 100K a year is just enough to live on based on the local economy...

One fellow lost his job offer with a well known company when he told them he wanted more money...


My husband works in computer science. He thinks this trend will result in a lot of folks like him becoming more valuable as people realize how outsourcing isn't the panacea it was proposed to be...in fact he finds that most folks have to rework stuff that was "outsourced"

My husband has a degree in software engineering and works in many different languages and manages software development and design....he works very long hours and is well paid.

[nick303]

77. Is there anywhere in the US (on Earth??)..

.. where 100K a year is just enough to live on?

[bleedingheart]

80. In some places 100K a year is just enough to live a "middle class"

lifestyle..in fact it is barely enough.

Try living in any of the big cities of this nation..NYC, LA..etc...where even a 1 bedroom apt can cost thousands of dollars a month in rent.
My cousin worked for a brokerage firm in NYC. She thought the salary (a bit over $100K) was a fortune...until she moved there and found she didn't have much left after rent, transportation costs, dry cleaning (she had to dress well for the position)...etc

The job offer the one kid lost was for a position in San Francisco...where living expenses are much higher than here in Pittsburgh...

[nick303]

81. I live in Manhattan and..

I would be a bit skeptical about anyone who claims you need 100K out of school to be considered middle class, even here. I certainly wouldn't hire them as my financial advisor. I can tell you dry cleaning doesn't run more than $200 a month and most employers will get you a tax-free unlimited Metrocard for $78 a month. If someone feels inclined to spend money on luxuries like owning a car here, $400 VIP bottle service, or $3000 a month on living in a white glove apartment building, that exceeds what I'd call middle class.

The only kids I know who make 100K+ the first year are investment bankers (100 hour work-weeks), and most traders can do that within two years if they're any good. I make a decent salary but it definitely isn't six figures, and I'm able to sock away over 2000 a month in savings (not even including my 401K).

[FormerDem06]

94. Are you rent controlled? Or just starting out?

I'm just curious.

[nick303]

104. Answers: No, Yes

I am not rent controlled. I actually wouldn't even know how to apply for rent control, but I definitely wouldn't qualify.

I'd consider myself still starting out. I'm a year out of (undergrad) school.

[MindPilot]

19. IT is no longer the exciting cutting-edge field it once was

I've been in IT for 15 years and it is now a soul-crushing drudgery of days filled with lazy ignorant users, even lazier and more ignorant managers, and a corporate culture that believes networks are self-maintaining.

Although my business card says "Senior Network Analyst", my real job function is technolackey.

[mcscajun]

20. I predicted this some time ago, No surprise, yet it IS disturbing.

Five years ago, I told parents of children thinking about to college to pick ANYthing other than IT, unless they wanted to go into the hardware side; that at least was not shrinking quite so much, although it was being outsourced domestically, some of that has already reversed, and hardware at least is a hands-on situation. When my own job was shipped to India three and a half-years ago, I was still saying it. I'm still skeptical, but not so sure of my stance anymore. Did I, along with thousands of my like-minded colleagues, contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy?

When I started saying it five years back, I saw the domino effect of moving some of highest-paying jobs and many lower down the skill set to India and other countries; if you don't let our people gain the bottom-up experience, you'll never build the advanced skill sets needed here. Gutting the IT workforce wasn't something you could do quietly or secretly, and people talk to people. For the short-term, certainly, and perhaps for even the intermediate term, IT was not going to be something you'd want your son or daughter to risk their futures on. Long-term, though, we must have a base of home-grown programmers, analysts, and database administrators, or we'll have no one to review the work done overseas, no one with the skills and experience to manage IT shops here in the years ahead, and the process will escalate.

Yet the basic concerns remain: the return on investment is uncertain, the prospects not yet bright, and there's hardly a corporation out there you truly trust. The whole situation is disturbing, yet I have no answers.

As for me, I'm done with IT. Not entirely by choice, but by circumstances. I can no longer compete in the field, when kids here coming right out of college know more than I do and will work for half of what I made, when overseas workers know more than I do and will work for 1/3 to 1/4 of what I did, no amount of experience or education/retraining can make me competitive. And the woods are full of former IT workers peddling themselves as consultants, and looking for management positions. The field is glutted on the top end, and dying on the vine at the bottom. This is all I foresaw, unfortunately. As I say, I have no answers.

[KaptBunnyPants]

24. I was a CSE student for about a year and a half...

Then I realized there would be no jobs waiting for me at the end of the road and switched over to one of the more employable engineering programs. There's just no way I'm gonna bust my ass for 4 years and end up with a completely unmarketable skillset.

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

25. Time for Unionizing IT employees

If a company ships programming jobs overseas, the network guys refuse to keep the wires up.

Unfortunately, in this environment, HB1 visas would flow like water and the network guys would be replaced as well. Long live the corporations, sieg heil for profits.

[mopinko]

28. no mention of foreign students on visas

is this where the drop is?

[puffthemagicdragon]

30. Racket is right and they should warn them...

Schools should rightly be warning these students of the difficulties ahead of them before they choose this degree. I know two IT people that were flying high - they graduated in 98 from college in IT and comp sci and were immediately hired and had several offers. They started out at 80K, since then one of them is managing the shoe department at Nordstroms and the other is back in school because their jobs are not there anymore. over the last couple years I have pondered what to add to my college degree to get a better job and Comp Sci crossed my mind but I was pretty scared of it. Now I am back in school for healthcare - they cant outsource Nurses. I hope that parents are not encouraging their children to go for these jobs that can possibly be outsourced. Both my partner and I are focussing on careers that absolutely cannot ever be outsourced.

[raccoon]

34. Colleges, universities, community colleges, they'll all lie

about job prospects in different areas of study. Even if they know the job market is tight as a drum, they'll tell you things such as if you're willing to relocate, you can find a job without too much difficulty.

Why? It's in their interest for you to give them your money and take their classes. If you get out of school and can't find a job, that's your problem, not theirs. But if their enrollment goes way way down, then some of them might lose their jobs.

It's like asking the barber if you need a haircut.

[Odin2005]

40. Exactly.

Because of the decline of manufacturing in this country there are many people going to college that wouldn't of had to 30 years ago. There is a reason a degree in many of the Humanities has gotten the "do you want fries with that" label.

[revkat]

66. heath care outsourcing

Ever hear of "medical tourism?" They may not be able to outsource nurses, but patients are being sent off-shore for cheaper treatment.

[BlueJackal]

31. It's a circle of blood

Did anybody else read the reader responses at the bottom of the article. I found this excerpt particularlly eye-opening:

"Extensive research has been done on this topic, most notably by professor Norm Matloff of UC Santa Barbara (google him). I have been a computer consultant for 20 years and I have seen the following scenario played out over and over again: Business interests, including the 2 consulting firms mentioned in this article, begin by claiming there is a shortage of IT/engineer workers in this country. They then lobby (payoff) congress to pass laws (massive guest worker programs, H1B, L1) that flood our country with cheap labor from over seas. These workers come to our shores with the hope of gaining the almighty green card and will do anything to stay here. They are payed less (see Matloff) and they live in fear that they will be deported if their "corporate masters" decide to end their employment. What is ironic about this whole scenario is that many of these temp workers are fired just before the green card is offered and have to self deport by law. Then guess what happens? You got it. The shortage shouters scream even louder that they need fresh cheap blood to keep their sweat shops going. See the circle???

Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 7:06 am"


Typical corporate asshats. They pretend there's a shortage of labor but what they don't say is that they have green-card labor on the ready that comes here every single week.

Besides, who the fuck wants to go to school for 10 years just to get a doctorate and a consulting business when by the time you're out of fucking college you've accrued close to a quarter-million in loan debt? It's like being an indentured slave for the best years of your life.

And then there's the issue of children who grow up quickly and start begging for a portion of your check, for me at least, I'll have to take a rain check on that and say I don't think so.

The problem being you won't be "free and happy and able to live your life" until you're at least in your late 30s -- just at the fine ripe age when your young body starts to break down and all the things you dreamed about in high school: travelling, backpacking, camping, running marathons, weight lifting, etc. all become extremely hard to do.(I know 35 year olds with arthritis)

Sorry, but I'd rather have a life by the time I'm in my late 20s before I'm too old to enjoy it and the middle-age blues begin to kick in. What's the point in having shitloads of money if you're too old to enjoy it? Sorry, but I don't know too many babes who like to cruise the beach looking for 40-50 year old men to pick up except maybe to gold-dig. I think I'll take my life while I still have it.

[EnviroBat]

35. I agree with you 100%

I'm in the industry and I've worked with many people from India. One I was working with recently was let go before the contract was up, no explanation, no warning, just see ya ," tomorrow is your last day." The poor guy had just signed a lease and everything. My career field is saturated with people from India. I don't know if their education system is different than ours, but more often than not I've seen them unable to accomplish the simplest of tasks on a computer when they claim to hold a CIS degree, maybe they were nervous under pressure. What I really can't figure out is why they would be so eager to get a tech degree in India and rush over here? They leave their families and friends behind often for years at a time. It's seems really sad. The recruiting companies, (body shops as we call them), snatch them up for short-term contracts and send them all over the place. Work for 6 months in Ohio, the off to Texas for another 6 month stint. I guess I've been lucky though, I make around 70k and I don't even have a college degree. I'll be getting out of the computer thing soon. Life is too short to do this every day...

[BlueJackal]

43. Tell me about it envirobat

A friend of my parent's out in Colorado is in his 40s right now and is the "outsourcing administrator" for his tech company. He's got a computer engineering degree and he's worked his way up in the company to where he's typically insulated from outsourcing. But he told that his entire company has gone to hell since the dotcom bust. The old man who owned it died and the new "venture capitalists" who bought it have outsourcing fever. He's actually went from a programming job where he actually did what he was trained to do in college just 5 years ago to where now he does absolutely NO computer engineering but rather negotiates buyouts from the more seasoned employees and helps terminate those his bosses tell him to axe.

Here's the reverse side of the coin though: he's responsible for *training and placing* the replacement Indian workers. He's had to go over there several times and he tells me there's close to no oversight as the Indian replacement workers are basically contractors although they are still technically employees of the company.(how the fuck can you enforce company discipline when there's nobody within 6000 miles of you?) He got really, really nervous when I asked him if he's afraid if they'll outsource him as well(imagine having to train your replacement, I'd give them the bird and walk out) and he says they have no plans to as of yet but the tone in his voice showed me he was very scared of the possibility. He told me the Indian workers are necessarily "harder working" than American workers and that he finds the same type of work attitude among Indians as among Americans.(you have the hard workers and then you have the lazies)

But the problem is that simply companies want to make more money(or the owners do) and by doing so they're cutting costs by outsourcing the labor. I remember reading the other month about these two older machinists who had invented some sort of a garage-door opener gizmo and after approaching several American manufacturers for price checks on mass manufacturing - and they only did this simply because they were union workers themselves and patriotic - they soon found themselves outsourcing to China because it cost them roughly a tenth of what their American competitors demanded. How can you beat that? Those same machinists the article pointed out, are now multi-millionaires. Fucking sad but it seems eventually all of our hard manufacturing will be outsourced.

[AJ9000]

58. "...they soon found themselves outsourcing to China...

because it cost them roughly a tenth of what their American competitors demanded."

That is in part b/c the workers in China are slaves pratically speaking, with few rights.

It seems all western civilizations are regressing in a number of ways.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

61. The bus I usually take to the YWCA to swim

is always full of young Indians, with the male-female ratio being about 90-10.

Since the bus's ultimate destination is downtown, I have to wonder whether some company has hired all of them and put them up in an apartment complex farther out on the busline.

[jmowreader]

71. CIS is a fucking joke. You know it is.

The Computer Information Systems degree is a four-year degree in Microsoft Office, with a little Visual Basic thrown in because that's the scripting language in Office. Maybe some Visual C++ if you go to a REALLY progressive school. (Campbell University in NC, which is North Carolina's Liberty University except that Campbell's accredted, doesn't offer C++ in its CIS curriculum.)

No one should ever get a CIS degree. You can get to the same place in half the time by going to a community college.

[nick303]

78. It depends..

A lot of different colleges call a lot of different things "CIS" or "IS". I graduated with a degree in IS and I had pretty decent exposure to C++, Java, VB, and HTML. I must admit though that there was more of a focus on data models and business flows than hardcore programming, and the curriculum was generally not as mathematically rigorous as CS. Things have turned out pretty well in my first year or so out of school.

[Pavulon]

84. Yep

Logic, data modeling, and applying syntax to a logical model...

[Moochy]

110. Hey Norm Matloff!

I had him in college, when he was at UC Davis!!

small world!

[electron_blue]

36. People are confusing true computer science degrees with computer applicati

applications degrees. At my university, computer applications programs are housed in the college of business and are more of a network administrator/IT/database management background. Comp sci is called "computer engineering" and taught in the sci/eng college. There's a big difference between the two, esp in the math and physics coursework required (or not required in the case of the business computer degree).

[samsingh]

39. it's still difficult to know where the IT industry is going.

[boxx]

48. You forget about government jobs.

I have a MSCS degree with a security clearance and I work for a defense contractor. You forget that there is no way these jobs can be off shored or even given to non US nationals. One can look at it two ways also, we're making products that help protect our troops in the war zone (my view), or that we're making products to kill people. That is open to debate based upon one's own belief system. The fact remains that as technology advances there will only be more demand for CS majors in the DOD area.

I also worked my way through two degrees to get where I am as I too didn't have daddy's money to pay for my education. What I did was be cautious about where to begin my career. I avoided the dot-com industry and decided that working for the DOD or defense suppliers is more secure for the reasons cited above.

Don't slam a profession based on the latest headlines, there is more to the story than outsourcing and foreign visas. The high salaries paid by government contractors is also a testament to the fact that demand is much higher than supply.

[Lars39]

54. What on earth makes you think they wouldn't ?

All you have to do is look at port security and realize cronyism and the almighty dollar can overrule national security.

[boxx]

73. Can you imagine...

the US out sourcing or hiring foreign nationals to work on our latest weapons systems? Regardless of which party is in control, this would not fly. I'm the most staunch Democrat there is, but the policies that the defense contractors MUST follow will not allow this to happen. There are laws against this that would put the biggest contractors like L-M, Boeing, Northrup, etc. out of business for violating these laws. During the first Gulf War, a British company named Churchill Machine Products was put out of business for supplying parts to Saddam. Haven't you read what happened to Boeing just for manipulating the refueling jet program and stealing technology from Lockheed? These are transgressions against American companies by American companies. My company will not even allow a foreign national into a building that has secure areas. I don't mean un-escorted, I mean not at all. Knock the career all you want, but I'll gladly sit back advancing our military technologies while making $150,000 per year. Just because "*" won't help our troops doesn't mean other Americans won't do all they can to get the job done.

[cap]

115. I can imagine outsourcing our weapons system to India very well...

I worked on a system that was installed on the Army's major Internet system... Yuppers... We had H1B Indians working right in the Pentagon doing the installs right on that Internet system. If you look at the job requirements, they have removed the mandatory US citizenship for defense contracting. Also, if you work directly for DOD they can privatize your function and send it to, guess where, India! They have also signed a DOD directive that permits "closer cooperation with the Indian military" aka, we can outsource computer skills to India.

Even NSA...The NSA people are pissed.

These people in the Pentagon look at India the way that the British Raj did. They had their sepoys and never lost wink of sleep over national security.

Who'd a thunk it.

[w4rma]

72. The Bush administration outsourced part of the IRS's accounting to India.

Or they were trying really hard to outsource the IRS's books to India.

That is major financial information about Americans being sent to another country where it is easily spied on by that country (or yet another country/competitor).

[varun]

57. I am an engineering professor

and there has been more than a 150% increase in our engineering / computer science enrolment.

-They are all FOREIGN (mostly from India) students.

[ramapo]

62. Not many Americans in the field

I've worked in this field for 25+ years. The vast majority of programmers and system/storage administrators are foreign born. Most are foreign educated. Many are (were) here on H1B visas.

Employers require experience. There are few companies that will take a junior programmer. All that work is outsourced/offshored. While some might call that a McJob, I call it getting the mandatory experience so that one might move on to analysis and design positions.

The whole math/science emphasis in our schools is a joke.

Americans are getting screwed while at the same time screwing themselves.

[Yavin4]

70. The Future of IT is in Being a Hybrid

The high paying jobs will be the ones that combine IT skills with other skills into new professions. Think accounting and IT. Financial Analyst and IT. Law and IT. etc. For instance, a lawyer that can develop an application that can scan through millions of pages of text will be better able to service his/her clients than the lawyer that has to read through millions of pages of text.

Big, do-everything applications can and will be outsourced. Smaller, more effective, and customed applications just for a specific industry or task will be the ones in demand. The key is that ITers will need to develop more non-IT skills.

[dethl]

79. I am a CS Major - and I'm staying one

Anyone these days who are going to be Computer Science majors usually do so with the knowledge of what they're going to go into. Sure IT and other easy computer-related jobs are being outsourced but you can't outsource security or network adminstration jobs. Anything involving the government requires a US citizen - and the government is always needing more people to fill those jobs (recently at a job fair on campus the NSA was recruiting comp sci/comp security VERY heavily).

[ChromeFoundry]

82. Why would anyone entering college go into IT...

...in this current day?

I am speaking on this topic with 20 years of experience in nearly all disciplines of IT; Electronics Engineering (component level repair), Network Design and Security, C/S Application Programming in C, C++, VB, .NET, C# (and others), Web App Design, Legacy Integration, Database Design and Performance Tuning, ETL, Infrastructure Design and Implementation in MS & Open Source environments, etc...

Experience teaches us to be flexible and all too often reminds us that no one person has the answer to everything. This environment has technology that changes at a pace that exceeds any other industry. Classroom experience can be looked at as a conditioning period for the discipline of constant study and research you will endure until you retire, face lay-off, or get fed up and quit!

Now, take a look through your local ads. Gone are the days of 3-5 yrs experience at six-figures. Now are the days of... you better be a master at everything with 3 years experience and willing to work 65-70 hour weeks at a salary of 45-55K/yr. For those of you that do not understand this field... this person does not exist on any continent on this planet. If they claim they are that person, they are full of shit and you are about to hire a nightmare.

I have worked in the areas of Federal Government, Financial Industry, Legal, Manufacturing and also in Consulting for many many years. With all this experience, one would expect that I would feel somewhat safe in a position. I have never had to deal with a lay-off, fired, etc... I've never been without work, and I have made a decent living at it, mostly because I enjoy the type of work and it satisfies my desire for knowledge. But the simple fact is that in this industry there is no guarantee that your job will be there tomorrow- NONE WHAT-SO-EVER!

Sure, a generalist has a much better chance of retaining a job, and peppered with specialties offers even more job security. But always remember that if someone higher up views your salary as too high, or that you are becoming to vital to the liability of the company, you will be asked to retrain one or more people on what you know to ensure the company has a fallback plan in the event of your demise. This also allows the company to bring in lesser talent to be trained for your obsolescence. Chances are that you will be training someone who's first language is not the same as yours. This is why consulting is a far safer bet for your career future. The hours may suck-ass, but they sure beat counting the hours until next Sunday's job ads come out.

Now companies have a new tactic. Many of the ads you will see in the newspaper you will not get a response from, even if you are the ideal candidate and are willing to work less than you are making now... why? because these are positions that are currently filled by H1-B employees and by law the sponsoring company must make an attempt at hiring a citizen on an annual basis. Oh, I'm sure the goddamn freepers are gonna try and call me on that one, saying that that is bullshit. But the fact is; I have worked at 3 companies that have done this. How do I know? Because my managers had me write up the job requirements in terms that no one with less than 10 years experience could ever have. This fell under my "other duties as assigned" clause of my job description. If they get a resume from a good match to the requirements.. those are quickly 'lost'.

I would not recommend this career for anyone entering their college years. Seek out a career path that will be a more fulfilling; one that gives you rewards and respect for your ideas, ingenuity and efforts.

[OhioChick]

83. Good post. n/t

[Name removed]

86. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cap]

116. Not so...

I've been in the Biz for over 20 years and my skill sets are Java, J2EE, Oracle... Learned Java in 1996 right when it was hot off the press -- aka just released from sun. Did OO since the mid-80's... Yup... Longer than most programmers in the biz have been alive. There are lots more like me. Most arent getting hired because companies want to crush salary ranges and we just aren't that f''n crazy about working 80 hour weeks as our wages go down.

We also remember when things were different: no rank and yank, no summary executions (aka being walked out the door), management accountability (no blaming a programmer when the problem was really systemic process problem) and most of all, we are vocal about it. That's why we arent working.

A manager knows we could take his job and that's what he's scared of. I spend most of my time people pleasing and acting like really stupid things that fail are stuff that I can agree with so I dont piss off co workers who definitely dont want to be mentored. I dont worry about it until it affects me. That's how I keep my job.

[NotGivingUp]

105. i've heard this before from a very reliable source

[treestar]

85. Probably from not letting aliens enter the country

They could be terrorists, after all.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

87. I do know that a lot of foreign students are no longer even trying

to enter U.S. universities, due to the over-zealous security regulations--and America's increasingly lousy reputation around the world.

[leftofthedial]

92. "fastest-growing"????

I haven't found a job in the field for going on three years now.

[tedzbear]

95. "Unqualified Applicants" is a ruse.

The big software computer corporations want to import immigrants so they can pay them a lot less than "qualified" American software workers would want.

What these companies mean when they say they "can't find enough qualified employees" is that they can't find enough qualified American students that will be willing to work for what they can pay these immigrants. They will save $millions$ hiring immigrants that get their degrees in foreign countries and are willing to come to America to work for a lot less then Americans.

I read this in Business Week.

[high density]

99. Nobody wants entry-level hires

I went through this for a couple years after I graduated with a CS degree. Everybody wants experienced help but none of these corporations want to invest the time and money to bring young grads into the fold. All of this lower level work seems to be going over to India, leaving just a few jobs here for those with more experience to manage the Indians and lead the probject.

[retread]

97. I have a BS in Computer Science. It is NOT an applications curriculum. You

need 3 semesters of Calculus, 3 semesters of Physics(the one that uses Calculus). A year of Statistics for Science Majors(the more rigorous one),a year of Discrete Math(in fact you earn a minor in mathematics when you major in CS), 3 semesters of foreign language, a ton of Computer Science classes, all heavy on theory.

Computer Science is a rigorous major.

[high density]

98. Does anybody actually use all this math?

I got a CS degree a few years ago and I'm very early in my career, but I have not found any use for all of the math I took. I suppose those in the graphic/3D industry probably use it, but for general applications I just don't see what the purpose for it was. Perhaps to weed out people to take a different major? I dunno... The statistics and calculus have pretty much evaporated from my head already, since I haven't used either of them since I left school. At least I didn't have a foreign language requirement, though I much rather would have been learning German or French instead of some of this other crap that I was more-or-less forced to waste my time on (e.g. Western Civ or Geology.)

I'm not surprised to see the number of new CS students way down... In fact this is probably a good thing since there's no sense to spend thousands on an education and then end up in such a horrible job situation at the end of it.

[Moochy]

109. No, not unless you are going to teach CS

My major program for my BS:CS came from the Mathematics Department originally so it was so heavy on math.

Fun? not so much. Useful? I found that the discrete mathematics has been the most helpful. Beyond that, alot of annoying math that I've mostly forgotten.

If however my specialty were computer vision or something that requires massive cpu iterations and transformations etc. then an undergraduate degree is not sufficient usually and you have to get a masters or PHd to even be considered for a job in that sub-field.

[cap]

117. what they were trying to teach you

with the math: they were teaching you abstract reasoning....which is the foundation for constructing reusable frameworks and architecting systems. I'd take some one with a little bit more background in math than a little bit more knowledge of the latest language... It's easy to learn the latest language...

with Western Civ... they were trying to give you some understanding of the basis of this country and how to deal with globalization

[TrogL]

103. We had some University-trained Computer graduates apply here

We turned them down. They were absolutely clueless. Yes, they could code a sorting algorithm to beat the band, but we don't need that - the OS supplies a perfectly good one. We need someone who understands how computers are used in business.

[Rex]

107. After teaching in a public school, I can see why.

nt

[techtrainer]

108. The computer industry is moving too fast for many universities

People who want to break into high paying computer jobs have the option of going to local technical schools at far less expense and much less time.

By the time universities get their computer science curriculum together it is often obsolete or irrelevant.

[minnesota_liberal]

112. After 20 years of coding, I expect to be laid-off any time

It wouldn't be hard to find something more interesting, but the problem is finding a gig that pays the bills.

[Ellen Forradalom]

118. Because you enjoy it?

There's still a living to be made for the dedicated.