<p>It seems like everywhere I look, computer science is the "hot" degree to get into. I am good at math and love computers so naturally I am looking into a BSCS, but I'm getting worried that the field will become saturated by the time I graduate, therefore lowering my starting salary (not to mention the likelihood of getting a job).</p>
<p>However, my end goal is to end up in business/project management. Is CS a good bachelors to get before an MBA? or would I be better off majoring in something like engineering, accounting, or economics? I am willing to work hard and I feel I am capable of accomplishing my goal of getting an MBA eventually, but just in case that doesn't happen, I'd like a bachelors degree that can get me a fairly decent job with room to move up.</p>
<p>Computer science has a pretty high barrier to entry due to the math involved, the time commitment necessary, and just the general difficulty of the degree combined with the fact that, for many, the subject matter won’t be too appealing once they actually start taking the classes. So even though it may be a “hot” major, you shoudn’t worry too much about too many students actually completing the degree program with high marks. </p>
<p>I saw the same principle in my accounting courses I took last year. Not that accounting is difficult, it’s painfully easy, which might be part of the problem. However, there were people in those classes that clearly had no business being accountants or anything close to it. They were there because they read an article online or heard from somebody they know how “hot” accounting was, and how it was a guaranteed good job and such. However, once these people actually started getting into the nitty gritty of the coursework, many of them ended up either withdrawing, failing, or receiving low grades due to the fact that the coursework is almost unbearable unless you have the right personality for accounting. Even many of those who received A’s in the course purely out of the desire to keep a high GPA, like me, were forever turned off to accounting by the brutal boredom that accompanied the coursework.</p>
<p>Remember, though, that the industry has its ups and downs, and is populated by a lot of small companies that can go bust relatively easily. This often means changing jobs relatively frequently, although getting a new job is not necessarily difficult most of the time if you are in an area with many companies. However, industry-wide crashes do occur (e.g. early 2000s tech bubble crash), which can result in long periods of futile job searching.</p>
<p>CS is also a field where technology changes rapidly; you have to be able to adapt to changing technologies. A good CS education will help you adapt – you are learning CS concepts that will help you adapt, not merely learning programming in the language of the day (and ideally, your CS education will include programming in several languages, since the different languages emphasize different things and have different capabilities).</p>
<p>The number of CS majors did drop during and after the early 2000s tech bubble crash, which may be why the supply is relatively low and pay levels and employment have been holding up in the current downturn. It also looked like the student chasing the “hot” field went into civil engineering in 2005, only to graduate into the real estate / construction crash in 2009.</p>
<p>As far as getting an MBA goes, any undergraduate major that leads to good job and career prospects at the bachelor’s level is good, because your work experience is important in MBA school admissions (and some companies subsidize your MBA school costs). You may want to take a few economics, finance, management, and/or marketing courses as electives as an undergraduate, in order to see if you would really like the types of things that you will learn later if you go to MBA school.</p>