IP: : Washington Post article on declining IT enrollments

[David Farber <dfarber () earthlink net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: tim finin <finin () cs umbc edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 09:08:48 
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Washington Post article on declining IT enrollments

This is from the first page of today's WP business section.
I agree with Steve Halperin's prediction that a dramatic
decline in declared majors will result in a much much smaller
decline in actual graduates, since many aspiring majors were 
attracted for the wrong reasons ("it's hip") and were subsequently
turned off by the actual content and work. tim

--
Tech's Major Decline - College Students Turning Away From Bits and Bytes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64806-2002Aug26.html
By Ellen McCarthy, Tue 27 August 2002

If John Yandziak had been entering college a few years
ago, he might have sought a stake in the "new"
economy. He might have dreamed of becoming an ace
code-cracker for the CIA or the National Security
Agency, or imagined toppling an empire with
revolutionary software. Maybe he would have tried to
use the Internet to end world hunger.

But as Yandziak attends his first college classes this
week, he's harboring different academic ambitions. The
Ashburn native says he wants to do something more
social and more interesting than working with
computers.

Besides, he said while packing for a Charlottesville
dormitory room, "you can't get the chicks with that
anymore."

The tech industry's financial problems are enough to
bankrupt the dreams of some fair-weather students. But
now there's another consequence of the tech bust:
Enrollment growth in undergraduate computer science
departments has come to a halt.

The number of undergraduates majoring in computer
science fell 1 percent in 2001, according to a report
by the Computing Research Association. And educators in
the field say the trend seems to be accelerating, with
some colleges seeing much greater drops as the new
academic year begins.

... ...

Economic potential weighs heavily in many student
career choices, but other factors, including program
difficulty, personal interests and social influences,
also come into play, said Judy Hingle, director of
professional development at the American College
Counseling Association. The perception of computer
science as an isolating, "nerdy" profession is one that
many in the industry have tried to squelch. That
stereotype went underground during the tech bubble but
reemerged during the bust.

"All the hipness is gone," Yandziak said. "Once we
thought of the Internet as this thing with infinite
capabilities. It was basically just a fad that came
along."

Lamont Thompson, a recent graduate of Calvin Coolidge
Senior High School in the District, is headed to
Morehouse College in Atlanta to study business
marketing, with the intention of going into real estate
development.

"Technology comes natural to people my age; it's not
fascinating anymore," Thompson said. "To be honest with
you, when I think computer science, I think of some guy
sitting behind a computer all day in a dark room. It's
a necessity, but I wouldn't take it any further."

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