The article raises some interesting points about how well colleges are able to meet the demand for the major. Also read the comments where many question the longterm viability of specializing in CS only to have your job outsourced in 20 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/technology/computer-science-courses-college.html
The choices that colleges and their CS departments have are:
To be fair, this was also a concern 20 years ago during the dotcom boom. Outsourcing still comes with plenty of issues that haven’t been solved (the discussion pf that could be another thread itself but let’s simplify for now). While I think people shouldn’t be blindly going into CS for the money, I don’t think people are going to see huge drastic changes anytime soon given the prevalence of technology and the benefits of local workforces.
Even in the apocalyptic scenario, it’s not like the skills learned from a CS degree such as problem-solving, data analysis, math, and technological savviness won’t be valued in other jobs.
I tend to agree that many specific areas of CS are “off-shore” proof for the immediate future. The cutting edge stuff (AI, quantum computing, data science) will stay in house. The cyber security stuff will likely not be outsourced depending on the company’s structure. The whole government sector that requires security clearance will never be outsourced.
Potential for outsourcing and age discrimination are not unique to computing jobs, but exist in all kinds of jobs.
Of course, predictions of what may happen decades in the future may not be too much better than wild guesses.
An important point the OP article raised is that getting into a CS program doesn’t automatically mean being able to register for the classes. I think it’s worth inquiring with target schools if they are having this problem of students not being able to register and if they have enough CS professors to cover the sections. The UT Austin CS program has a good reputation, but I’m sure this NYT article is somewhat of an embarrassment for them.
If outsourcing is an issue, go work in fields that are highly regulated.
One field that pops to my head is medical field. Too many rules and all to be outsourced. Well paying and historically had pretty much a guaranteed employment for life if you could get into medical school for most medical fields.
Another is government jobs like teaching (very outsource-proof and age discriminate-proof and has good pensions though the retention period is low due to the lower salary to reflect that in many parts of the country).
Otherwise, outsourcing and age discrimination is something you just have to accept.
Look at manufacturing. Just look at Detroit. Got outsourced.
As for age discrimination issue, that, I do agree, is a pretty big issue in software industry. It seems to be more of an issue than most other careers especially if you work in the East Bay area. It isn’t surprising because even CEOs like Mark Zuck publicly stated that younger workers are just better than older workers (apparently 32 and above is considered ‘old’ there from my limited experience unless you are someone famous. Quite frightening and I believe a detrimental perspective going forward). And the notion that age is seen as being out of fashion and becoming ‘outdated’ is endorsed in the industry isn’t helping. I mean Google gets routinely sued for age discrimination, race discrimination, etc. It’s so normal nowadays a year without a court case for Google in these cases is considered an abnormally.
But I think outside major tech hubs like East Bay, it isn’t much of a thing even in this industry.
Don’t take East Bay culture as the CS culture. Most of the software jobs don’t have that kind of cult like mindset (nothing wrong with the mindset. I’m fine with it myself but don’t be turned off by that. It’s really only a East Bay thing)
The problem highlighted by the NYT article is due in large part to the lack of awareness by the general public and media of what a CS college education is really about and what it is required. Most people still associate CS with programming skills which are really tertiary at top-tier CS schools/departments. Many (perhaps most?) students who are crowding intro CS classes these days are not really equipped to study CS as a major at these schools (the failure of Stanford’s CS+X program is just an example of this). These intro classes should really be incorporated into the general HS curriculum (perhaps via online courses if a HS doesn’t have the resources to teach them).
And event those that aren’t top tier. Programming and languages are freshman level stuff, I’d guess, just about anywhere.
Some medical jobs are being outsourced, such as radiology.
It’s ironic that software companies that consider themselves so “woke” to racial and ethnic discrimination have absolutely no problem with age discrimination.