How stable is a degree in comp sci, and how does it compare to something like civil engineering or business?
A degree sits on your bookshelf and is very stable. I will assume that you are asking how stable is the job market in these areas and how stable is it likely to be over the next few decades. These are very good questions.
Right now jobs are plentiful in computer science, civil engineering, and most engineering disciplines. Jobs have been plentiful in the US in computer science and most engineering disciplines since I graduated university in the 1970’s. There was a serious shortage of jobs in Canada in the mid 1970’s, and have been in some other countries as well.
What things are going to be like in 30 or 40 years is very difficult to guess, and impossible to know. There have been huge changes in the economy over the past 40 years and things could change as much again in the future.
I had a new septic system installed about a year ago due to the failure of the old system. A civil engineer needed to come out and plan where the new system would go in. This required someone else (a guy with a really big backhoe) to dig really big holes (“bury a car” sized holes) in various spots around the yard. The engineer then took a very close look at the holes and at the soil. All of this also required dealing with local health and conservation officials, and local vegetation had to be taken into account. This is not a job that could be moved to a remote location or moved out of the USA. I can’t imagine that building a bridge, or fixing one that is in danger of falling down, could be moved out the country either.
I tell this story frequently, but when I started college in 2004, the hot careers were finance/investment banking, real estate, and law. If you had asked if law or real estate was a stable career as a high school senior in 2003, most working adults would’ve said yes. A bunch of my classmates actually did go to law school in the 2005-2008 range, before the law market completely collapsed and the market became flooded with graduates.
And no one was anticipating the housing bubble bursting and the financial crisis in 2008. I have some friends who went to Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch right after they graduated and then got laid off. (In fact, Lehman Brothers promised $10 million to my undergraduate college in October 2007, a little under a year before they collapsed.)
But if you had asked the average adult what you could do with a computer science degree in 2003, people may have shrugged - or pointed to the dot-com bubble bursting in the late 1990s. (And like tech rebounded, it’s also entirely possible for law and/or real estate to rebound. In fact, in some markets - mine included - real estate has already rebounded.)
In other words…it’s hard to tell. Something could happen to the tech markets in the near future,* causing VCs to go shy and for start-up funding to dry up, contracting the market. Or something could happen politically that allows us to hire more talent at cheaper prices. Or a completely new field could be invented and become the new hotness.
*Actually, if you’re following the tech news lately, that “something” could be happening right now.
Life is about reinventing yourself as you go.