With as many as 400,000 jobs available nationwide in information technology, some U.S. colleges are striving mightily to entice students into computer science.
For example, how’s this for a message that anyone is welcome on the bandwagon? American University in Washington, D.C., just started a program to make high-tech workers out of liberal arts majors.
Some industry leaders suggest one answer lies in improving the field’s image–the Nerd Syndrome. But things in Silicon Valley are different. There’s still a decided labor supply problem, but apparently not an attitude problem.
Stanford University’s computer-science program is the fastest-growing in the entire engineering school. University of California-Berkeley has far more applicants than it has room. And last fall San Jose State University saw almost a 30 percent enrollment increase in its computer-science department.
Why the avid interest? Local academics say it’s because of the Silicon Valley setting, the abundance of high-paying jobs here, and–yes, it’s true–the promise of stimulating work.
“This is the most technically aware part of the country,” said John Hennessy, dean of engineering at Stanford. “The Web has really generated a tremendous growth in enthusiasm for computing.”
Unfortunately for the computer industry, the supply continues to be dwarfed by the demand, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Over the next decade, the U.S. economy will create four high-tech jobs for each college graduate in the field.
Worse, student interest shown locally isn’t typical of the rest of the country. Recently in Oakland, Calif., at a high-tech shortage conference, which brought government, industry and academic officials, the Clinton administration pledged $28 million in new initiatives to bring people to computing work.
In addition, industry leaders are striving to make the work seem stimulating, and if possible, a little sexier, too.
But the industry doesn’t seem to have an image problem here.
“I’ve never seen students shying away because they consider it drudge work,” said Michael Burke, chair of the mathematics and computer-science department at San Jose State. “I don’t see them coming in with the attitude of, `It’s . . . geek work.’
“They see it as very interesting.”
Last fall, about 1,000 San Jose State students were computer-science majors–an increase of 28 percent over the previous fall, Burke said.
Stanford graduates about 90 students a year in computer science. However, interest in the field spreads across the student body. Seventy-five percent of all Stanford undergraduates have taken an introductory computer programming course.
“They sense it’s an exciting time to be in this technology,” said Eric Roberts, who teaches the class. “Also, being at Stanford, right in Silicon Valley, people see all the exciting stuff going on” in high-tech companies.
UC-Berkeley has more than 700 students majoring in computer science. Only about 15 percent of applicants enter the program, said university spokesman Bob Sanders. The school has plans to expand the program in the next couple of years, he said.
In fact, Gov. Pete Wilson’s latest budget proposal calls for spending $6 million across the UC system to increase enrollment in high-tech fields by 800 students this year. The plan is the first step in reaching UC’s goal of increasing enrollment in those fields by 40 percent over the next eight years.
Silicon Valley schools show more concern with finding computing teachers than students. “The industry is so hungry for people–its appetite is so insatiable–that right now it’s very difficult to get good students to go on for Ph.D.s,” Roberts said.
“If (employers) are going to need those people, we’re going to need to teach those people. But the applicant pool may not be there.”
For the moment, most other colleges’ first priority is attracting the students. The national situation is “urgent,” said Richard Skinner, president of an Atlanta college who heads a Commerce Department task force on how universities are responding to the labor shortage.
At the conference in Oakland, Skinner and others spent time reviewing successful academic outreach programs–for example, in Omaha, northern Virginia and the Seattle area. In a telephone interview after the conference, Skinner said enough work has been done that a model should be created at a national clearinghouse.
One unique program has unfolded at American University. Students with liberal arts majors are recruited to enter a training program that guarantees them work with participating high-tech companies.
“How do you convert a liberal arts major into an (information-technology) worker?” asked Patrick Valentine, director of the program. “You find the best and brightest who have an aptitude for it.”
The standard, he said, is to find “the overachiever–whether in English lit., philosophy, music.”
The program, only a few months old, has placed about 60 students, he said.
The eagerness to recruit students to computing seems to assume what in the past was arguable: that the nation’s colleges should act to meet the changeable needs of private industry.
“I think it’s appropriate, presuming students still have free choice of what to take,” Hennessy said. “Part of the purpose of education is to prepare students for careers. It’s not the only purpose, but it’s a purpose.
“And clearly, students want to have jobs in high-paying industries.”
