<p>Stanford</a> Daily | NEWcs106a04 reports that enrollment for Stanford's CS 106A in 2011-2012 totaled 1,523 for the entire academic year. CS 106A is the introductory CS course for CS majors.</p>
<p>However, Stanford</a> University: Common Data Set 2012-2013 reports 8.04% of 1,715 bachelor's degrees in CS, or about 138 bachelor's degrees in CS for the class of 2012. That implies significant attrition from the 814 students who took CS 106A during the 2008-2009 academic year.</p>
<p>While a sizable chunk may be due to inadequate preparation or time towards studying/doing the work in the course, there may be other factors.</p>
<p>They include finding the “nerdier than thou” competitive oneupsmanship tiring, finding out one doesn’t have the desire to spend 4+ hours at a stretch to write up and debug a programming assignment, the mostly solitary nature of programming itself* may be a serious turnoff for those who are social butterflies, etc. </p>
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<li>Am talking IRL…virtual communities/spaces don’t really count for those inclined to being social butterflies from what I’ve seen.</li>
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<p>Ummm…my son met his now-spouse in the computer lab. He is rather social these days; he attributes it directly to his CS work. It cracked open his shell, got him teaching and mentoring in HS and college, and he now does tech presentations to programmer types all over SV. He spends many hours programming, too, but has found a happy medium that works rather well for him. Also spends a couple of nights a week doing social dance.</p>
<p>I would anticipate that an intro CS course for would-be majors is, by necessity, a weeder course. Stanford doesn’t seriously expect 1,000 CS majors! In addition, I am sure there are a number of folks (like my S) who took a number of CS courses but chose not to major in it.</p>
<p>Obviously, some students take the course with no intention of majoring in CS. But it is not clear whether those who eventually major in something else are in that category, or who were considering CS when they took the course.</p>
<p>However, it is a good thing that students in many majors have some knowledge of computing.</p>
Taking the non-accelerated version of an intro computer science course (no programming background required) has little to do with being a CS major, just as I wouldn’t assume that most students who take AP Computer Science A in HS want to be a CS major. The course is required for many majors besides computer science. For example, I took CS106X (I took the accelerated version instead of 106A/106B) because it is a requirement for a degree in EE. Many students also take the class when not required for reasons such as wanting to learn basic programming or just because it sounds enjoyable. The Stanford wiki states, “CS106A is explicitly designed to appeal to humanists and social scientists as well as hard-core techies.” This was one of my favorite courses at Stanford. I particularly liked the final project, which was programming strategy for a chess game and competing our chess programs against each other in a tournament. My program won the tournament against the students, but I was unable to beat the professor’s chess program.</p>
<p>That said, the increase in number of students also fits with more students majoring in CS. CS became Stanford’s most popular major last year with more than 220 students declaring a major in CS that year. The increase is understandable with the an increasingly technical world and increased demand for CS majors in silicon valley. The average starting salary for Stanford grads with a BS in computer science is nearly $100k.</p>
You must not have been a CS student.
When you have to spend hours in the CS lab, well past midnight, with other people, not to mention the easy collaborating nature of the assignments, the environment for CS is as good if not better than other majors as far as social interaction is concerned.</li>
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<p>You don’t have to be a CS major, or even considering becoming a CS major, to take an intro CS class. My S is a senior poli sci major and is taking an intro CS class this semester, with no intention of majoring in CS.</p>
<p>As the others have said, I also agree that a fairly large percentage of the people who take intro CIS courses are not majoring in CIS. The intro course here is taken by a lot of students majoring in other types of engineering, Int’l relations, etc. Then, some people decide to get minors, and some are done with the intro course and decide to not take any more. Many take it for fun, or just to learn basics.</p>
<p>I would think that enrollment in Data Structures would be a much better indicator of how many students are thinking about being CS majors. The word is out: students who can program are more likely to get that summer job, and ALL fields (even English!) need programmers.</p>
<p>What is interesting about Stanford is that the 2011-2012 academic year enrollment in CS 106A is numerically equivalent to 89% of the frosh class that year. This is despite the fact that CS 106A is not generally required, and Stanford offers introductory CS courses for non-majors (CS 21N, 54N, 73N, 74N, 101, 105 this quarter).</p>
<p>You’d be mistaken. I took 3 courses for CS majors during my college years. Only the last course allowed some collaboration. </p>
<p>Moreover, the idea of spending hours in a computer lab doing assignments with other CS students as a social activity actually underscores the reason why many social butterfly personalities hated CS. It’s great for those who are passionate about computer programming and enjoy spending most/all their time with fellow hardcore engineering/CS folks. </p>
<p>The social butterfly personality types I’m talking about would find spending hours in a computer lab and prospects of only socializing with CS students/majors to be extremely limiting. </p>
<p>I don’t share that as I also have a passion for computer technology and can relate with the hardcore engineering/CS folks…even while understanding that their socialization preferences/interests are sometimes at wide variance with everyone else’s. </p>
<p>However, I prefer socializing with people with a wide variety of academic backgrounds/interests rather than sticking with one or a few related groups as most of the hardcore engineering/CS friends/folks I’ve known as friends, classmates, and colleagues tend to do IME…including some in my own family.</p>
<p>I can see why you had issues .
First you limited your “collaboration” in classes to the one that was allowed.
Second, you somehow think CS don’t do any extra-curr activities as compared to other majors ? No one stop you or anyone IF you get involved. I only pointed out the time spent in CS lab as the extra time you can get to know your classmates over and above what you probably could when you take other classes .</p>
<p>It wasn’t my choice. If I had collaborated with other classmates on programming assignments, that would have violated my college’s honor code. If you had read more carefully, I did specify what was allowed rather than what was my choice.</p>
<p>Was the restriction on collaboration more limiting than for other subjects? I.e. were students in the CS course allowed to ask other students questions as students in a math course typically could (obviously without copying each others’ assignments)? Were they allowed to discuss various topics from the course the way that students in a history or English course typically could (again obviously without copying each others’ assignments)?</p>
<p>I was a double major CS and a humanities back in the dark ages, and the amount of interaction between students was actually greater in CS because there were formally assigned large projects where group organization was key. You can’t design and implement a large software system without a lot of interaction between the parties. But there had BETTER not be any collaboration between students in writing major papers.</p>
<p>(Class discussion depended much more on the size and format of the class, not the subject. There wasn’t much discussion in large intro classes in any field, and plenty in all fields when the number of students in the class shrunk substantially.</p>
<p>Demand for CS majors has come and gone over time and the shelf-life of the degree seems shorter than most. No sure thing. Esp over long-term as older ones seem to be weeded out regularly and often viciously.</p>
The article at [Stanford</a> Daily | CS?s rising popularity poses pressing questions](<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/2013/06/04/cs-popularity-reaches-record-high/]Stanford”>CS's rising popularity poses pressing questions) mentions that 1817 students enrolled in 106A during the 2012-2013 academic year, which is 103% of the freshman class size. The article was published on June 4th 2013, so I expect they did not include summer quarter. Based on previous years, summer would increase the total to over 2000 students, which is ~115% of the freshman class size. Students with a strong programming background often take 106X instead of 106A, like I did, so this ~2000 students does not include a good portion of the techie/programmer/CS types.</p>
<p>The other intro classes you listed are not programming classes, and most sound really basic. For example, CS 105 is called “Intro to Computers” and has a prerequisite of “minimal math skills.” How many Stanford admits have minimal math skills? Students who have programming experience require consent of instructor to take the course. It’s not surprising to me that the overwhelmingly larger number favor 106a since it is a useful programming course for most grads leading to a skill that looks good on a resume, it is required for several majors (often require 106B/106X, and students take 106A as prerequisite), it’s a foundation/prerequisite necessary for a large number of other CS classes, CS is by far the most popular major and the major with the highest average salary among Stanford grads, and Mark Zuckerberg has been giving a guest lectures in CS106a in recent years (started at about the time that the enrollment rapidly increased).</p>
<p>I have seen you post something similar in another thread and besides being from UCB, I am not sure what your agenda is.</p>
<p>Stanford students aren’t required to declare a major.
Second of all many people take this course who have no interest in becoming CS majors since it is highly regarded, really interesting and very well taught. Look at the reviews for the course on courserank.
Third, there are a lot of people who take English courses but don’t become English majors - it isn’t an issue of attrition.</p>
<p>The agenda is just to point out something that may be interesting to people here – that CS has recently attracted a lot more student interest than it used to attract. It used to be that the biggest classes on many campuses were introductory courses in chemistry, biology, economics, psychology, etc. Would anyone have thought that introductory CS for CS majors is now the biggest class on some campus?</p>
<p>Stanford is not unique in this respect; the introductory CS course for CS majors at Berkeley has also become the largest course on campus with over 1,000 students (and another poster mentioned the situation at Harvard as well). However, Stanford seems to be the most extreme example where yearly enrollment in the course approaches or exceeds the size of the frosh class.</p>
<p>There might also be a caution for those students going into CS mainly for the job and career prospects. Who knows what the CS job market will be like in four years? Will the industry cool off at that time, just as the bulge of CS majors at many schools graduates? Think back in 1998-1999 when CS was hot – frosh CS majors then graduated into the tech bubble crash.</p>