The Education vs. Innovation Debate
The Education vs. Innovation Debate
Date: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 12:34 AM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
September 02, 2004 - No. 1084
It's no secret that enrollment in computer science and engineering is
rapidly declining. The interesting articles below cover slightly
different sides of the debate on how universities should respond to
that new reality.
Steve Mintz, a visiting professor of accounting at Claremont McKenna
College, wrote the most thought provoking article because he frames the
debate as one of ethics. Of course it's a lot easier for him to speak
the truth since his college doesn't offer computer science or
engineering. The next two articles drive home the point that
universities are choosing to forgo ethics in favor of filling
classrooms and they aren't going to let the truth get in their way.
Dr. Norman Matloff at UC Davis is one of the few teachers that advise
his students of the risk of pursuing CS careers, and he specifically
mentions outsourcing and H-1B. Unfortunately he is one of the few that
do because. Most faculty staff fear bucking the status quo like Matloff
does so even if they understand how bad the job situation is they just
go with the flow and accept the half-truths that the administration
pumps out to attract more students. Of course most academics have no
clue what is happening in the real world of outsourcing and H-1B.
There are two themes from these articles that are very disturbing and
they deserve some mention here. Many educators that were interviewed
seem to think that engineering education should emphasize softer skills
such as business, communication, and personal relations. The consensus
seems to be that our economy won't need pure engineers anymore so
universities should emphasize other skills. If that's true, then why
should anyone bother with CS or engineering? They would be better off
just taking some classes to learn how to use basic computer tools - and
most business schools already provide that. Today's kids seem to
understand that it's far more efficient to take business and management
courses since that is where their employment future lies.
The most annoying and factually dubious theme that is constantly
repeated is that the cure for outsourcing is to emphasize "innovation".
There is an assumption that Americans have an innate ability to
innovate. This is nothing but wishful thinking that is based on a small
part of human history. We can lose it just as fast as we got it.
In my experience as an engineer I have observed that most technical
people do very little in terms of innovation. There are usually just a
very few who actually invent new technologies. Educating people to be
more innovative is impossible because there just aren't many people as
a percentage of the population that can innovate and they get that
ability at a college; and there is a dwindling job market for the few
that can. Foreign workers who are taking our jobs can get the same
education and skills, and therefore they will be the innovators if we
lose these jobs. How innovative will Americans be while they change bed
pans and sweep floors, and work as greeters at Wal-Mart?
Innovation occurs when there are large numbers of people working in a
field. A small percentage of those people will come up with innovative
ideas. We will have less innovation if we have less engineers and
computer scientists - why is that simple fact so difficult for
educators to understand? Their desire to educate students to be
innovators for a very small and dwindling number of jobs is futile and
a growing number of students realize it. Most engineering is just hard
work and determination coupled with the correct education and training,
and any country can produce people to do that. It's just a matter of
time before India and China are the technical leaders of the world
because they will have more engineers and programmers that are in a
position to innovate. The citizens of the U.S. have no monopoly on the
ability to innovate but these educators seem to deny that fact.
Articles Used for this Newsletter
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040806/news_lz1e6mintz.html
The ethical problems of outsourcing
Should I, as a college professor, advise my students not to study
computer programming or software development because those jobs will be
handled primarily from India?
http://www.prism-magazine.org/jan04/global.cfm/
should U.S. engineering education continue to provide the basic science
foundation for its students that encourages innovation -- whatever that
might be -- or should engineering schools tweak their curriculum to
provide their students the necessary nonscience skills to compete in
the global economy? many engineering educators feel universities need
to better emphasize the skills used in the new global economy --
teamwork, systems over specific knowledge, and marketing. None of the
engineering educators interviewed for this article believe that radical
changes are needed for the new global landscape.
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=29100069
By The Book
Enrollment at undergraduate computer-science programs peaked at the
turn of the millennium, then plummeted in the past few years by 30%.
"In the '90s, people saw computer science as a quick opportunity for
lucrative, high-paying jobs," says Stuart Zweben, chair of Ohio State
University's computer- and information-science department. "Then
companies began layoffs, and people heard about offshore outsourcing.
That got them scared to go into this field. Students are becoming
cautious. They have cold feet."
Most troubling for the future of computer science is the idea that
students wouldn't pursue the field because they believe there are no
jobs, that all the work is going to India, or that all the cool stuff
has been done. "It's natural for people to look at a narrow point of
time and conclude that businesses aren't well capitalized and jobs
aren't plentiful," Ohio State's Zweben says. "They're wrong on both
counts. You've got to believe IT is an important factor in our future."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5306096.html
Students saying no to computer science
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as in other schools
across the country, computer science enrollments are dropping, raising
questions about the country's future tech leadership. not everyone is
sure the country needs more Ph.D.s, and some observers argue there are
many technology professionals unable to find work in the wake of the
dot-com demise and the rise of offshoring.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040806/news_lz1e6mintz.html
The ethical problems of outsourcing
By Steven M. Mintz
August 6, 2004
Outsourcing is just another example, like allowing illegal immigrants
to receive driver's licenses, of putting economic and political
interests ahead of doing the right thing. We need to examine issues
like these from an ethical perspective. You know: Is it right or wrong?
Most supporters defend outsourcing based on economic considerations.
Some say more jobs are created at home because the countries benefiting
from outsourcing develop more spending power. However, job displacement
and social costs exist that should be considered before the trend of
outsourcing threatens the long-term viability of our economic and
educational systems.
The California Legislature recently found that the United States has
lost nearly 3 million jobs over the last three years, with at least 15
percent outsourced to a foreign country. Outsourcing by the technology
sector is a growing trend, with an estimated $10 billion in net
contracts subject to outsourcing in 2004. By 2008, an estimated $23
billion will be subject to outsourcing by this sector. According to
Cynthia Kroll, senior regional economist at UC Berkeley, at least 14
million service-sector jobs are at risk of being outsourced over the
next decade.
The long-term effects are likely to be even greater unless actions are
taken now to slow the trend. There are important social costs to
consider.
The key word is "responsibility." Has anyone done a study of the
long-term effects on our educational system? Should I, as a college
professor, advise my students not to study computer programming or
software development because those jobs will be handled primarily from
India?
What should they study in college? How about accounting? They can learn
tax preparation. Everyone pays taxes right? Yes, but as Lou Dobbs
reported recently on CNN, "tax experts estimate between 150,000 and
200,000 American tax returns were prepared in India this year."
What if it was your tax return? Wouldn't you want to know that the
personal tax information given to your American preparer might be
transmitted to someone in India who put the return together and
transmitted it back to the United States? I sure would. Unfortunately,
SB 1451 was amended to drop the disclosure due to business opposition.
SB 1451, introduced by state Sen. Liz Figueroa, D-Fremont, addresses
the risk of privacy when personal medical or financial information is
transmitted on-line to overseas workers for processing. The bill
ensures that confidential information regarding a California resident,
such as Social Security and bank account numbers, tax information, and
health information that is legally protected by confidentiality laws in
California, will be protected when used by parties outside California.
The ethical issues of outsourcing were made apparent when it was
disclosed in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on Oct. 22,
2003, that a Pakistani transcriber of medical information threatened a
medical center in San Francisco with posting patients' medical records
online unless she received more money for her services.
This is not an isolated situation. Dobbs reported in May that U.S.
software company SolidWorks Corp. found that a worker employed by its
Indian outsourcing partner tried to sell its property to a competitor.
States are dealing with the issue as well. Tennessee's Democratic Gov.
Phil Bredesen has signed a bill making it the first state to give
businesses an incentive for not outsourcing data-entry and call-center
work to cheaper offshore locales. The law asks state procurement
officials to give preference in bids for such services to contractors
employing workers only in the United States.
AB 1829, by Assemblywoman Carol Liu, D-Pasadena, prohibits California
agencies or a local government from expending state-provided funds for
contracted services unless the contractor certifies under law that only
workers in the United States will perform all work.
Outsourcing compromises the confidentiality of patient and tax client
information and the practice is unethical unless the consumer of the
service is given the right to "opt out" of the arrangement. It's time
to address the ethical problems.
Mintz is a visiting professor of accounting at Claremont McKenna
College.
http://www.prism-magazine.org/jan04/global.cfm/
By Dan McGraw
Two years ago, the state of New Mexico was looking to overhaul its
system of supplying unemployment insurance to 72,000 claimants each
year. The system was paper-based; information was entered into a
30-year-old mainframe, and field officers had to travel long distances
to collect and verify information.
New Mexicos Department of Labor did not have the IT expertise to
create a new automated system for processing claims. The work had to be
contracted out. The state took bids from companies that would overhaul
the workers compensation system. TRW said they could do the work for
$18 million; IBM came in at $12 million. Both companies said the work
would take about six years.
A third company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), also bid. The Indian
company said it could do the job for about $6 million and could
complete the work in 15 months. TCS used 110 employees to do the job:
30 in New Mexico and the rest in India. With a 24/7 operation and using
a Web-based system of collecting data, TCS was able to save the
taxpayers of New Mexico a significant amount of money and made the
system of filing unemployment claims far more efficient.
The irony of the New Mexico case is that some of the people using the
new system are, undoubtedly, out-of-work IT workers whose jobs have
been lost to this type of outsourcing. The underlying question in the
outsourcing debate was made very clear in the choice New Mexico made in
picking a company to handle its unemployment insurance: Namely, are the
savings and efficiencies that TCS brings to the table worth the loss of
some American jobs? More importantly, is this an inevitable trend?
Raman Unnikrishnan, dean of engineering and computer science at
California State University-Fullerton, says the trend is not only
inevitable, its not necessarily a bad thing. For Unnikrishnan, the
nature of work in the new knowledge economy has changed in a
fundamental way. "Instead of qualified people seeking work wherever
work is available," he says, "work is seeking qualified people wherever
they are."
The reason, Unnikrishnan notes, is that the products of information
technology -- whether that be computer code or reading X-rays or
developing engineering plans for architecture -- can now be transported
around the globe with few costs. There are no transportation charges,
no shipping delays, no tariffs. Traditional boundaries in the workplace
have vanished. If a computer engineer can do useful work at $25,000 a
year, and the same work costs a company $60,000 in California, the
market will place that work in India, Unnikrishnan says.
"Outsourcing is a natural outcome of the information technology field,"
Unnikrishnan says. "It is not going to end with IT or customer service.
But that doesnt mean that globalization is a bad thing. It is going
to force the American science and engineering community to do what we
have always done best. And that is innovation."
The issue of outsourcing white-collar jobs to emerging markets like
India, China, and Russia, among others, has become a hot-button issue
of late. Gartner Inc., a high-tech forecasting firm, estimates that one
in every 10 software jobs will be moved overseas by the end of 2004.
Forrester Research, a marketing research firm, predicts that 3.3
million high-tech and service-industry jobs will move overseas by 2015,
jobs that will provide $136 billion in wages.
A Change in Course?
While politicians and economists wrangle over solutions to the
perceived problem, engineering educators wrangle over how to respond.
The debate over this complex issue boils down to some simple choices.
Namely, should U.S. engineering education continue to provide the basic
science foundation for its students that encourages innovation --
whatever that might be -- or should engineering schools tweak their
curriculum to provide their students the necessary nonscience skills to
compete in the global economy?
"We have a tendency to overreact to the immediate crisis," says Nino
Masnari, dean of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State
University, and a professor of electrical and computer engineering. "We
have to continue to give our students the best scientific education.
But we must always re-evaluate what an engineering education is all
about. It boils down to the question of whether we are adding enough
value to our students so the American companies will see that value and
hire our students. Adding that value is key to re-evaluating our
programs."
The situation facing engineering educators is how to view the
outsourcing problem. On the one hand, a variety of factors -- the
economic slowdown, vastly improved communication, routine IT work
becoming commoditized have led to the outsourcing boom. On the other
hand, many engineering educators feel universities need to better
emphasize the skills used in the new global economy -- teamwork,
systems over specific knowledge, and marketing.
"When I talk to CEOs from industry, they say they will observe young
engineers that reach a career plateau relatively early, usually within
about five years," says Richard Miller, president of the Olin College
of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts. "It is not because they are
deficient in some technical way. Instead, it is because they have
problems in relationships with people. They may be working on a team
where they have to deal with marketing and manufacturing people. They
will be dealing more and more with the business office or a client.
"The people skills needed to work overseas are more important than ever
before," Miller continues. "Our graduates have to learn to be willing
to accommodate and not offend. Thats hard enough to do when youre
sitting across the desk from someone. Its even harder to do when
your contact is primarily by phone or e-mail."
Miller suggests that American engineering schools must play to the
strengths of our system in the new global economy. American engineers,
he says, lead the world in two fundamental ways: innovation and the
ability to recognize and improve systems. While India may be good at
writing specific computer code, Germany excels at precision, and Japan
at continuous improvement, American engineers excel at creativity,
Miller says. "About the time we begin to lose jobs overseas, we change
the game, and it makes the argument irrelevant," Miller says. "The
business of being creative is fundamental to our long-term economic
health. This creativity needs to be nurtured, needs to be emphasized,
needs to be measured.
"The cultural and ethnic diversity foster this creativity," Miller
continues. "This diversity is not replicated anywhere else around the
globe. A diverse group of people has a better chance of recognizing
opportunities. We need to encourage diversity, from within our own
country, to having students from other countries study here. That flow
of incredible talent really enhances the rate at which we innovate."
It is clear the globalization trend is affecting the job market for
engineers in several ways. The first is that graduates with specific,
individual skills will more than likely find that their jobs can be
done as well and cheaper in emerging labor markets. For example, a
student whose expertise is to provide improved ways to apply paint
coats to an automobile may find that an engineer in Russia can provide
the same service at one-third the cost. The second trend is that the
traditional job promotion track, where an engineering graduate may
spend his entire career with one company, is a thing of the past.
John Anderson, dean of engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University in
Pittsburgh, says these trends make it necessary to change some of the
ways that engineering is taught. In September 2003, Carnegie-Mellon
convened a panel discussion of industry leaders and educators to
discuss what specific recommendations might help students in the global
economy. The conclusions were that students must be more
multidisciplinary in their skills, and that working in partnerships
within teams was a skill that most American companies prized.
"Were still ahead of the world in innovation," Anderson says. "And
U.S. students still integrate science and engineering into systems
better than anyone else. But we can do a better job in bringing a
global awareness through business and humanities courses. The
constraint is that we still have to provide a good, solid technical
education."
Anderson suggests the general education requirements be changed to
reflect the global marketplace. For example, some schools might require
a course in economics but do not allow a business or marketing course
to fulfill the requirement. Anderson also thinks studying abroad for a
semester or two should be encouraged. In addition, partnerships with
foreign universities, where students collaborate in teams via the
Internet (Carnegie-Mellon has such a program with Technical University
at Delft in The Netherlands), should be implemented.
"Students need to have an appreciation of markets, what customers of
technology really need," Anderson says. "Increasingly, for U.S.
companies, those customers and markets are in foreign countries. When
we are talking about creating new technologies, we cannot only think in
terms of the U.S. market."
North Carolina States Masnari agrees that changes should be made in
general education requirements to better meet the needs of students.
"In the past, accreditation of an engineering program has been a
bean-counting exercise," he says. "With the new global marketplace, we
need to have the flexibility to use the general education requirement
to better serve the students. We should be able to better define what
our programs offer. The onus should be on the institution to do this."
Masnari also believes that teamwork is essential in the global economy,
and that engineering schools can do a better job of teaching that
skill. "We used to be very compartmentalized, everyone had their
specific niche," he says. "You basically worked within your own
discipline. Today, the trend is toward larger and more complex
projects. It is critical that students learn the skills of working
within teams."
The U.S. Department of Commerce, in a report released in June 2003,
suggests that many companies want computer science and IT workers to
have a better understanding of the business side of the business.
Employers, according to the report, are stepping up their recruitment
of people with M.B.A.s or masters degrees who also have technical
skills. Overall, 12.3 percent of IT workers hold a business degree. The
ability to understand the business side, according to the report,
provides "a deeper foundational knowledge" that "is likely to
prepare them for technological change and learning new technical skills
when needed, rather than just knowing the skill of the day."
The challenge for engineering educators is to provide some of the
"softer" skills required for the new global economy, without
sacrificing the necessary "hard" science that drives innovation. At
Olin College of Engineering, the curriculum is being "bundled" in ways
that combine different courses within a team project. Students
participate in a team-based project every semester for eight semesters.
In one "bundle," students study biology and business while completing
an engineering project. Another bundle unites history, materials
science, and engineering. "This teaches students how to work and use
the resources of the team, across disciplinary boundaries," says
Olins Miller.
"We have quite an interest in entrepreneurial thinking and business,"
Miller continues. "It is a practicum that is overlayed in much of what
we do. Starting with freshman, we emphasize the ability to recognize
opportunities. We want them to think about business opportunities and
the relationship with technology. Were trying to weave that into the
engineering curriculum.
"The strategy might be better not what to teach, but how they learn,"
Miller says. "You cannot teach every chapter in every book. You cannot
cram sufficient knowledge covering everything into four years. Its
certainly a matter of balance. We need to look at how students learn,
instead of perhaps what they learn. How to answer questions, how to
integrate within systems, how to work in teams -- those skills are
important but arent taught in books."
Labors "Manifest Destiny"
None of the engineering educators interviewed for this article believe
that radical changes are needed for the new global landscape. Cal
State-Fullertons Unni-krishnan says that a historical view needs to
be taken into account. "If we look at the 1980s and the technological
scenery from that period, we were extremely despondent about the
economy," he says. "Japan was supposedly taking over the world, U.S.
productivity was low, and trade was out of tilt with the rest of the
world.
"But everything changed in a relatively short period," Unnikrishnan
continues. "Innovation led us to the boom years of the 1990s and into
2000, and Japan is nowhere on the scene, certainly not as an invincible
economic superpower. The lesson we need to take is that innovation has
made us great, and we are still the best at fostering creativity and
innovation. That is our strength and will continue to be so."
And that is precisely what makes the issue of globalization so
difficult to get ones arms around. The solutions being bandied about
-- protectionism, job quotas, trade restrictions -- are precisely the
policies that tend to discourage innovation. However, no one knows
where and when innovation will rise up. In 1990, very few could have
predicted the Internet would have such a vast impact on the world
economy. And it is difficult to predict what the next big thing will
be. Nanotechnology? Biomedical advances? Wireless systems?
Unnikrishnan points out that the outsourcing of lower-end jobs within
science and engineering is a natural occurrence. "There was a fear that
computers would lead to automation and cause unemployment," he says.
"That never happened. What happened is that low-end jobs were taken
over by computers, freeing people to do high-end jobs."
Outsourcing, Unnikrishnan contends, raises companies profits,
providing more money for research and development and ultimately
raising our standard of living. "As long as the United States continues
to remain ahead in leading-edge technologies, new jobs will be created
naturally," he says.
That, in essence, is the challenge for engineering educators within the
global economy. Technology has changed to allow work to be done without
the traditional boundaries of the workplace, in countries with lower
wages. Some critics of the trend have called outsourcing "the manifest
destiny of labor." But as long as innovation and creativity are
fostered within the nations engineering schools, newer technologies
will be created, jobs will follow, and the economy will hum along.
Certainly, some changes would be welcome to better prepare students
within the global economy. But the real mission of science and
engineering education -- creating an environment for students to dream
and innovate -- is still very much in the forefront of what engineering
schools should do. Outsourcing of jobs in the new global economy will
not change that mission.
Dan McGraw is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas.
He can be reached at dmcgraw@asee.org.
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=29100069
By The Book
Declining computer-science enrollments should worry anyone interested
in the future of the U.S. IT industry.
By Eric Chabrow, InformationWeek
Aug. 16, 2004
Approaching San Angelo, Texas, on Route 87, travelers behold apanorama
of a stony, flat terrain blanketed with buffalo and Indian grasses,
cacti, yucca, prickly pears, and mesquite trees. The arid landscape
segues into fields of maize and cotton. Nearby, sheep and cattle graze
on large ranches. San Angelo, an oasis of a city of nearly 90,000, is
situated near the junction of the southern stretch of the American
Great Plains and the northern tier of the Great Chihuahuan Desert. It
hosts a school that for three decades has been a quintessential
training ground for the American IT workforce and that, like
computer-science programs around the country, finds itself at a
crossroads.
Angelo State University has been turning out computer-science graduates
since 1974, supplying American businesses with the professionals who
develop, implement, and operate their IT systems. Angelo State and
other schools offering undergraduate computer-science programs are
facing declining enrollments as the profession loses some luster, and
fields as diverse as biotechnology and criminal justice are seen as
more exciting choices for talented science-minded students.
"IT is an important factor in our future," says Stuart Zweben, chair of
Ohio State University's computer- and information-science department.
Photo by Jeff Sciortino
Perception has become reality. Enrollment at undergraduate
computer-science programs peaked at the turn of the millennium, then
plummeted in the past few years by 30%. "In the '90s, people saw
computer science as a quick opportunity for lucrative, high-paying
jobs," says Stuart Zweben, chair of Ohio State University's computer-
and information-science department. "Then companies began layoffs, and
people heard about offshore outsourcing. That got them scared to go
into this field. Students are becoming cautious. They have cold feet."
Undergraduate enrollment at Angelo State's computer-science department
is down sharply. In the late 1990s, the school, which has 6,000 total
students, graduated about 40 computer-science students a year; last
spring, 18 received bachelor's degrees from the program. Angelo State
isn't alone. Boston University's Metropolitan College counts some 400
computer-science majors, down from more than 500 just a few years ago.
Intensely competitive, elite universities such as Carnegie Mellon and
Stanford have no problem filling their classrooms, but they're getting
fewer applications. Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science's
incoming freshman class has 130 students, but applications have fallen
about 40% from a peak of 3,200 in 2001. Mark Stehlik, assistant dean of
undergraduate education, characterizes the 2001 application figure as
artificially high. "We had too many kids with parents who dreamed of
six-figure initial job offers," he says. Stehlik says it would take
another 40% drop-off in applicants to adversely affect the quality of
the students admitted to the program.
Yet declining computer-science enrollments should worry anyone
interested in the future of the U.S. IT industry. While the Carnegie
Mellons and Stanfords of the world won't have trouble filling their
chairs, the future of IT innovation depends on them getting their fair
share of the very best young science minds to come up with the truly
breakthrough ideas in still-emerging fields such as robotics,
artificial intelligence, and next-generation information security. On
the more practical level, if companies can't get enough people in the
United States trained in the IT skills they need, it provides one more
reason to ship work to places such as India, which will mint more than
100,000 graduates in IT-related disciplines in the coming year,
according to Nascomm, an Indian IT business association.
Here's one look at where the numbers have gone: In 1995, some 10,000
undergraduate students at Ph.D.-granting schools--which represent about
a third of the nation's computer-science programs--declared majors in
computer science and computer engineering, according to research
conducted by the Computer Research Association, a group supported by
more than 200 departments of computer science, computer engineering,
and related fields. That number doubled two years later. By 2000, the
number of students declaring computer-science majors at these
universities approached 24,000 and hovered at that level for another
two years. Enrollment in computer-science programs soared in the mid-
to late 1990s, as year 2000 remediation and the dot-com and telecom
booms created an IT labor shortage. "Parents steered their children to
computer science for dreams of instant wealth," Stehlik says. "It
wasn't that the field was cool, but the dollar signs were cool."
However, the bust doubled the nation's IT jobless rate to about 5.5%,
and IT started looking like most any other field--you had to scrape and
hustle for a job out of college, especially a high-paying one. The
number of undergraduate students declaring as computer-science majors
at Ph.D.-granting schools plunged by some 30% to about 17,700 last
year. Non-Ph.D. programs reported similar declines.
Computer science often loses out to other fields of study, many of
which depend on high-end computing. The type of student who once
expressed interest in computer science now is lured by life sciences
such as biology and chemistry, or even criminal justice, attracted to
those fields by the popularity of criminal forensic shows such as CSI
and Crossing Jordan. "Things on TV guide their interests," says Charles
McCamant, head of Angelo State's computer-science department.
Leaders of computer-science programs, having ridden a rising tide of
ing decline" in the number of U.S. citizens studying to become
scientists and engineers, even as the number of jobs requiring science
and engineering training grows.
But not everyone is sure the country needs more Ph.D.s, and some
observers argue there are many technology professionals unable to find
work in the wake of the dot-com demise and the rise of offshoring.
A recent study from the Rand think tank concluded that a labor shortage
isn't looming in tech-related fields in the United States. "Despite
recurring concerns about potential shortages of (scientific, technical,
engineering and mathematics) personnel in the U.S. work force,
particularly in engineering and information technology, we did not find
evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that
they are on the horizon," the report said.
Nationwide numbers for undergraduate enrollments in computer science
departments this fall were not available. But a survey of
Ph.D.-granting computer science departments in the United States by the
Computer Research Association found that the number of new
undergraduate majors in the field dropped 18 percent last year.
Carnegie Mellon's Lee said the recent decline in undergraduate
enrollment is part of a larger trend of declining student interest in
computer science over the past two decades--a tendency temporarily
interrupted by the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. To him, a
fundamental cause is that computer science hasn't emphasized its grand
challenges.
Rather than tout the excitement of trying to magnify human intelligence
through machines, the field has focused on more practical matters,
which tend to be less attractive than big questions in disciplines like
biology or chemistry, he said.
"It's hard for voice over Internet Protocol or e-commerce to compete
with finding the age of the universe," he said.
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