<p>I've been seeing articles like this in the past few months.</p>
<p>Do you guys expect a huge influx of CS majors in the near future? It seems like there's already a huge upward trend. Half my Calc class is CS majors.</p>
<p>Didn't something like this happen with pharmacists? There was huge demand for pharmacists, they were making a ton of money and getting all kinds of signing bonuses, then everyone made a big deal about it and a handful of new pharmacy schools opened. This was like 6-7 years ago, now the job market for pharmacy grads is not nearly as good.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say this is dangerous, for two reasons.</p>
<p>The first reason is that this is what we all should be hoping happens in a free-market economy: where there is a demand, supply will emerge. In the end, this is good for everybody, even if it means that suppliers who were around when demand was high and supply was low have to settle for less money.</p>
<p>The second reason is that labor isn’t exactly a perfectly competitive market, and this is especially true in the software industry. I believe some credible people have estimated that the best programmers, software engineers and computer scientists (I imagine this is true of all academics - as in professors and researchers - as well) are several times more valuable than the worst… maybe by an order of magnitude or more. I don’t have any data, but my guess is that the these kinds of people are generally successful at most things they’d pursue. What I’m getting at is that people who are destined to end up in CS who are good at it will not be affected by an influx of people chasing the job market. I mean, if the job market’s good now, that’s not really affecting people who are already in school for CS, since they have a head start on people who might use this news to make a decision for the wrong reasons.</p>
<p>That being said, if you’re in CS and just in it for the money, odds are you should be worried in the first place.</p>
<p>I don’t think most people are in things just for the money. I mean, someone could be really interested in business but also interested in CS, and choose CS after they heard on CNN that CS job prospects are great. I don’t think you need some deeply held lifelong urge to study CS to become a good programmer who enjoys his job. I don’t think many people would pick a major they are totally uninterested in just because it pays well. </p>
<p>The concern isn’t the best economic outcome in the long run, but the potential short run volatility in the market. It’s the volatility that causes unemployment, recessions, etc. What happens in 4-5 years if there are twice as many CS grads than there were last year?</p>
<p>Naturally, that depends on how many CS grads there were last year, but generally, I’d agree that to expect salary offers to drop and unemployment to rise wouldn’t be outrageous. Of course, if enrollment doubled in any major next year, salaries would probably drop and and unemployment would probably rise. Also, I doubt that anything’s going to cause an influx that size…</p>
<p>The thing about studying CS to become a good programmer is actually not as clear-cut an issue as it may seem. Some things are easier to teach than others, and there are some things that most people are more or less the same at, but things like computer programming - maybe acting, sports, crime, etc. - aren’t necessarily among them. I can try to find references for this, but I think it’s a fairly widely acknowledged empirical finding.</p>
<p>My assumption is that the proportion of potential CS adept studying CS of their own volition and interests is higher - probably significantly higher - than the proportion of potential CS adept doing something unrelated (so as to target different employment)… then again, I have no way to back that up. In any event, I don’t see any real problem with the best students having virtually assured jobs (I imagine most 10x programmers get hired somewhere, unless they have serious problems that would keep anybody unemployed) and the runners-up having to compete for what’s left. I assume there aren’t enough potential CS adept to cover all the jobs there are, but that could be wrong.</p>
<p>Also, according to the BLS OOH, software engineers and programmers held about as many jobs as all engineers combined (in the last report… a new one’s coming out soon). If you can show me recent enrollment statistics from a college where there are as many CS grads as there are all engineering grads combined, the idea of doubling CS enrollment might seem more “dangerous”. Just as a sanity check, what are the numbers at Stanford? Looks like 5% CS/IT, 15% engineering. <a href=“http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2011.html#degrees[/url]”>http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cds/2011.html#degrees</a>… 2010/2011 look similar, it seems.</p>
<p>Berkeley, 2010:
<a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Major/Major.stm</a>
786 College of Engineering + Computer Science (College of Letters and Science) graduates
282 Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduates (appear mostly emphasizing computer science, but not all do)
88 Computer Science (College of Letters and Science) graduates
=> 42.3% of College of Engineering + Computer Science (College of Letters and Science) graduates are in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science + Computer Science (College of Letters and Science); however, this is an overestimate because some of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science graduates emphasized electrical engineering</p>
<p>For what it is worth, civil engineering was a very popular major around 2005, but has declined in popularity since then. Computer science was more popular in 2000 than it has been after the tech bubble crash.</p>
<p>As a computer science major from a top school and now working for one of the most highly paid tech company, I would say you need not to worry. The demand is now a lot higher than supply. Even though there are a lot of CS major, but there are very few qualified people who are actually good at it. CS is not something everyone can be good at.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is that computer science is offered at a lot of schools that don’t offer engineering. Most states only have one or two engineering schools but literally hundreds of other colleges, many or most of which offer CS.</p>
<p>I don’t know if I agree with your assumption. I actually never had any interest in CS until I took a class and realized programming was pretty fun (I’m not a CS major, though), I did well. I had very little experience with programming (messed around with HTML and edited scripts for Diablo 2 hacks in C), but I caught on very quickly and made an A. Other people struggled. My impression of them (one girl in particular got a C despite having a 4.0 prior to that) is that they’re the very hard-working average IQ type. Maybe CS difficulty is simply a function of IQ, while most other subjects in college are a function of work ethic? In Calculus, you don’t necessarily NEED to understand the concepts and why things work, but you can still be taught that the integral of x^2 is obtained by adding 1 to the exponent and dividing by the new exponent. In CS, you really have to understand why things work the way they do - there’s no way to break it down enough to make people understand it. I suspect a lot of smart people who never tried to program could be great at it and learn to like it. Some people don’t even know what a programming language is because they were never introduced to it.</p>
<p>I’d be interested to see national enrollment statistics by college major, but I don’t know whether that kind of data exists. I imagine well-known or large state universities make up a large percentage of CS graduates… or the most competitive ones, anyway, from a prestige and opportunities standpoint.</p>
<p>If IQ is what makes good programmers 10x better than average programmers, I suppose that’s not so surprising… naturally, I’d expect many people with high IQs to succeed in most of their endeavors, and not to be particularly affected by the kind of thing you’re talking about. The ones who want to do CS will probably not be affected very much by large numbers of less capable CS people entering the major, the ones who want to do something else will probably be confident enough not to switch for only economic reasons… competition will most likely increase for less-capable CS majors, and I do not view that as a particularly bad thing.</p>
<p>If the government made it so that wearing two wristwatches conferred a variety of tax benefits, while failure to do so was a crime punishable by a fine, I think it’s reasonable to assume demand for watches would increase. Furthermore, I don’t doubt new watch companies might flood the market if demand were sufficient. What I doubt is that these companies, for the most part, would be serious competitors to Rolex, or that Cadillac would suddenly stop making cars and start making watches.</p>
<p>This is sound economic theory here: if an industry is experiencing particularly high profit margins, where marginal cost is < marginal revenue, more competitors will enter the industry and bring down the profits for the total industry. If people get the perception that CS majors are getting particularly high salaries (profits in the form of return on investment in education - not just financial investment), more competitors (additional CS students) will enter the market. In the long run, this should result in the CS job market being in equilibrium. In the short run, (if) the profits are above equilibrium, there is the potential for volatility. The increased competition can bring the profits below equilibrium before balancing out, which could mean short-term unemployment and lower wages for CS grads IF the number of new CS students resulted in a higher supply of CS grads than the demand would be when the market is in equilibrium.</p>
<p>All that is assuming this hype results in a spike of CS grads. In the mid 2000s, CS enrollment was not particularly high (probably due to the 2001 bubble), which is why CS skills are in such high demand today. The opposite of what I am speculating could happen did happen in the 2000s which is why CS grads are doing so well lately. It makes sense that it would happen. Pretty much every school that offers CS is reporting increases in enrollment for the last 2-3 years. These students haven’t hit the job market yet, but they will soon enough and it should at least have some effect on the field. That is probably due to the recession and more people choosing tech degrees out of concern for the high levels of unemployment. Lately though, I feel like everywhere I look someone is encouraging people to major in CS. I’ve seen two articles about in the past month on CNN alone. This is exactly what happened with pharmacy school a few years back.</p>
<p>The software engineering field is expected to grow by 30-something% until 2018 (according to bls). Even if there is more interest in CS it seems like everyone will still be looking forward to a job fresh out of college.</p>
<p>Last time I checked the BLS OOH hadn’t been updated since 2008 - the middle of the recession, and shortly after a long run of low enrollment for CS majors. Since 2008 a lot has changed and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is inaccurate now. The same chart lists civil engineering as a big growth field, but after the housing crisis and subsequent recession, civil engineers are really hurting.</p>
<p>However, some schools’ CS offerings are very limited (e.g. consider Amherst, a very selective private school; its generally lower prestige neighbor, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, has a much stronger CS department). So not all of the CS departments that exist may be graduating students many with degrees in CS; they may just be offering CS courses for students looking for breadth or electives of interest.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cpst.org/STEM/STEM6_Report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cpst.org/STEM/STEM6_Report.pdf</a> shows trends in various majors from 1966 to 2004. CS greatly increased in popularity at the end of this time period, which ends before the tech bubble crash induced fall in popularity (remember that there is about a four year lag between freshmen entering college and graduating with a degree, so the crash of 2001 would start affecting 2005 graduate numbers).</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is how many CS major will really stay in the software engineering industry? To stay employed in SoftE, it requires a LOT to studying at home AFTER work. This includes buying new technical books for $40, $50 or $60 a pop and throwing them away 2-3 years later. This includes changing with the trends in technology. Just in my career I went from scientific programming to PowerBuilder development to data warehousing with Oracle/SQL Server to now cloud-computing.</p>
<p>No CS major worth their salt is going to be threatened by an influx of new people that are in it just for the money.</p>
<p>GLOBALTRAVELER: Pretty much any STEM job will require one to stay up to date with one’s field…CS/SoftE is no different. And arguably, CS majors have a lot more flexibility when shifting gears and learning different technologies.</p>
<p>The BLS OOH isn’t infallible, and the data are now literally as old as the BLS lets them get, but there are two observations: the software industry wasn’t hit as hard as engineering as a whole (if you include civil, etc); software was starting out having significantly higher growth projections than engineering, if I recall… a factor of 2 if you include programmers. Come to think of it, an influx of CS grads may simply mean more programming jobs go to CS grads than Physics/Math grads or precocious high-schoolers. Software has had to be desperate, and an influx of better-quality labor into the market might help everybody in the long run (in the short term, some people might get it in tge shorts, though).</p>
<p>Also, I think this bears repeating: labor markets, particularly the software labor market, are not guaranteed to be perfectly competitive. That means that an influx of new supply wouldn’t have the same impact on prices as it would in a perfectly competitive market. It’s essentially the difference between the market for cheeseburgers at restaurants and the market for salt (not quite perfect, but close, I believe; if not this, then maybe steel nails).</p>
<p>Thinking that a greater supply of qualified CS grads won’t reduce the market wage does not make economic sense. It doesn’t have to be a perfectly competitive market for economic principles to apply. If companies are struggling to fill CS positions right now, it makes sense that they would have to pay a higher wage to compete with other companies for CS grads. It also makes sense that they would pay a lower wage if they had to compete less. Filling slots with CS grads rather than math grads doesn’t change a thing. They are hiring the math grads because finding CS grads is difficult, and they are willing to spend a lot of money and time training these math grads. They wouldn’t be willing to spend this much if finding CS grads became easier.</p>
There are economic theories for plenty of different kinds of markets, not all of which are perfectly competitive. I have no sources for this, but based on my understanding, I believe that the labor market for CS might better be described by a kind of monopolistic, or imperfect, competition… check this [Monopolistic</a> competition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolistic_competition]Monopolistic”>Monopolistic competition - Wikipedia) . I’d say the software engineer labor market satisfies those points. We can check perfect competition… [Perfect</a> competition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition]Perfect”>Perfect competition - Wikipedia) . The requirements of infinite buyers and sellers, perfect information, zero transaction costs, and homogeneous products are tough to swallow. In such a market, while it is true that adding supply can only reduce prices, it is also true that the market can see inelastic demand in the short run (companies won’t pay good grads less just because there are more grads) and that firms in the market don’t typically adjust prices based on competitors’ changes, in the short run.</p>
<p>
What I’m saying is that there will always be companies competing for the best CS grads, and I don’t see an influx of students into CS substantially changing the supply of the best CS grads, for reason I stated earlier: I believe the best CS students are in it primarily for interest, not for job prospects, so news about better job prospects won’t have a significant impact on top talent. The part of that same talent that was destined to be in CS will probably not leave CS for the news, and the part of that talent that was initially inclined to do something else probably won’t leave either, because - as you and I seem to agree - whatever it is that makes some CS grads so much better than most others probably makes them successful at most of what they do. Students like that, in my experience, tend to follow passions, even when less idealistic people advise otherwise.</p>
<p>
I think it means a great deal. Let’s take your argument to the logical limit: with n CS jobs and 1 CS grad per year, under the simplified assumption that CS grads get CS jobs before non-CS grads, the number of CS grads would have to increase by a factor of n before anything substantially changed for pre-existing CS grads. Perhaps some of those n jobs never paid very well anyway; but if we’re counting those as CS jobs, they represent current wage information and their failure to change with increasing CS enrollment would be beside the point. Your argument seems to hinge on the assumption that a company would hire a non-CS grad for X and train him for Y, while the same company would hire a CS grad for X+Y. I just don’t find that realistic; odds are that the company would hire a CS grad for X if CS grads were available, and otherwise, they’d hire a non-CS grad for X and train him for Y. It’s imperfect information going the other way.</p>
<p>There are SO many programming jobs right now, especially in the social media/mobile market. Probably, in my universities sci/tech career fairs, 90% of the employers are looking for these kinds of engineers. A small influx is too little ,too late, to damage the job market. </p>
<p>I would not worry so much about the influx of these new programmers. I would worry more about the impending collapse of this mobile app and social media obsession that seems to be the latest fashion. It is an unsustainable business model, when Groupon is worth 1.3 billion. Not to mention that the makers of farmville, Xygna games, have revenues that are higher than ARM. While contributing nothing to society and just riding the social media craze.</p>
<p>Did you recently take a micro-economics course KamelAkbar? Those supply-demand relationships are good in theory (and often in practice). But, keep in mind that the total need for programmers isn’t static. Qualified programmers can create new products/services which fuel an increase in demand for more programmers. Take a simplified view of Facebook - a few qualified programmers created a new product which resulted in a tremendous increase in demand for more programmers at that company. As the new programmers came on they also created new features which required more CS people to implement and maintain the expanding system</p>
<p>There is also a huge unmet need for computer programming expertise (and data mining) in the field of health care. Even without a creative class of CS graduates the health industry will be able to absorb the extra CS graduates.</p>
<p>Finally, as Bill Gates once said “one good programmer is worth ten thousand mediocre programmers”. If you are one of the really good ones you will always be in demand and paid accordingly.</p>