Comments on: Reversing Declining Computer Science Enrollments

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 00:06:46 +0000

Outsourcing is only a small part of the cause. There are trends today were Indian companies are seeking North Americans and Europeans to manage the operations.
What keeps people away from Computer Science has more to do with bigger trends in our economy, greater demand for other professions (medical for example), or increased perception around what is actually involved in the IT industry in terms of work hours, “on-call” commitments, pay, etc.

UNB has a fine program for a smaller school. They teach a lot of classical CS topics that broaden a student’s perspective. I’m sure UNB understands that most of its students will enter the NB workforce and, as such, there isn’t demand for niche CS topics.

By: Danny D'Amours

Danny D'Amours — Thu, 29 May 2008 05:25:09 +0000

Sam: Regardless of how much outsourcing you do, there will still be a need for skilled computer science graduates. Perhaps I’m being naive, but I think that a lot of the outsourcing that takes place is displacing lower skilled programming jobs. As far as I can tell, most of the complex technical development is still taking place largely in North America and Europe although there are signs of something greater than simple outsourcing coming from countries such as India and China.

Check out this paper entitled “Impact of offshore outsourcing on CS/IS curricula” by Ernest Ferguson to see what might need to be changed in colleges and universities in order to accommodate the reality of outsourcing.

Lisa: I see that UNB did introduce a Bachelor of Information Systems which I think is a good step. UNB is in an interesting situation in that the faculty is not large enough to focus on a specialty such as bioinformatics or data mining and become known nationally and internationally for it as it still has to have a broad enough coverage of courses in order to teach the fundamentals. Yet without having a specialty to build up their reputation, it will be difficult to attract students to the program and the university. Perhaps they need to create a new niche program which could get some recognition (Computer Science for Nanotech?, Computer Science for the Energy Sector?, or perhaps Health informatics).

Right now if you are a top notch student coming out of high school and interested in computer science, I would imagine that Waterloo, U of T and perhaps Alberta or UBC are on your list. How can UNB get on that list?

By: Lisa R

Lisa R — Sat, 24 May 2008 00:42:44 +0000

UNB is introducing a new course this fall that combines IT with management in the hopes of raising enrollment and interest. I think it’s a good idea as the skills often go hand in hand. I’d also like to see more women in the field as well.

By: Sam

Sam — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:31:40 +0000

Who cares?

The software companies (Google, Sun and IBM )brought this on themselves. If the execs at these companies run out of Indian programmers, then I suggest they learn Chinese because we’re all going into marketing and accounting just like they did.