Computer Science is the Hottest Major on Campus

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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The demand has been steadily growing in the workforce for highly trained computer science majors nationwide. The number of college-level applicants has mirrored the demand causing available application slots to be filled quickly. If you are a high school senior with an eye on the computer industry, you had better get your application in like pronto, to assure acceptance.

"One hundred percent of our seniors were placed last year," Stehlik says. "About 15% went to graduate school. The rest had jobs. We saw the return of the six-figure offer."
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Computer Science is the hottest major till folks hit Calculus I, fail, and become liberal arts majors. It's always been like that, and it will always be like that. Doesn't matter what the industry needs, most people who enter the program are simply not capable.

How do I know? I work for a STEM department at a college and have been there since 1999.
 
Also, 6 figures out of college obviously doesn't happen for undergrads and is unlikely for Master's as well unless you have some long history of releasing awesome stuff on your own web site or in the open source community.

I don't advocate folks burning their time on open source in the hopes of landing a better job, but releasing a useful program on their own page or an app store does help.
 
Thuleman said:
Computer Science is the hottest major till folks hit Calculus I, fail, and become liberal arts majors. It's always been like that, and it will always be like that. Doesn't matter what the industry needs, most people who enter the program are simply not capable.
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Either this, or until they hit the first object-orientated programming class. In my Intro to CSci class during my undergrad program, there were initially 300 in the class. Roughly half dropped out midway through. When Intro to CSci II rolled around, there were about 90-100 remaining.
 
I figured most of the comp sci majors were initially comp engineering majors until they took the first calculus based physics class.
 
Suleks said:
I figured most of the comp sci majors were initially comp engineering majors until they took the first calculus based physics class.
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lol you should see how many we have here that think they are going to land this great job making games or some thing like that :eek:
 
I can agree with both Thuleman and CKTurbo, my initial CS class had a full lecture hall (150ish or so) and midway through second year there was about 20 people in my class.
 
MajorDomo said:
The demand has been steadily growing in the workforce for highly trained computer science majors nationwide. The number of college-level applicants has mirrored the demand causing available application slots to be filled quickly. If you are a high school senior with an eye on the computer industry, you had better get your application in like pronto, to assure acceptance.
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Sure it has but instead of hiring those of us that work in the IT field. U.S. companies bring in foreign labor at 1/10 the cost and lie saying there is shortage of workers in the field.:rolleyes:
 
In my experience, a small percentage of students will make it, and of those, a small percentage will actually write software. The six figure offer is only for the students who understand the CS and can craft software. The market demands software craftsmen over those who can mathematically prove that an algorithm works. If you are a junior and offered a job at a promising startup... just do it... you will learn far more that way.
 
Thuleman said:
Computer Science is the hottest major till folks hit Calculus I, fail, and become liberal arts majors.
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Haha!!! That is so true from my experience! I'm finishing up Calculus 3 right now, and I've gotta say, I've been discouraged many times by all the math classes. I'm glad I stuck to it, though, and only have Differential Equations to take now until I'm done with math requirements. I love actual programming, but the math, not as much.
 
Hottest since when? at my University with close to 40,000 students computer science made about 1.3% of the student population including grad students which was about 30-40%
I'm in my last semester of computer science (minor in math) and I haven seen at least 50-60% of the friends I started with drop out and switch to business/accounting.
Now if you want to see which major dominates at my Univ the last I checked there was some 30% liberal art majors/35% account/business then the rest scatter in small percentages.
 
CKTurbo128 said:
Either this, or until they hit the first object-orientated programming class. In my Intro to CSci class during my undergrad program, there were initially 300 in the class. Roughly half dropped out midway through. When Intro to CSci II rolled around, there were about 90-100 remaining.
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Soooooo true.

The girl I was dating was in CS.. If I hadn't taught her C++ (while learning it myself.. since I'm mostly a Java/C guy) she would never have made it through.

She said like 2/3 of her class dropped it within the first few weeks.

It's sad that a math class does push people to quit as well.

It's not really a hard concept to grasp if you can understand you're creating absolutely everything (from a noob perspective, anyway).
 
A lot of people are probably dropping out of Comp Sci majors because they thought that it would b something exciting and fun only to find out that its actually boring and tedious most of the time.
 
Related, but why do so many IT/computer people suck so badly... Are there idiots teaching them, or are they just nonaturally awful?
 
UWM has at least a 75% drop out rate from Freshman to sophmore and probably 90% do not graduate from the program. Most Wisconsin CS programs are like this due to the high emphasis on calc over CS. In most of the CS programs in wisconsin you have to take 6-10 math courses, you might only take 6-10 computer courses in your major!

most IT folks I know have a non-CS degree or MIS, and are more real world experience trained. most engineers i know however do have CS degrees of some sort.

most IT tech support users do not have CS degree and I've worked at 3 of the largest helpdesks in Milwaukee.
 
DeathPrincess said:
Related, but why do so many IT/computer people suck so badly... Are there idiots teaching them, or are they just nonaturally awful?
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IT /= CS

CS people tend to know nothing about the hardware, and IT people tend to know little about the software.

MIS is in the middle of the road, but doesn't really warrant enough info to be good at either.

Bottom line, if you want to learn the material, it is up to you how to make it through and to actually learn it.
One can't depend on classes or a degree to teach them the basics and the knowledge necessary to succeed.
The degree is just a means to an end, not the end itself. ;)
 
I'm a returning adult student at 34 years and re-enrolled in CMPSC at Penn State. Gotta tell you that the work isn't all that difficult IF the teachers are good. And the teachers here at PSU are on both ends. There are no so-so CMPSC teachers. There are really really good and so terrible you drop and avoid all classes they teach.

I can only take 1-2 classes a semester because I actually have an IT job at the university to pay the bills. For spring semester, I dropped Discrete Math in lieu of Computer Gaming (an elective) because the teacher for Discrete Math was a tyrant when we had him in Java...so much so that his passing rate is less than 50%. I'm a solid B+ student but couldn't manage a D in his class because of his nonsense grading. My C teacher is just as bad, with 33 students left enrolled out of over 100. (These are junior-year classes so the kids don't drop out of the major, just the class.)

It's a shame there such a divide. I like the material. I hate the teachers who suck at their job.
 
Engineering, chemistry, physics, comp sci all have high dropout rates. I believe engineering has the highest drop rate from all those though.
 
Thuleman said:
Also, 6 figures out of college obviously doesn't happen for undergrads and is unlikely for Master's as well unless you have some long history of releasing awesome stuff on your own web site or in the open source community.
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My boss at school who was student lab manager and finished his graduate degree ended up negotiating quite the offer with Google. It was low six figures.

Then again, even undergrads here in those disciplines are always wanted and held in high regard. Got buddies going to Microsoft, NASA, Northrop...but most of the engineering undergrad programs are 5 year (4 quarters of coop). I think the ME undergrad degree has even longer requirements. :eek:

Also, mathematics is an important tool for and I have no idea why anyone would say otherwise in terms of 'software craftsmen'. You know what a company really hates? When they hire you and pay you a great deal of money and you're supposed to be a computer scientist but since you barely passed all your math classes they have to get computational math majors to come in and write the algorithms you're too dumb and should be able to understand. Then the offshoring begins...
 
Thuleman said:
Also, 6 figures out of college obviously doesn't happen for undergrads and is unlikely for Master's as well unless you have some long history of releasing awesome stuff on your own web site or in the open source community.

I don't advocate folks burning their time on open source in the hopes of landing a better job, but releasing a useful program on their own page or an app store does help.
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You'd be surprised... I'm graduating in December with a BS and while my base salaries have not been 6 figures, when you add in the signing bonuses alone, I'm easily in 6 figures.

It depends largely on the companies of course. I've heard from friends who claim that at some financial firms, they get even more ridiculous offers than at tech companies.

6 figures isn't common, but man, most people get pretty damn close in my CS program.
 
I can tell you from my early experience back in college when CS was my first major. Was perhaps the most intimidating and frustrating things I've ever had to do in my life. Never before was so inept at understanding a discipline before.

The school I went to was primarily engineering and CS which had 45% percent drop out rate, and I was among that statistic. Unless you've been messing with programming at an early age, it's stupid to try and figure out that kinda shit. The professors were elitist pricks who spent more time working on their projects than actually trying to teach students, don't know how many times I saw the professors get frustrated with students who couldn't write a simple calculator program because in their eyes it's almost expected for them to know it already. Top that with the fact you're basically staring at a computer screen for 9-10 hours a day with no sunlight and no social life, I wanted to slit my wrist so many times.

One of my regrets in life was thinking I could program, but who was I kiddin....
 
jroe52 said:
UWM has at least a 75% drop out rate from Freshman to sophmore and probably 90% do not graduate from the program. Most Wisconsin CS programs are like this due to the high emphasis on calc over CS. In most of the CS programs in wisconsin you have to take 6-10 math courses, you might only take 6-10 computer courses in your major!
most IT folks I know have a non-CS degree or MIS, and are more real world experience trained. most engineers i know however do have CS degrees of some sort.
most IT tech support users do not have CS degree and I've worked at 3 of the largest helpdesks in Milwaukee.
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Only class I dropped was Calculus I. Had a teacher who had health problems and missed several classes. After a few months, they brought in a new teacher, who decided we should be several chapters further along in the book, and just stated teaching based on where he though we should be. the next week, about 1/3 the class was gone. The following week he gave us a pop quiz, and by the following class, only about 5 people showed up.
 
Yossarian22 said:
My boss at school who was student lab manager and finished his graduate degree ended up negotiating quite the offer with Google. It was low six figures.

Then again, even undergrads here in those disciplines are always wanted and held in high regard. Got buddies going to Microsoft, NASA, Northrop...but most of the engineering undergrad programs are 5 year (4 quarters of coop). I think the ME undergrad degree has even longer requirements. :eek:

Also, mathematics is an important tool for and I have no idea why anyone would say otherwise in terms of 'software craftsmen'. You know what a company really hates? When they hire you and pay you a great deal of money and you're supposed to be a computer scientist but since you barely passed all your math classes they have to get computational math majors to come in and write the algorithms you're too dumb and should be able to understand. Then the offshoring begins...
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At my school, we had two majors, computer engineer (software writer), and computer scientist (theory, algorithms, all that crap).

Both took pretty much the same courses, but the CS degree went further into the theoretical and mathematical stuff while the CE degree focused on more practical stuff (like learning other languages other than C/C++/Java) or things like computer security.
 
i switched majors at uwm before they redesigned their program after several of our complaints... the probably with the "theory" approach is most of the CS kids that did graduate, had no real world modern experience. most of the books and methods of programming they learned were largely based on 1980's tech which is what the professors if you were lucky enough to have one excelled in.

c++ was about as advance as it got beyond theory.

no server, security, networking, windows, unix, linux real world skills were ever utilized. when the courses are 40-50% math, you lose out on real world experience.

most of us that switched majors, on the 6 year BS degree, but stuck with IT jobs on campus now have IT jobs after college.

you have to get real world experience somehow or you'll facepalm.
 
err "problem" ... also i switched in 2003. several of our books were last updated in the late 80's which was sad! or we would have to buy 'custom books printed by the school' for 100$ that were 100 pages, just crap.
 
my Calculus I prof spoke a total of 6 English words. I gave up the first day of class.
 
Imaulle said:
my Calculus I prof spoke a total of 6 English words. I gave up the first day of class.
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lmao that's funny dude, my second semester of Discrete mathematics we had an instructor that just had move to southern California (his previous job was at some IV league school) anyways we had no syllabus the entire semester which it's illegal to start off. He would pick random sections from the book and taught us whatever he felt was imported. Midterm time comes around and when we ask for a review/study guide he tell us to look at the table of content LMAO :| I mean I was just crying inside lol to top it off the day of the midterm he hangs out a midterm that was 15 pages long. Let's just say the smart ones where able to do half of the test before time ran out :/
 
I work around computers all day long and have taught myself some programming (mostly Linux shell and more strongly Perl) so I understand the concept of language is same, just mostly a syntax thing between languages. Currently I just have an Associates in Semiconductor Electronics. If I wanted to look at getting a Bachelors in programming would "Computer Science" be the way to go? Is that generally specific to computer programming?

I already make about $85K a year even with this 2 year, so I'm not really dying for more income. But my work will pay for it and I figure it might be a good experience and make me more diverse. I'm currently 30 and even if I did it part time I'd be happy having a Bachelor in 5-8 years.
 
Also Google can teach you a hell of a lot if you know what your searching for and how to search for it.
 
I'm on boat with the Calc thing... I really wanted to go into CS but Calc 1 kicked my ass so bad I quit. I have a pretty bad memory, and each class was memorizing a couple of major math functions/equations. It was torture... after the first test of which I turned in a little more than a blank page, I dropped out of the course.
 
Don't get me wrong. I love math but the one thing that I hate is having to remember equations/functions. There are so many thing that you generally have to remember in calc. Hell even trig/college algebra can be daunting to remember all that you have to remember. I always found I would test better when our professor would allow cheat sheets for formulas. Yes it makes the class easier but I would rather let the professor make the test harder and allow formula's. That being said, you can have all the cheat sheets in the world. If you do not know how to do the problem you are not going to be able to utilize the cheat sheet to answer some of the harder calc problems. I have found that the only way that I can reliably remember my formulas and how to use them always is to do mass amounts of math problems on a regular basis. I tend to do every problem in my math books, not only the ones that they assign. This along with rote memorization helps me remember most of what I need to remember.
 
Imaulle said:
my Calculus I prof spoke a total of 6 English words. I gave up the first day of class.
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Sickb0y said:
lmao that's funny dude, my second semester of Discrete mathematics we had an instructor that just had move to southern California (his previous job was at some IV league school) anyways we had no syllabus the entire semester which it's illegal to start off. He would pick random sections from the book and taught us whatever he felt was imported. Midterm time comes around and when we ask for a review/study guide he tell us to look at the table of content LMAO :| I mean I was just crying inside lol to top it off the day of the midterm he hangs out a midterm that was 15 pages long. Let's just say the smart ones where able to do half of the test before time ran out :/
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So....can you speak English?
 
Never really understood why the Calculus classes made people drop out, I found the broad Physics and Chem classes to be more of a bore and harder to grasp if you had a bad professor. Math's relatively easy to study on your own...
 
Huh? I had a terrible time with one of my Physics classes, failed it twice, sure the prof was awful but my point was that an awful prof is easier to overcome in a class with little theory... Early math classes are just about practice. At worst it's a memory test more so than any sort of critical thinking.
 
I'm 25 and I just left a great job to get a Computer Science degree. I'm in the process of finishing my first semester, now. I am pursing a Software Engineering degree (master's), but I need to complete CS (bachelor's) first.
 
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