<p>Well, that’s nice to know: my son wants to major in computer science and also has strong interests in math and physics. He’ll probably get a combo CS/applied math degree and add a bunch of physics classes to it. I’m a little concerned that every other teenage male seems to want to major “in computers” these days. </p>
<p>But if jobs run tight, he could use the physics background to get a job in a government lab designing ever-bigger bombs – that’s an industry immune to outsourcing or budget cuts!</p>
<p>Actually, defense jobs have been outsourced for years, and to strange places. There is a famous military R&D center here that developed some pretty well known stuff. They have hired a good number of friends. My friends report the highest tech piece of equipment left in the buildings is the PC - not even a scope or multimeter - thanks to outsourcing.</p>
<p>Such outsourcing is often several times deep but the programming invariably ends up being done offshore.</p>
<p>Comp Sci these days is either a huge number of young kids pursuing a few hundred jobs a year at Microsoft, Apple, or Google, and the rest delegated to fixing .NET code bugs in someone else’s code. There’s ‘software engineering’ type jobs for embedded work but these are being outsourced in large numbers…</p>
<p>At Purdue, the Microsoft based Computer Tech curriculum has an incredible placement rate (contrary to popular belief, few Comp Sci schools teach the ‘good’ stuff businesses want). Computer Science teaches stuff that businesses often don’t want (Java, LISP, etc).</p>
<p>One can always make the distinction between IT and Comp Sci and Software Engineering, but the reality is a lot more muddled.</p>
<p>Seems to not be the case in many Silicon Valley computer companies.</p>
<p><a href=“contrary%20to%20popular%20belief,%20few%20Comp%20Sci%20schools%20teach%20the%20’good’%20stuff%20businesses%20want”>QUOTE=turbo93</a>. Computer Science teaches stuff that businesses often don’t want (Java, LISP, etc).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Computer science is not about specific programming languages like Java and LISP. Students in the subject, and good computer professionals, are expected to be able to quickly learn any programming language needed for whatever task needs to be done or whatever concept is to be learned.</p>
<p>Someone whose skill set is tied to a specific programming language is at much greater risk of having his/her job obsoleted.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is usually a big distinction between IT and the others. IT people are much more likely to be less technical “business” types who have more trouble adapting to new technologies or solving unusual problems.</p>
<p>I majored in Accounting from a low cost state school and for more than 30 years have been employed. My s is majoring in math and physics at a top liberal arts college. He will need many years of grad school to be employable. Is it worth it, not sure…</p>
<p>Well, the numbers speak for themselves in terms of outsourcing. Sure, the ‘cool’ stuff is done in Silicon Valley, but in reality, the back-breaking development is done offshore much of the time. I can think of a handful of well respected Silicon Valley companies that have tried to recruit me, and the song remains the same… Architect or Senior or Lead This Or That, blah blah, manage team of offshore programmers, blah, blah. I won’t mention names, but it’s not an isolated case. Likewise with many of our suppliers.</p>
<p>I agree that programming is all about concepts - However, trying to convince the software that parses Monster resumes that you know .NET and C# because it’s not that much different than Java would be a lost cause. Mrs. Turbo is a high flying IT consultant and in her field (data mining / data warehousing) if one does not have the right buzzwords, one is canon fodder in seconds. One of our computers is dedicated for her as use a test server to keep her claws sharp… </p>
<p>I will respectfully disagree about the last statement. I am good enough in IT to make a living in it if I wanted (Oracle, .NET, web/database development, and the like) and would not dream of ever believing it is easier than ‘Software Engineering’ (say, developing PC or Unix flavored software tools or embedded real time programming, which is what I’ve done for the last 27 years). The coding may be easier for IT if you’re using the same tools but in reality, you don’t. modern corporate IT uses lots of strange tools that make life easier (Informatica, Business Objects, SSRS, SSIS, … (glancing at Mrs. Turbo’s library next desk over). But modern IT has a lot more of a learning cliff, and far higher potential for being obsolete in a hurry. In contrast, Eclipse is Eclipse, Ubuntu is Ubuntu, and if I have to cry a bit because the customer wants real OpenGL versus OpenGL ES, well, that’s that.</p>
<p>This is a terrible metric. It’s akin to saying people should try to be professional football players, because it’s what the nation’s best football players go do. If someone is genuinely among the top 1% intelligence-wise they’ll probably be fine no matter what they study. For the lesser 99% the decision should be based on what their counterparts are most successful in, not what the elite are most successful in.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth I’ve always been told that engineering is good for the average person. It’s (relatively - compared to medicine and law) easy and you can go out an get a good job with an undergraduate degree. Getting a job in engineering is easier than getting a job in banking or consulting. It might not be the best choice for extraordinary people, but for average people I think it’s a good choice. </p>
<p>I also wanted to address some of the idiots in the thread:</p>
<p>Your major doesn’t make you rich! No major makes anyone rich! No degree makes anyone rich! People aren’t rich because they got engineering degrees! People aren’t rich because they got medical degrees! People aren’t rich because they got business degrees! People aren’t rich because they got law degrees!</p>
<p>I didn’t say that IT was easier (doing it well may be harder, but I have seen a lot of IT done not very well). However, it does appear that a lot of IT departments seem to accept a significantly lower standard of hiring, which may not be sufficient to handle the job well. As you say, some hire by buzzwords and certifications more than actual understanding of the concepts and ability to learn and adapt.</p>
<p>As far as the offshoring goes, it was a huge business fad in the early 2000s, which coincided with the tech bubble crash, making the job market very bad in the computer industry at the time. But companies soon figured out that if you go offshore for cost and cost alone, you get what your pay for or less. The cheap offshore outsourcing company is not where the IIT graduates are. Yes, it still happens quite a bit, but not so blindly as it used to be done.</p>
<p>UCBAlumnus, without going into details, let’s just say that my experiences as well as Mrs. Turbo’s as well as our suppliers and competitors strongly suggest that outsourcing is expanding - largely because that there are fewer jobs to go around to begin with in the US and that every subsequent growth largely comes from offshore.</p>
<p>There are even new acronyms and certifications pertaining to outsourcing - something called ITIL :-). My company (consumer electronics) had zero people working in Eastern Europe, India, or China in 2000. Now 9 of 10 software engineers works in these three locations. The track records of India and China have been less than stellar - far less in the case of India, just less for China - but we do complex stuff to begin with. </p>
<p>In Mrs. Turbo’s case, the amount of IT outsourcing that has been done in her company (pharmaceuticals) is even more mind-boggling, and has slowed down only because they have run out of people to outsource, even in core areas like chemistry and biostatistics. When you see departments go from 45 people to 6, one manager and 5 ITIL-certified ‘left behinds’, is there more to be said?</p>
<p>Similar pictures in our suppliers and competitors, incidentally. A few companies that have brought back some jobs are a drop in the bucket. In fact, due to 30% or more layoffs in both companies in the last 2-3 years, even if the top brass wanted to keep the work in the US, there would be nobody to do it (since there’s not enough people to do the work and management will not hire). In contrast, our German and Scandinavian divisions have cut very few people, and outsourced even fewer (usually to us :-))</p>
<p>Is anything safe from outsourcing? my answer is ‘I do not think so’. Medicine and nursing, maybe, since we’re well on the way to having made doctors the ‘ruling elite’…</p>
<p>Quite a few top students from our area who graduated from the public high school in the past 5 to 10 years have ended up enrolling in Teach for America or gotten teacher certification to work in public schools. I imagine that teaching cannot be outsourced, but that it could become increasingly difficult to motivate students who believe that their opportunities for ever achieving any modicum of economic security through hard work in school are diminishing to near zero, with little hope in sight.</p>
<p>Teaching is worse than outsourced - it’s vilified (thanks, instant speller :-)). Teachers and other non-outsourcable jobs are the ‘problem’ or so it goes.</p>
<p>An interesting comment on outsourcing. Its ironic that we outsource jobs to other countries, because America’s higher education programs are considered the best in the world. If you look around the world, there are no doubt great schools and places to get an education outside of the country. Yet, we’re viewed as having the best graduate education. To further the blow, we can’t find jobs for those people with our degrees within our own society?</p>
<p>As a second year college student, I’m curious about what the worth of my degree will be. In the current economy, it seems an education isn’t required. Most of the open jobs are low-end jobs, and people simply aren’t qualified for the jobs they are taking. You have people with lengthy CVs who are taking introductory positions. Those positions are looking for fresh college graduates, not for those with experience, or a masters or doctoral degree.</p>
<p>Another interesting tidbit. At the career fair my university held last year, by and large, the most sought after degrees were marketing, management, and accounting. I’m at a school focused on engineering and known for its sciences though. Our business school has only 200-300 students. Is this really what the economy has come to? While I would love to enter into the medical field or, as a second option, something in the sciences, it seems to me that it almost isn’t worth it. I considered switching to a business degree, simply because it is more in demand. I think that says a lot about where we are headed.</p>
<p>One last comment to tack on. Further back, it was mentioned that companies are looking for students from IIT in India, or something along those lines. (I skimmed through that part of the discussion.) Also, there’s a difference between “good” engineers and “ho-hum” engineers. I don’t think it matters where you get your students from. The one thing I’ve learned in this past year is that people will work as hard as they want to. If people are going into a profession simply for security, they won’t be interested in their job and they won’t actually want to participate in their work. If, however, they enter a field because they are interested, you’ll see a significant difference in their attitude and the worth ethic.</p>
<p>I’m considering these two majors: Biomedical engineering or Computer Science.</p>
<p>Would you happen to know how stable biomedical engineering is?
Also, what exactly does one DO with computer science?
To be honest, the only reason I’m considering it is because my father recommended it (he threatened to disown me if I chose anything else) and because I’ve heard it is one of the most desirable majors right now. But desirable for what?</p>
<p>I’m taking Computer Science right now and I’m doing pretty okay at it. But I honestly can’t say I want to be typing a bunch of mumbo-jumbo java all day long.</p>
<p>Would computer programming be the only career available if I was to choose Computer Science as a major?</p>
<p>CS can often be paired with a lot of different majors – math, finance, economics, psychology (for AI) perhaps even graphic design or filmmaking (movie CGI or video game design). Your job will probably involve programming or managing programming projects, but that doesn’t necessarily mean website design.</p>
<p>A good number of engineers, regardless of pedigree, are in it for the money. Comp Sci, even worse, because, let’s face it, it’s easier than EE or ME or some such. Clueless MS CS’s nearly wiped out the profession (such as it was) in the mid 80’s when grad CS schools were printing degrees (to non-STEM BS degree holders) as fast as the line printers of the day would allow. Few of these people were in it for the love of computers. It was all about money. Many of these people eventually became managers, and in my view were instrumental in outsourcing the labor intensive part (i.e. coding) in the late 90’s and later…</p>
<p>The difference between the ho-hums and the good software dudes can be an order of magnitude in quality and quantity of output. Unfortunately, outsourcing often hits the ‘good’ coders just as much as the ho-hums since layoff chances are not necessarily tied to productivity or quality… Even worse, a ho-hum US based ‘lead engineer’ hiding behind a wall of ‘good enough’ programmers a continent or three away is the new ‘trend’. Just like we have certifications for Java, C++, and the like, we now have certifications for outsourcing techniques. If you think I’m joking, look up ITIL.</p>
<p>My husband and I graduated from Sam Houston State Univ. in Texas. His degree is in Accounting. We’ve never had a problem finding a job. He is actually on his third. Took a Financial Analyst job out of school (in a town I hated)… then found a Corporate Tax Accountant job in Austin. Loved the move, he hated the job, and the company (Temple Inland) got bought out after just being there for a little over 4 months. His job now is as a Financial Advisor. It’s tough right now becuase we’re working off a small salary plus commissions, but will make it work. It’s what he has wanted to do.</p>
<p>As for me, I am a part time teller at Chase. Partly because I have a 2 year old daughter and partly because I hate my degree and want nothing to do with it… I have a BS in Poli Sci. During my last year in college I regretted the degree. I thought about what the heck I should do… nursing. UT has an alternate entry to gain a Master of Nursing in 3 years. So I am now on that path. Hopefully I will find a great job afterward and start my career. </p>
<p>I have always said that business is the way to go… especially accounting. The courses are hard as crap (for me bc I flippin hate business) but people really like that you went for it. My husband beat out a 4.0 student from UT with his Accounting degree and a gpa just under 3.0.</p>
<p>I’m still standing with my vote for “physician assistant”. Son just called to say he got a neurosurgery rotation at Cleveland Clinic. It’s his dream job and rotations are after 4 years of college.</p>