Are Kids Not Going Into Computer Science Because Their Parents Want Them To Be Sports Stars?
from the really? dept
There's been some talk lately about how come not as many students are taking computer science in school, and someone over at Information Management online is suggesting that it's all your parents fault for encouraging you to be a baseball star or a CEO or the next American Idol. This seems to be based on nothing more than a hunch, and the whole thing makes no sense to me. My guess is that most people who don't go into computer science don't do it because they're not interested in it. I don't think the answer is to tell your little slugger to put down the baseball bat and spend more time learning BASIC.
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Filed Under: computer science, parents
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There's lots of reasons
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Re: There's lots of reasons
Parents should support the interests of their children. They should be there to correct the course when the child does something that could be dangerous. They should support education itself and make sure their children understand it's value. They should have high, but realistic expectations that push their children to do their best in the subjects and activities the child chooses.
However, picking your child's interests/career or "pushing" them to be a certain thing is the surest way to have an apathetic, unmotivated child.
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Re: Re: There's lots of reasons
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Re: Re: There's lots of reasons
Let them experience different things, not just their own interests.
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If you learned that your boss fired a co-worker, and sent their job to a "Well qualified PHd in Hyderabad with 20 years of web experience" for $50.00 a week, you may be a little depressed.
But later, it may make you fear for the quality of the manager you have. 20 years Web Experience? Shit. They must have worked with Tim Berners-Lee.
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Now the perception is of a scary minefield of outsourcing and layoffs. Software engineering is generally a 5- to 5.5-year major, and employment can be very difficult to find. The job market is full of experienced, unemployed programmers, engineers, and IT staff who end up taking jobs well below their experience level just to have a job at all. Meanwhile, many jobs are going overseas or into programs like the disastrous H1B visa program.
That's the perception. How much is true? I don't know. But that's how the general public views it, and that is going to drive students away from the field.
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CS's stigma as being an all-guy and all-nerd major (which isn't entirely inaccurate) is another big problem.
Also the knowledge that you'll be spending the rest of your days typing away at a desk. At least with other engineering majors like electrical engineering or mechanical engineering there's some preconception that you could be out doing something 'cool'.
Of course to many of us, myself included, making computers do something very complex is 'cool'. I just don't think that many people really see it like that.
Also CS is an incredibly bad major for people uninterested in it. Other majors like Accounting or business-y stuff are probably more worth the effort if you just want to make money. CS isn't exactly a path that's assured to get you rich and also potentially involves long hours. On top of that if you aren't interested in code it won't be anything but excessively boring since it's not a job where you can really 'zone out' or constantly be doing new things.
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Many other places seems to have caught the H1B Piggie Flu. Piggie Flu allows managers to play golf during the workweek because their normal allocated headcount of 20 FTEs in accounting is dropped to 5 FTEs financially, and you know what that means-- big bonus for management for reducing expenses! Also, because employees are 1/2 a world away and asleep when you're awake, they probably won't notice or care about the tan you got when you're hard at work at the Arnold Palmer-designed country club.
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Too right. American kids are taught just enough to realize that they aren't lean and hungry, nor getting a quality enough education to compete in fields demanding a high intellect. Then they take the time to learn how American business really works: nepotism, favoritism, sexism, plagiarism and exploitation. There are better work environments out there for the tattered remnants of American intellectual capital. The vote that counts is the vote you make with your feet.
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Unemployment
I'm going to guess that all of those engineers who lost jobs and couldn't get them back advised their kids to go into another field.
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Re: Unemployment
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There's too many already
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Re: There's too many already
It's also funny how many people think that Computer Science is about programming. The programming is only a tool.
Most people do not go into Computer Science because they can not do the math.
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programming
you need to be both logical and creative, and that doesn't necessarily go together.
on the one hand, you're coming up with something from scratch, and on the other, it's basically purely logical/organized/hierarchical.
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Re: programming
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Re: programming
The more time I spend with "programmers" who couldn't program their way out of a paper bag, the more convinced I am that this is the truth - it's not that these people are dumb by any means - it's just that I believe their brains aren't wired the same way as people who really get into programming.
The kids with an aptitude for programming are going to learn how to program without any pushing from anyone. The rest... It's just as well that they do find something else to do with their lives
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Re: programming
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Let's not forget
Also, many schools simpy do no offer computer courses anymore. I know my son's high school has no programming offerings.
The strangest thing that I have seen seems to be caused by the ease of use that modern GUI's offer. The children seem to become "spoiled" by point-and-click, and have no interest in learning arcane "keywords".
I agree, the "job of the future" has gone the way of the dodo. More work for me, though :)
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Office Space
Now, about your TPS reports ...
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Think of the dotcom bust...
Since it was only 9 years ago, it could be that event is still stuck in their minds and in those of their parents. I've been fighting in the IT world for years.
Many IT people I worked with didn't want the bother of getting a BS in Computer Science, and so only remained computer administrators, etc. Now that all of the IT jobs are going overseas to India and other asian companies and bringing in Indian IT professionals to the US through a visa, it makes finding programming jobs much more difficult, even with a Bachelors.
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BASIC? Really?
As an experienced software developer who cut his teeth on BASIC I can say with certainty that this is _terrible_ advice!
But I also shied away from computer science courses and focused academically on business and economics subject matter and frankly, I couldn't be happier about this. There's very little about computer science that's particularly suited to the classroom, and the languages and practices they teach are notoriously outdated. Kids are better off staying away.
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It'll probably be some simple innovation like 24-hour malls in cities where innovation is exported, or home sunlamps to trick people into thinking it's daytime so managers are awake to manage their overseas subordinates.
But that wouldn't stop me from letting Junior go down the same path. I have a few simple concepts I'd share along the way and maybe he'll probably learn something in the process.
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IT is a mature industry now. If I were to pick an industry where my child would have a chance at getting the rewards of being part of The Next Big Thing, I'd pick the biological sciences, specifically genetic engineering. It is where the computer industry was in the '70s.
But really? I want my kid to have a career that fulfills her. Whatever that may be, and regardless of other considerations.
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Nerds Win
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Now I am depressed...
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Re: Now I am depressed...
Of course, the landscape may change when the economy improves. Then again, it may not. I'm thinking of the overpopulation of engineers in the '70s. That field never did grow enough to employ everyone who was trained & qualified to do the work.
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Re: Re: Now I am depressed...
I don't really know what is happening in the field now, but I did see what happened in 2001. People were laid off and couldn't find other tech jobs.
The turnover in tech can be as brutal as it is in any field, so unless you really want to do it, don't bother.
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Re: Now I am depressed...
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The poetic justice is that call centers are tearing out the lines in Bangalore, packing up and moving to even cheaper locales, like China.
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Another reason
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No Jobs for Newbies
My company (60000+ employees) hasn't hired someone right out of college for years. The developers are all 35+ years old.
BTW, the people that are hired from India - no fancy college degrees. Many from technical schools. Its hard to mentor someone who lives in such a radically different time zone
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Though if I had to choose one group to blame it would be schools. My high school used to have a computer course requirement. Granted, this really wasn't anything more than how to learn to use Microsoft products, but it directly exposed kids and may have sparked some interest in someone. My high school also used to have computer programming courses in GW BASIC and AP Computer Science (Java). Sadly, my high school dropped the computer course requirement because they weren't able to enforce it (lack of funding, faculty, and facilities).
So without schools, how else is a kid going to be exposed to CS? I wouldn't readily suggest parents be completely responsible because they're at a disadvantage, especially with technology. Altogether I wouldn't expect parents to be knowledgeable about other fields outside of their scope of work anyway. I also don't expect kids to pick up the slack either. There will be those who will, but they are few and far between. So with what I see as a lack of other opportunities for exposure to CS (or any other field) I think a school's core responsibility should include exposing kids to a broad array of fields. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done...
But like I originally said (and would like to further re-emphasize), lack of interest in CS stems from multiple sources. I chose to point out schools because of my personal first hand experience.
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Go Open
If you want to advance a career in computing, look at open-source technologies. The world doesn’t need more Java and BASIC programmers, but it could do with more Python. And Web 2.0 is built heavily on JavaScript, so that can be useful to know as well.
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Why bother
It's summed up best by what a guest lecturer in my software engineering class said:
"Dilbert's not funny when it's your life."
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Want to talk about a useless major? Talk MIS.
I'm in college for CS and so far as I can tell graduates are getting hired somewhere....
Though I agree in a lot of ways it's a pretty anticlimactic career if you get a testing/implementation only desk job... (Hopefully I'll find something at least slightly better.)
Of course I mostly just care that I can find a job in the open source world.
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While CS and IT are very similar in many ways, they have very different concentrations, and neither could do the others job well enough to call themselves professionals in that field, though a lot of people like to think they could. The fact is, CS is in one of the top 10 most wanted jobs on every study I've seen lately, the real problem I see among fellow students around me is that they go in thinking they'll get to make cool programs easily, and bail out quickly when they find out how hard it really is. It really just boils down to most people not really enjoying this type of job.
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Available jobs
If this is the case, what universities might want to do is publish what percentage of its CS graduates get jobs upon graduation for how much money. And then they should continue to track their graduates and publish what percentage remain employed in the field after 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and 30 years.
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Re: Available jobs
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I think I'm in big trouble!
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LOL@SecurityClearance people. All of you are funny in your own little way.
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Now with Windows, the only thing most users know is how to double-click on an icon and to wait for Windows to ask what they want to do with the disc they just put in the drive. If what they want/need to do falls outside those two activities, they're completely lost. Something as simple as manually changing a file association is a mysterious and complex job that only a "computer whiz" can accomplish. If they don't download files to the desktop, they have no idea where they downloaded to or how to find them. They have no idea where the music files are actually stored on their drive because everything goes into the "media library". Reading a text file included on a disc? That's much too complicated for their poor brains to grasp...
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Now with Windows, the only thing most users know is how to double-click on an icon and to wait for Windows to ask what they want to do with the disc they just put in the drive.
But that's progress. You don't know how to fix a car to drive it.
Look at all the software (Word, Photoshop, etc.), which, while eliminating many jobs for people with specialized skills, allowed ordinary people to do themselves most of the stuff they needed.
Most people don't work on farms anymore either. Or sew their own clothes.
The goal isn't necessarily to enable everyone to work on computers, but to allow them to accomplish want they need to do with relatively little technical input.
The ratio of people who design tools should always be smaller than those who use the tools.
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No, but to make your analogy more accurate, the car owner would only know how to start it, drive forward using the gas pedal and stop using the brake. All of the car's other's functions would be considered too complicated for them to master. Shifting? You mean you have to remember what all those letters mean? Why do I have turn on these "turn signals"? Why don't they come on automatically when I turn? This whole "gas pump" thing is way too complicated for me. I'll have to get my friend the car whiz to help me out with that!
Look at all the software (Word, Photoshop, etc.), which, while eliminating many jobs for people with specialized skills, allowed ordinary people to do themselves most of the stuff they needed.
Yes, they learn a few specialized skils while being completely clueless about the rest. It's like buying a TV and only ever using the power and volume buttons.
The goal isn't necessarily to enable everyone to work on computers, but to allow them to accomplish want they need to do with relatively little technical input.
Except that people today spend hundreds or even thousands on a computer, learn how to do one or two specialized things with it, like check their email or browse the internet and that's usually the extent of their knowledge.
Download an XviD AVI file off the net, burn it to a disc and give it to the average user and they'll have no clue what to do with it. They'll stick it in the drive, Windows will offer to play it, they'll select that option and since a default Windows install lacks a DivX/XviD codec, all they'll get on the screen is garbage. At this point, they are completely stumped as to what to do next. Using Google to try and figure out the problem never even enters their mind.
Go a step further; Put the installer for a self-contained video player like GOM Player or VLC on the disc, put a ReadMe.txt file on the disc explaining in detail how to install, configure and use the player. Then include a printed set of instructions on how to read the ReadMe file on the disc. Explain to the person that the videos probably won't play and that they'll need to follow the instructions and install extra software which is all included on the disc. Know what they'll do? Put the disc in, let Windows try to play the files and when it doesn't they'll give up. Reading a file on the disc and installing software will be deemed much too technical for someone like them and they'll decide that it's better if they put it off until you can come over and set everything up for them.
People today don't even know what a file extension is because the idiots at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to hide them from people. Everyone goes by the icon. They know what type of icons denote what type of file. Yeah, that works real well when they sit down in front of a different computer with different software installed and all the icons are different. Then they sit there staring at the screen wondering why they can't recognize any of the files.
Here's a fun prank; While an average user is away from their computer, right-click on the screen, go into the properties, find the rotation options and flip the screen 180 degrees. See how long they struggle with it before begging you to fix it.
Even better, wait until they leave the room, then rename the Desktop and Start Menu directories so that Windows can't find them. When they come back, tell them that everything just disappeared. It's a toss-up whether they'll spend the money at a repair shop to get it "fixed" or whether they'll just chuck it and buy a new one.
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I have worked for DoD contractors and the feds, during that time we could rarely fill positions because US citizens could not pass the background checks. My advice: follow your passion, but be realistic about your options -- not everyone gets to be an astronaut. Also, learn a foreign language (Mandarin, Japanese, Korean etc..) that way you might still have a job when the Asian countries call due on our debt.
BTW, there is no safe profession -- my wife is a nurse and has been unemployed for over 6 months.
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