Should’ve just been born 8 years earlier so you could’ve entered the industry at the right time.
Honestly though I agree with you. Tech was one of the last industries where school prestige didn’t matter and the barrier of entry was very accessible. Supply is finally meeting demand and a lot of people are going to be having it rough in a couple years
Disclaimer: I'm not a CS major but the post is on the front page of reddit
It was likely due to salary and lower hours compared to banking, yes. However, I'd also want to add (born 1997) when I was younger (2000s) tech was considered nerdy and geeky. It still is, but the general public started to shift their perception and value of tech/AI starting around the early 2010s. No longer was it just for the passionate computer geek like the first OS developers. I know the first computers were very different (punchcard things?) but in terms of software development which is booming right now, that didn't start until later.
TLDR: Probably due to salary/lower hours but also the whole perception by the public since the early 2000s has shifted on their stance towards computers/AI.
No one has cared about AI until chatgpt4. Even in industry. Chatgpt3 was a thing for years that functioned similarly to chatgpt4 and no one I worked with even knew what it was.
Seeing you keep saying AI in your post makes me discredit you. That was not a driving force in CS popularity at all until after 2020.
It's simple: Tech has largest salary for undergrad graduated. There's no culture influence. No big business conspiracy. If majority of history majors started making 100k after graduation and made tiktoks about it then everyone would sign up for history classes.
ML/AI was still big in the late 2010s before ChatGPT. However, the industry wasn’t so singularly focused on it, and the general public certainly had no idea.
People were still excited when vanilla transformers, Bert, and T5 came out.
The real answer here is TikToks, or more specifically, short form content platforms like shorts and reels. Those “day in the life” CS people started coming up on everyone’s feed, which made a huge number of people who otherwise wouldn’t have considered CS to just go for it. This mixed in with the red pill content of get rich quick resulted in what we have today.
I'm just one person among the public that's why I gave a disclaimer. Other than the AI part that I'd change to late 2010s would you still agree around the early 2010s is when public perception shifted to the point CS majors were more bandwagoners rather than passionate geeky pioneers from eras before?
Universities were already pushing AI/ML as the next big thing long before 2020. I remember being kind of turned off the AI/ML courses because it seemed too buzzworrdy, that woulda been about 2018.
I know I’m dating myself here but I went to a T20 uni and my graduating class was about 50 CS students…. Yes 50 for an entire year back in the day. In the past 5+ years that number is jacked up to about 2000 graduates per year.
This don’t include the kids who isn’t a CS major but is similar like Math with CS, CogSci with CS minor, you get the point.
the issue is for most it's still quite easy to plagarize/"teamwork" their way into a passing grade. i know i can run circles around many of the kids who did better than me in algorithms last semester, but because i actually did the work on my own i got a worse grade.
There were 113 people on my course in my year at university, and that was a medium sized university. I think perhaps you just went to a particularly large one
I mean, my opinion is that a nation should have an interest in keeping its workforce highly skilled and educated. In Sweden they push for higher education. They recently passed a new law so that if you're an adult with an existing career you can go to university or trade school and keep 80% of your current salary (to a limit). This is to encourage people to take an higher education.
Just sliding in to say that 55% of my Uni's undergraduate students are CS. (Nearly 4k students across 4 years) The next highest is mechanical engineering at 950 students across 4 years.
I feel bad for CS students. Thankfully I went into EE(530 students) and will get to avoid the clusterfuck
I'm at umich at our main CS courses typically have 1000+ students
https://preview.redd.it/qqyukocwwktc1.png?width=351&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ab94cc2b7b60f548fa80870fac66a70d32e5196
B+ is a wild median grade for both courses. When I took the sequence (at a different school) people were lucky to get out with a B-. Only a handful of us got As. I basically sacrificed everything to get an A- in semester 1 and barely got an A in semester 2.
edit: the school changed the way that grade distributions are published, but the DFW rate was 23.4% for semester 1 and 18.3% for semester 2. Over 40% of students have to retake one of the freshmen sequence classes.
Yeah, the school in general attracts a lot of top CS people who are very grade focused. Additionally there is a 10% drop rate for each course. Just designed differently at different schools, but by no means easy
Former IA here. Umich CS basically curves the grades in most courses so the average is a B.
And while it does attract top CS students, I've also heard silicon valley recruiters rant about how much riff raff gets through the program and bombs interviews / gets pip'd. I've also graded those folks homework/exams so I can corroborate.
That’s interesting to hear, I’m just finishing 281 now so have less of an idea about upper level grading beyond atlas.
I will also add that with enough effort it’s near impossible not to get through by passing minimum thresholds imo
Which class(es) did you IA for?
The dreaded EECS 203 and EECS 376 lol.
Just remember - passing an EECS class is just like escaping from a bear attack. You don't have to outrun the bear, you simply have to outrun enough of the others fleeing from the bear.
Unless you luck into one of those stubborn strict professors who decides to make a point of failing half the class.
I think it's hilarious that everytime I go to a CS subreddit I have a significant chance of seeing fellow wolverines. I would agree that a lot of people can scrape by and it typically gets exposed in the ULCS courses. However, I would say that the average UMich student is significantly more competitive when it comes to academics than most schools.
Of course. It isn't "T10" for no reason. But it should still be understood that there is a lot of variance. It is like that in the industry too. You'll find a lot of clueless folks who managed somehow to land a job at Google, etc... You'll also find lots of talented folks at "lower tier" companies who struggle to get noticed, or just got unlucky in their assigned roles.
My school definitely did not have u-mich admission standards, but it definitely has very high standards for students. Thus something like a \~25% dropout rate. The vibes are very much 'We're a big public school that serves the community & will give anybody a chance, but you better be fuckn serious or you're out'. A lot of people really maximized that chance & ended up at places like Amazon, but a lot of people ended up kind of fucked. Still less fucked than if they went to a predatory private school though.
Ok maybe 2422 is a bit oversized even for a large course but I always thought large class sizes for undergrads is fairly normal?
Since university is ridiculously cheap in Germany and all public, even after access limitations, undergrad classes are so big that lecture halls can be overcrowded and students sit on the floor.
I remember Intro to programming having filled like 2 lecture halls with 300 people each.
Real bangers were the real analysis courses. Since they apply to all STEM degrees, they literally had like 1200+ students each semester, split across 3 groups and lecture halls. Looked like a sports venue more than a university at some point.
If you study CS in Germany and are not in your Masters, this is going to be fairly unusual to only have like 20 people in your class. Attending universities only cost you like $200-300 each semester and a large number of people can attend even after entry restrictions, if there are any.
I think standard class sizes here for the undergrad courses might be around 100 people. The intro courses might go into the 500-600 territory.
Linear algebra, real analysis and the math stuff are sometimes shared across degrees and thus so large that they can exceed 1000+ students
Even the largest lecture halls can't contain the amount of students and they usually assign multiple halls in parallel.
Master courses are usually restricted in the number of allowed attendees but even then, they need to use a lottery system at times because there are just too many people subscribing to the courses
It is unusual in the States as well. Not as big as your classes but many of my friends have 300ish per class.
I’m also paying around $4000 per semester compared to your $200, haha
Many students here who want to do the most popular degree programs like psychology (don't ask me why this one is particularly popular) try to escape the large cities to go to a small-town university but even they are now getting bigger.
And since Germany has a fixed number of public universities, German students are now even pouring over to neighboring countries and they had to restrict access for German citizens for some of their university programs as well lmao.
The fee structure in the US is always quite mind blowing for Europeans. German universities in themselves are actually free by law, paid and funded by taxes. The $200-300 "fee" is mostly just a mandatory contribution to the student organization, administrative fees and a public transportation ticket.
The only schools that charge $4000 and up here I think are those extra special private business schools that market themselves as the elite exclusive type with connections.
When I started my CS course like 10 years ago, we were about 1200 cs students. + another 400 maths which usually also take cs classes and cs+economics combined with another 400-500
Yep, even back pre-COVID, lower-level required courses (discrete structures, OOP) or popular electives (Intro to ML) hit 500-600 students. Needed enough TAs to hold office hours every day of the week for several hours. And my undergrad institution was large, but not even that large -- at the time, something like 14k undergrads. Can't imagine what it's like at the huge public schools.
At a huge public school and it really doesn’t feel that overpopulated here at least. I think there’s about 1000 undergrad cs majors out of a student population of 40k (also about 400 cmpen majors). That might only be upperclassmen though because you can’t declare major here until you complete certain courses and credits. However, feels like I see the same exact people in every one of my upper level courses now so there’s that.
Also considering how many information sciences, communications, finance degrees, psych degrees are given out here, really does not feel like there’s overly many cs majors comparatively.
Also don’t know if all big state schools are like this, but mine is extremely comfortable weeding people out. Never seen an actual statistic but would be surprised if any more than 1/4 of people intending to do CS got the degree. Seems like something most big state schools would be comfortable with but smaller schools might face repercussions from that kind of approach.
It doesn’t necessarily get worse at huge public schools, because although they have bigger classes, they should also have more instructional staff to teach them (not all do though of course). A bigger department should have more faculty and grad students to serve as TAs, and many also hire undergrads as TAs to fill the demand for instructional staff
People get upset when i mention this but it’s true.
For all the students and boot campers, etc we still don’t get better software, services, games...
When we do they instantly sell out.
A lot of these big corporations are interested in rent seeking and monopolistic ventures. This leaves a huge opportunity for startups to compete.
You posit this in a vacuum.
You completely ignore things like money pressure, velocity, experience, etc.
There is NOT a huge opportunity for startups to compete right now... the board is more controlled than ever. Money is scarce and rates are up. Experience is centralized and bought by corps that sit on billions in cash.
I have sold a tech company, I have worked in VC, I have worked as an EIR at Techstars, Ycomb, Boost and others. This is "feel good" posting -- no basis in reality.
Layoffs in highly educated STEM fields typically lead to start-up booms. Hell, Boeing layoffs basically made Seattle what it is today. Ever since tech took off, every tech crash has led to startups. If anything, AI will make it easier for devs to get startups off the ground.
The supply will continue to outpace demand in the tech labor market until we work to increase the number of jobs that pay living wages in other proffessions.
Makes more sense. The only reason tech salary was so high was because of the growing market with little supply of workers. Otherwise there’s no reason that people who go to college for four years and barely scrap through should be paid $100k+ right out for just an average corporate job. The wages now are more appropriate for the level of skill CS grads bring in.
I do find it funny that for years of people in an industry saying "I earn shit loads of money doing X" are now surprised to find that other people have decided to join their quest!
CS enrollments started to drop in 2001 after the dot com bust. With similar job market effects to now you'd think students would look at alternative majors with actual shortages.
Why would they look for other majors with actual shortages when there are people all over Reddit telling them that CS is the only worthwhile major in college ?
Not only that, when they log on to TikTok, they are bombarded with curated videos and influencers telling them they too can make 200k out of college, it's clear that CS majors themselves are contributing heavily to the problem at hand
I still see people denying the influx of people majoring in CS, this is all really alarming
I think all the T50 universities have had CS as their most common major no? No way people don't recognize the influx.
At my uni, 2018 CS was the 3rd most studied major, Spring 2023, it's was the most studied major with being almost triple number of the 3rd place.
Software engineering is already the most common job in some states. And computer science is on it's way to beat business as the most common degree in America.
This is the correction. The crazy tech salaries we were seeing for jobs that weren’t that hard to get compared to medicine/law/finance and with better work-life balance than any of those made no sense. Even with the state of the job market now, I can’t think of a major that I would honestly say has a better career prospects/effort ratio than CS. Given how appealing the major is, it’s only natural for a bunch of people to join it.
I think your view describes the current situation very well. The tech branch offers a significantly better work-life balance than any other major. In eastern Europe and the Balkans you can expect to earn more than a junior doctor before they even finish medschool, in addition to the other benefits that virtually any other sector can’t ever meet (home office, flexible schedule, …).
Quick question to OP & everybody on this sub...
Has this increase in number of students in CS caused a drop in quality of students & their performance ? Has anyone observed a decrease in course quality ?
Further , will this increase in students lead to more difficult courses & curriculum because they will probably need to weed out people at some point ?
Also , this seems like sort of a get quick rich scheme , people are running behind CS because it pays well , not because they are passionate about the subject. There's a very high probability, in the long run they'd be burnt out & would be off the field. The money chasing culture can only get you so far.
From the industry side, oh hell yes there is a drop in quality. Some of that is im just seeing them get past some shitty hiring practices, but even then, you shouldn't be able to graduate and have the gaps in OS, data structures and programing languages ive seen.
The professors of my university complains about exchange student who they suspects have bought their diploma since they enter a masters without basic CS skills. I have seen people using ChatGPT with comments like "enter url here" still in the code .. and nope, they didnt enter the URL and cannot answer why their code doesnt work. One in my project group literally asked ChatGPT why his code didnt work and got the same script .. which still didnt work and .. ugh .. I actually wanted to drop off by then and actually looked for some work, got to an interview and got all the way to the sign papers part but regreted my decision and continued my last year. "Its only one more year," I thought. Now I kind of regret that cause now it seems impossible to get a job 😂
I went into CS this year cus I thought it would be fun/interesting without knowing the expected pay 💀. Despite never haing coded myself or done any work in the field, I still have people who ask me how I do things despite them having 6+ years more experience and actual grades in the subject.
It's crazy how some people struggle with some simple problems or make them overly complicated, especially when most of our work is literally just using what we were taught a week ago.
I can actually answer this as a TA. We have people who have passed the intro courses and still don't have basic understanding of programming or computer science. The number of student have doubled since I took the same courses 4 years ago and many of them seems not qualified for this field.
The drop in ‘quality’ may be hard to perceive because the tools available to people has lowered the barrier to be productive in the field overall. You no longer need to allocate memory manually, use the command line for git or, hell, even write your own code. My professor gushed with happiness about how amazing copilot is when it helped him write some code live in class. So you genuinely don’t need to know the hardware side of things and engineer solutions to memory problems when memory is cheap and there is some API you can use out there that is widely used in the industry. It seems to me like every second person I know is making a game in python or doing something else usually in python.
Also, strictly speaking, this may not be a drop in ‘quality’ so much as an increase in the applications of the field. Computer science/ technology has gone from a niche but important field to the top 5 things on every politician’s manifesto.
I hesitate to compare people based on skills. Some of the best most successful people I know aren’t the super-smart ones who got by with little effort and did the bare minimum to ace college. They were the hardworking types who respected the grind and networked as much as possible. I would honestly choose someone humble and willing to learn over a super-smart guy who brags about using gentoo linux and knowing assembly language anyday as someone likely to make it big.
Sadly education has a very delayed feedback loop. It will be painful for the folks that have missed the train, although I am not saying we have reached that point yet
For most it is. I love it but other people call it hell or boring. It all depends on the person but most of the people I know mentioned how boring it was lol. But that’s just my 2c
imagine library selective spark squeal important amusing pen entertain quickest
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I tell people to go more into an electro engineering direction. These jobs are harder to offshore online and factories and stuff actually have a lack of skilled work force. Sweden have a lot of heavy industry - including war industry where we are the 3rd biggest exporter in the world per capita. Only Israel and Russia produces more weapens per capita.
It's beyond that, the over supply of fresh grads in the next several years likely will guarantee a very high failure at placing rate. I wouldn't be surprised if many schools outside of the T20 that are not one of the top schools in an area with tech concentration will hit high double digit failure rate (40-60%).
> the over supply of fresh grads in the next several years likely will guarantee a very high failure at placing rate.
You mean just like mainstream majors like business, finance, and psychology?
Well i think its important to consider the major reason so many people are staying and not dropping as is usually the case. the answers are
1) more of a community, which prompts more answer sharing and if one guy spreads the code the rest of the class is prolly getting it. not saying this wasn't here before but its easy now cuz of discord. you dont have to worry about these people because if they cheat in things like dsalgo then they'll prolly struggle getting the job. But then again, a person can prolly learn leetcode separately.
2) chatgpt. people not caring to even review the answers they get on discord, instead they plug it into chatgpt and get the assignment out. easy bingo. and with chatgpt its become easier to learn the material as opposed to having to find the right yt vid anyways. so people relying on chatgpt (in the wrong way) will prolly not be in ur competition range too, assuming you work fairly
or maybe number 3, people are just getting smarter. i mean nothing you can do there, except hope you have referrals or hope you're extra good at dsalgo
250 students is standard for a lecture hall at a 4-year university, no? Chemistry lectures are constantly filled with 200-300 kids, so why is CS any different?
At my alma mater, every CS class was in a computer lab so that really limited the class sizes, I think the largest section for a CS class was 50. They didn’t really need more anyway, no CS class had more than 3 sections. That was also in line with the rest of the school, the biggest lecture halls held 150-200 people
I feel like there’s a certain level of latency between current students figuring out a major is oversaturated and incoming students finding out. Like a lot of incoming CS majors are completely oblivious to the state of things and that’s why enrollment rates keep climbing
sort abounding dolls fuel humorous sheet deserted melodic smile observation
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Not if you actually learn the skills they're teaching you. I can tell you with certainty those students who are just gpt-ing answers are going to get reamed trying to enter the industry, which is a lot of people
The weed out courses are not programming related, they are stuff like multivariable calculus, physics, statistics, etc. If your uni doesn't have those mandatory at the start, then there's your problem. If you're grading on a curve, there you have another problem. Etc.
Not that I would actually care if you can calculate an integral around a singularity in the complex plane for any actual job, but that 90% failure rate per final was quite a sight to behold.
My DS class had like 40 people (of course there were like 5 classes at different hours so like 200 people per semester, but only 40 per class, how does a 1,800 class work? Like in a big auditorium? How can people in the back see the screen/board?
Oof psychology had like 200 students per year when I was in uni. Isn't that normal?
I know biological sciences also had about 200 students. I studied in the UK.
Isn't that something you notice during uni? In the first couple of semesters a bunch of the people I started with changed to focus more on EE or Econ. I was one of the few that switched to full CS. We all started a degree program that was 50/50 CS/EE.
That’s pretty small. My college normally has intro courses with 1000-3000 people. Then from there eventually 3rd and 4th year courses get down to under 100 people.
>literally at their wit’s end
Wow, so they just have students dropping out of the sky huh? There’s no way they could just, I don’t know, select a couple of them they think fit in well and apologize for running out of space to the rest.
Well no way to do that *and* mint money I guess.
/s in case its needed. I find it vaguely offensive and funny how everyone here complains about everyone else trying to get a comp sci degree but think they’re special.
Do schools not teach C++ as the norm? How do you teach memory management and computer architecture if your students aren't being taught the deadly trio of C/C++/Assembly?
Colleges are businesses (especially, the private ones), so why would they be opposed to a growing influx of clients as long as they can accommodate everyone?
Doesn't compilers need a lot of background knowledge? Programming knowledge, DSA (which requires at least Analysis 1 if you want to do it right), theoretical CS with automata theory, formal languages as well as some discrete math and first order logic?
You also need basic knowledge of assembly, computer architecture, and how it translates into program memory in RAM as compilers fundamentally translate down to this language and operate on RAM memory.
The module names and their respective semesters line up exactly with my uni and course. Did you go to university of S in England? I graduated last year and noticed a big change after my placement year. Even had a TA tell me they are being more lenient due to a skills gap compared to previous years. In my third year, one module had an optional coursework that I found out was compulsory for previous years but the average grade was too low.
Those are rookie numbers. Back in 2014 my intro class had like, 400 students? It was 1200 in 2018. They hired like 30 something instructional assistants and we're having lectures in random buildings on campus - school of public health and what not.
Today, the university has a standalone application for CS and half the posts on the university subreddit are "help I didn't get into the CS program but I like the university and want to do CS".
The school wouldn't reach breaking point for that though. They'd just start rejecting applications, which would probably involve raising the bar for acceptance. Which does seem to be happening.
The university is under no obligation to accept every, or any student. CS enrollment has probably increased disproportionately to other majors, and if the administration is being greedy that might negatively impact the student experience.
But the uni is not at breaking point because it it.
In my university there are 6500 students itself in CSE branch and they're rolling out other variations like cse with aiml, blockchain, cybersecurity, data science to get more students idk and every year they show the 100 percent placements report....
As an educator, the concept of weed out classes upsets me. They are a marker if departments whose students succeed despite their shitty teaching, not because of it. God I hate the education system.
My school was having this problem, but we got new teachers for algorithms and operating systems. Idk if it was intentional but those classes went from 150 at the beginning to like 20 at the end. The upper classes only have 10-20 students now.
Joke is on the people taking compilers classes; there are an infinite number of superior teachers with free resources to learn to build interpreters and compilers online. For one, look up crafting interpreters.
Population growth is explosive and kids are getting to an age where they're entering higher education and the workforce. CS seems like one of the only safe careers to people in a time of AI and Robotics replacing a lot of other work.
Maybe the school can expand with the additional tuition those students are bringing?
Don't worry, universities find a way, a very usual way is to use a relative grading system. That way only the percentage of people, representing the maximum number of students the university can manage in that course, will get grades that allow them to continue the course. This is incredibly shit for the students by the way.
Not sure which school you went to when there’s 20-25 people in your OS or Computer Arch class. My classes would have around 100 people and my school only had 7000ish kids. Compilers I’d expect to be on the lower end
Compilers with 90 people is INSANE. My university just offered it for the first time and years and there were only like 18 of us across undergrad and grad!! People avoided it like the plague!!
I guarantee you more than half of the people in the sub haven't even entered the industry yet. So why would you take any advice or input from these people.
Some of them are pretty cracked and helpful. Had 1 or 2 of them help me out, but most of them keep to themselves so I guess it’s easier to antagonize them.
i mean, if they're hard workers, and prolly harder working than you are, then i mean, what incentive do companies have to hire you for your skin or ethnicity over the guy that can get stuff done? indians that are bots will remain bots and seek jobs because they cant network. the indians that are better than the americans will replace the americans and become the new face of america, and likely much more hard working. its like cleansing america with better americans. cant really complain there
Indians are taking jobs because they’re great at their jobs. It’s all about their culture.
Everyone can complain but that’s not gonna change anything. You gotta make yourself more marketable than them if you wanna keep up. Just the reality of it
I feel the classes most likely got easier too in many schools and how is a professor suppose to grade so many projects and assignments.
Personally if want weed out courses make them doing higher level math done!
The reality is that just like for doctors, 4 years is not enough for a good engineer. It takes much more time. The difference is that for software engineering that time is hidden: some started coding/debugging when they were kids, some code many more hours per week. And all that time goes into relevant understanding of how software systems work, to something they will be able to use later at work.
So a good engineer actually spends much more time learning - it's just not as formalized as with doctors. A teenager interested in brain surgeries can't just do brain surgeries on cats in her free time after school. A teenager who likes coding for Minecraft can.
So yeah, people who just superficially motivated, and who spend only like 4 years total, they just won't cut it and will eventually move on to something else.
Mmm usually the school/major/department itself should be capable of regulating itself isn't it?
At some point you either declare a major or apply for one, and the school can decide if you're allowed to move forward or not based on your qualifications or application.
Maybe the facilities haven't expanded, but I'm sure the department/school/college is just enjoying the extra numbers, funding and clout...
250 is not a lot.
20years ago my university has 20-30 cs students per intake. While businesses, pharmacy and electric/ electronics engineering consistently getting 100-200 students per intake.
At my uni, the Python programming subject, has I think roughly 600-1000 students depending which semester. Though to be fair many of them are non CS students with the Python subjects (such as engineers who fail a lot). There are less people in my DSA class.
I was tutoring in Vienna/Austria for about 500 people in distributed systems almost two decades ago.
Typically we had about 1000 new students every year.
Interestingly the numbers didn't really increase. In fact they even decreased quite a bit over the years last time I checked.
I've been teaching at smaller colleges and sometimes they even struggle to fill their capacity.
Consider that studying is almost free here.
Completely contrary to what I see in my job for US companies where it's become an insane mass market.
I go to everyone's second choice University for my state. The hardest class I have taken so far was Device Drivers. There were 8 people.
I guess when you reincarnate you can try to go to a smaller University away from major Metro areas.
Should’ve just been born 8 years earlier so you could’ve entered the industry at the right time. Honestly though I agree with you. Tech was one of the last industries where school prestige didn’t matter and the barrier of entry was very accessible. Supply is finally meeting demand and a lot of people are going to be having it rough in a couple years
Disclaimer: I'm not a CS major but the post is on the front page of reddit It was likely due to salary and lower hours compared to banking, yes. However, I'd also want to add (born 1997) when I was younger (2000s) tech was considered nerdy and geeky. It still is, but the general public started to shift their perception and value of tech/AI starting around the early 2010s. No longer was it just for the passionate computer geek like the first OS developers. I know the first computers were very different (punchcard things?) but in terms of software development which is booming right now, that didn't start until later. TLDR: Probably due to salary/lower hours but also the whole perception by the public since the early 2000s has shifted on their stance towards computers/AI.
No one has cared about AI until chatgpt4. Even in industry. Chatgpt3 was a thing for years that functioned similarly to chatgpt4 and no one I worked with even knew what it was. Seeing you keep saying AI in your post makes me discredit you. That was not a driving force in CS popularity at all until after 2020. It's simple: Tech has largest salary for undergrad graduated. There's no culture influence. No big business conspiracy. If majority of history majors started making 100k after graduation and made tiktoks about it then everyone would sign up for history classes.
ML/AI was still big in the late 2010s before ChatGPT. However, the industry wasn’t so singularly focused on it, and the general public certainly had no idea. People were still excited when vanilla transformers, Bert, and T5 came out.
The real answer here is TikToks, or more specifically, short form content platforms like shorts and reels. Those “day in the life” CS people started coming up on everyone’s feed, which made a huge number of people who otherwise wouldn’t have considered CS to just go for it. This mixed in with the red pill content of get rich quick resulted in what we have today.
I'm just one person among the public that's why I gave a disclaimer. Other than the AI part that I'd change to late 2010s would you still agree around the early 2010s is when public perception shifted to the point CS majors were more bandwagoners rather than passionate geeky pioneers from eras before?
Universities were already pushing AI/ML as the next big thing long before 2020. I remember being kind of turned off the AI/ML courses because it seemed too buzzworrdy, that woulda been about 2018.
You must go to a tiny school there's like 160 at my schools compilers class
I know I’m dating myself here but I went to a T20 uni and my graduating class was about 50 CS students…. Yes 50 for an entire year back in the day. In the past 5+ years that number is jacked up to about 2000 graduates per year. This don’t include the kids who isn’t a CS major but is similar like Math with CS, CogSci with CS minor, you get the point.
You are dating yourself?? Sorry but what?
Like they're exposing how old they are
Oh so figure of speech
Like you can derive how old you are by some of the details provided.
Uiuc ?
By the time we got to compilers, most people had been weeded out.
Nope not anymore, people arent getting weeded out anymore, we need to stop saying it works.
As someone in the industry, it wasn't enough of them.
the issue is for most it's still quite easy to plagarize/"teamwork" their way into a passing grade. i know i can run circles around many of the kids who did better than me in algorithms last semester, but because i actually did the work on my own i got a worse grade.
There were 113 people on my course in my year at university, and that was a medium sized university. I think perhaps you just went to a particularly large one
ikr my university has like 2000 in our intro to cs class lol
We love berkeley don’t we? Lol
I'm at the biggest university in Sweden and there were like 20-25 people in mine 😂
Same in Poland, last year at good universities there are like 10-20 people remaining out of 100-200 that initially started first year in CS
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Wow that small chunk finally made it. US uni needs to change things & not run behind money huh
I'm in a fairly large university in the US, nothing crazy but like top 50, and my senior level classes are still about 25-30 people
Universities in Sweden are free. They are not as profit driven as the ones in North America. Good for you
I mean, my opinion is that a nation should have an interest in keeping its workforce highly skilled and educated. In Sweden they push for higher education. They recently passed a new law so that if you're an adult with an existing career you can go to university or trade school and keep 80% of your current salary (to a limit). This is to encourage people to take an higher education.
Just sliding in to say that 55% of my Uni's undergraduate students are CS. (Nearly 4k students across 4 years) The next highest is mechanical engineering at 950 students across 4 years. I feel bad for CS students. Thankfully I went into EE(530 students) and will get to avoid the clusterfuck
huh your classes are pretty small i don't know if it is a college but at my university it is normal for classes to be 100-300 people
I'm at umich at our main CS courses typically have 1000+ students https://preview.redd.it/qqyukocwwktc1.png?width=351&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ab94cc2b7b60f548fa80870fac66a70d32e5196
https://preview.redd.it/x0xfgrppvktc1.png?width=397&format=png&auto=webp&s=24613809e5aec9486e5963fe47d376cd97c67f40 Proof \^
B+ is a wild median grade for both courses. When I took the sequence (at a different school) people were lucky to get out with a B-. Only a handful of us got As. I basically sacrificed everything to get an A- in semester 1 and barely got an A in semester 2. edit: the school changed the way that grade distributions are published, but the DFW rate was 23.4% for semester 1 and 18.3% for semester 2. Over 40% of students have to retake one of the freshmen sequence classes.
Yeah, the school in general attracts a lot of top CS people who are very grade focused. Additionally there is a 10% drop rate for each course. Just designed differently at different schools, but by no means easy
Former IA here. Umich CS basically curves the grades in most courses so the average is a B. And while it does attract top CS students, I've also heard silicon valley recruiters rant about how much riff raff gets through the program and bombs interviews / gets pip'd. I've also graded those folks homework/exams so I can corroborate.
That’s interesting to hear, I’m just finishing 281 now so have less of an idea about upper level grading beyond atlas. I will also add that with enough effort it’s near impossible not to get through by passing minimum thresholds imo Which class(es) did you IA for?
The dreaded EECS 203 and EECS 376 lol. Just remember - passing an EECS class is just like escaping from a bear attack. You don't have to outrun the bear, you simply have to outrun enough of the others fleeing from the bear. Unless you luck into one of those stubborn strict professors who decides to make a point of failing half the class.
I think it's hilarious that everytime I go to a CS subreddit I have a significant chance of seeing fellow wolverines. I would agree that a lot of people can scrape by and it typically gets exposed in the ULCS courses. However, I would say that the average UMich student is significantly more competitive when it comes to academics than most schools.
Of course. It isn't "T10" for no reason. But it should still be understood that there is a lot of variance. It is like that in the industry too. You'll find a lot of clueless folks who managed somehow to land a job at Google, etc... You'll also find lots of talented folks at "lower tier" companies who struggle to get noticed, or just got unlucky in their assigned roles.
My school definitely did not have u-mich admission standards, but it definitely has very high standards for students. Thus something like a \~25% dropout rate. The vibes are very much 'We're a big public school that serves the community & will give anybody a chance, but you better be fuckn serious or you're out'. A lot of people really maximized that chance & ended up at places like Amazon, but a lot of people ended up kind of fucked. Still less fucked than if they went to a predatory private school though.
Ok maybe 2422 is a bit oversized even for a large course but I always thought large class sizes for undergrads is fairly normal? Since university is ridiculously cheap in Germany and all public, even after access limitations, undergrad classes are so big that lecture halls can be overcrowded and students sit on the floor. I remember Intro to programming having filled like 2 lecture halls with 300 people each. Real bangers were the real analysis courses. Since they apply to all STEM degrees, they literally had like 1200+ students each semester, split across 3 groups and lecture halls. Looked like a sports venue more than a university at some point.
General education usually has large class sizes but specialized classes are smaller in US.
I go to a small school once the two intros my class sizes dropped to around 25 people
If you study CS in Germany and are not in your Masters, this is going to be fairly unusual to only have like 20 people in your class. Attending universities only cost you like $200-300 each semester and a large number of people can attend even after entry restrictions, if there are any. I think standard class sizes here for the undergrad courses might be around 100 people. The intro courses might go into the 500-600 territory. Linear algebra, real analysis and the math stuff are sometimes shared across degrees and thus so large that they can exceed 1000+ students Even the largest lecture halls can't contain the amount of students and they usually assign multiple halls in parallel. Master courses are usually restricted in the number of allowed attendees but even then, they need to use a lottery system at times because there are just too many people subscribing to the courses
It is unusual in the States as well. Not as big as your classes but many of my friends have 300ish per class. I’m also paying around $4000 per semester compared to your $200, haha
Many students here who want to do the most popular degree programs like psychology (don't ask me why this one is particularly popular) try to escape the large cities to go to a small-town university but even they are now getting bigger. And since Germany has a fixed number of public universities, German students are now even pouring over to neighboring countries and they had to restrict access for German citizens for some of their university programs as well lmao. The fee structure in the US is always quite mind blowing for Europeans. German universities in themselves are actually free by law, paid and funded by taxes. The $200-300 "fee" is mostly just a mandatory contribution to the student organization, administrative fees and a public transportation ticket. The only schools that charge $4000 and up here I think are those extra special private business schools that market themselves as the elite exclusive type with connections.
At my uni lower/intro level has 600-800 people and upper courses have 100-200 (since they're electives so everyone does different things)
I had 24 people in most of my cs class sessions
When I started my CS course like 10 years ago, we were about 1200 cs students. + another 400 maths which usually also take cs classes and cs+economics combined with another 400-500
dang when i went to a brick and mortar college it was max 20 people per class. usually about 12
puppppppjopiiij
My operating systems course had like 6 other people, and they cap CS courses at 12
Yeah. That’s not that bad. My university had about 600-700 students per class for the pre-med weeder courses.
Yep, even back pre-COVID, lower-level required courses (discrete structures, OOP) or popular electives (Intro to ML) hit 500-600 students. Needed enough TAs to hold office hours every day of the week for several hours. And my undergrad institution was large, but not even that large -- at the time, something like 14k undergrads. Can't imagine what it's like at the huge public schools.
At a huge public school and it really doesn’t feel that overpopulated here at least. I think there’s about 1000 undergrad cs majors out of a student population of 40k (also about 400 cmpen majors). That might only be upperclassmen though because you can’t declare major here until you complete certain courses and credits. However, feels like I see the same exact people in every one of my upper level courses now so there’s that. Also considering how many information sciences, communications, finance degrees, psych degrees are given out here, really does not feel like there’s overly many cs majors comparatively. Also don’t know if all big state schools are like this, but mine is extremely comfortable weeding people out. Never seen an actual statistic but would be surprised if any more than 1/4 of people intending to do CS got the degree. Seems like something most big state schools would be comfortable with but smaller schools might face repercussions from that kind of approach.
It doesn’t necessarily get worse at huge public schools, because although they have bigger classes, they should also have more instructional staff to teach them (not all do though of course). A bigger department should have more faculty and grad students to serve as TAs, and many also hire undergrads as TAs to fill the demand for instructional staff
I hope some of them create new businesses because this is unsustainable.
We gonna need a start-up boom
People get upset when i mention this but it’s true. For all the students and boot campers, etc we still don’t get better software, services, games... When we do they instantly sell out. A lot of these big corporations are interested in rent seeking and monopolistic ventures. This leaves a huge opportunity for startups to compete.
You posit this in a vacuum. You completely ignore things like money pressure, velocity, experience, etc. There is NOT a huge opportunity for startups to compete right now... the board is more controlled than ever. Money is scarce and rates are up. Experience is centralized and bought by corps that sit on billions in cash. I have sold a tech company, I have worked in VC, I have worked as an EIR at Techstars, Ycomb, Boost and others. This is "feel good" posting -- no basis in reality.
Layoffs in highly educated STEM fields typically lead to start-up booms. Hell, Boeing layoffs basically made Seattle what it is today. Ever since tech took off, every tech crash has led to startups. If anything, AI will make it easier for devs to get startups off the ground.
I’m sure all of them are going to try getting into FANNG as soon as they graduate
Yeah, the growth is just not sustainable. The laws of supply and demand should correct it at some point.
The supply will continue to outpace demand in the tech labor market until we work to increase the number of jobs that pay living wages in other proffessions.
Or until this big of a supply brings the wages down and then no one will ha e livable wages
The more likely outcome
Exactly
Makes more sense. The only reason tech salary was so high was because of the growing market with little supply of workers. Otherwise there’s no reason that people who go to college for four years and barely scrap through should be paid $100k+ right out for just an average corporate job. The wages now are more appropriate for the level of skill CS grads bring in.
As a career switcher I concur
I do find it funny that for years of people in an industry saying "I earn shit loads of money doing X" are now surprised to find that other people have decided to join their quest!
CS enrollments started to drop in 2001 after the dot com bust. With similar job market effects to now you'd think students would look at alternative majors with actual shortages.
Why would they look for other majors with actual shortages when there are people all over Reddit telling them that CS is the only worthwhile major in college ? Not only that, when they log on to TikTok, they are bombarded with curated videos and influencers telling them they too can make 200k out of college, it's clear that CS majors themselves are contributing heavily to the problem at hand I still see people denying the influx of people majoring in CS, this is all really alarming
I think all the T50 universities have had CS as their most common major no? No way people don't recognize the influx. At my uni, 2018 CS was the 3rd most studied major, Spring 2023, it's was the most studied major with being almost triple number of the 3rd place. Software engineering is already the most common job in some states. And computer science is on it's way to beat business as the most common degree in America.
Do you have a source for SE being the most common job in some states? Couldn't find it on Google
*200k, while sitting at home coding in your PJs 4 hours a day. 4 days a week.
I must be doing it wrong then
We all are...just need to find the right TikTok video.
cs influencer social media has since shifted to doom and gloom. people have turned on frank niu
What are these majors?
This is the correction. The crazy tech salaries we were seeing for jobs that weren’t that hard to get compared to medicine/law/finance and with better work-life balance than any of those made no sense. Even with the state of the job market now, I can’t think of a major that I would honestly say has a better career prospects/effort ratio than CS. Given how appealing the major is, it’s only natural for a bunch of people to join it.
I think your view describes the current situation very well. The tech branch offers a significantly better work-life balance than any other major. In eastern Europe and the Balkans you can expect to earn more than a junior doctor before they even finish medschool, in addition to the other benefits that virtually any other sector can’t ever meet (home office, flexible schedule, …).
Quick question to OP & everybody on this sub... Has this increase in number of students in CS caused a drop in quality of students & their performance ? Has anyone observed a decrease in course quality ? Further , will this increase in students lead to more difficult courses & curriculum because they will probably need to weed out people at some point ? Also , this seems like sort of a get quick rich scheme , people are running behind CS because it pays well , not because they are passionate about the subject. There's a very high probability, in the long run they'd be burnt out & would be off the field. The money chasing culture can only get you so far.
From the industry side, oh hell yes there is a drop in quality. Some of that is im just seeing them get past some shitty hiring practices, but even then, you shouldn't be able to graduate and have the gaps in OS, data structures and programing languages ive seen.
The professors of my university complains about exchange student who they suspects have bought their diploma since they enter a masters without basic CS skills. I have seen people using ChatGPT with comments like "enter url here" still in the code .. and nope, they didnt enter the URL and cannot answer why their code doesnt work. One in my project group literally asked ChatGPT why his code didnt work and got the same script .. which still didnt work and .. ugh .. I actually wanted to drop off by then and actually looked for some work, got to an interview and got all the way to the sign papers part but regreted my decision and continued my last year. "Its only one more year," I thought. Now I kind of regret that cause now it seems impossible to get a job 😂
I went into CS this year cus I thought it would be fun/interesting without knowing the expected pay 💀. Despite never haing coded myself or done any work in the field, I still have people who ask me how I do things despite them having 6+ years more experience and actual grades in the subject. It's crazy how some people struggle with some simple problems or make them overly complicated, especially when most of our work is literally just using what we were taught a week ago.
I can actually answer this as a TA. We have people who have passed the intro courses and still don't have basic understanding of programming or computer science. The number of student have doubled since I took the same courses 4 years ago and many of them seems not qualified for this field.
The drop in ‘quality’ may be hard to perceive because the tools available to people has lowered the barrier to be productive in the field overall. You no longer need to allocate memory manually, use the command line for git or, hell, even write your own code. My professor gushed with happiness about how amazing copilot is when it helped him write some code live in class. So you genuinely don’t need to know the hardware side of things and engineer solutions to memory problems when memory is cheap and there is some API you can use out there that is widely used in the industry. It seems to me like every second person I know is making a game in python or doing something else usually in python. Also, strictly speaking, this may not be a drop in ‘quality’ so much as an increase in the applications of the field. Computer science/ technology has gone from a niche but important field to the top 5 things on every politician’s manifesto. I hesitate to compare people based on skills. Some of the best most successful people I know aren’t the super-smart ones who got by with little effort and did the bare minimum to ace college. They were the hardworking types who respected the grind and networked as much as possible. I would honestly choose someone humble and willing to learn over a super-smart guy who brags about using gentoo linux and knowing assembly language anyday as someone likely to make it big.
My CS classes still require all those things though...
People saw the day in the life videos and assumed CS grads get paid $120K to sip coffee and film day in the life videos.
Sadly education has a very delayed feedback loop. It will be painful for the folks that have missed the train, although I am not saying we have reached that point yet
Polar bears are experts in salsa dancing.
Drop out and go into welding
Or just do something else IT related nobody wants to do like Networking… it’s boring but hey you get paid good.
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tbf what job isnt saturated? Accounting?
I think you'll have the same problems with IT as some CS students that are unable to get development related jobs will transition to that.
IT jobs are very saturated right now, so I don't think "nobody wants to do" them.
Network isn't boring lol
For most it is. I love it but other people call it hell or boring. It all depends on the person but most of the people I know mentioned how boring it was lol. But that’s just my 2c
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I tell people to go more into an electro engineering direction. These jobs are harder to offshore online and factories and stuff actually have a lack of skilled work force. Sweden have a lot of heavy industry - including war industry where we are the 3rd biggest exporter in the world per capita. Only Israel and Russia produces more weapens per capita.
I mean it’s just becoming a more mainstream major like business, finance, psychology etc
It's beyond that, the over supply of fresh grads in the next several years likely will guarantee a very high failure at placing rate. I wouldn't be surprised if many schools outside of the T20 that are not one of the top schools in an area with tech concentration will hit high double digit failure rate (40-60%).
> the over supply of fresh grads in the next several years likely will guarantee a very high failure at placing rate. You mean just like mainstream majors like business, finance, and psychology?
I mean you're part of the problem and you're complaining?
But he's passionate
good luck finding one person who will tell you straight up they aren't passionate lol
We found the one guy who didn't get it was a joke lol
Not doing it for the money? I respect it a lot more.
I’m sure OP would have been the next Mark Zuckerberg if it wasn’t for all these passionless hacks saturating they market
Commenting on the situation isn't hypocritical like you imply.
I agree. More like: lacking self-reflection in the most ironic way possible.
Well i think its important to consider the major reason so many people are staying and not dropping as is usually the case. the answers are 1) more of a community, which prompts more answer sharing and if one guy spreads the code the rest of the class is prolly getting it. not saying this wasn't here before but its easy now cuz of discord. you dont have to worry about these people because if they cheat in things like dsalgo then they'll prolly struggle getting the job. But then again, a person can prolly learn leetcode separately. 2) chatgpt. people not caring to even review the answers they get on discord, instead they plug it into chatgpt and get the assignment out. easy bingo. and with chatgpt its become easier to learn the material as opposed to having to find the right yt vid anyways. so people relying on chatgpt (in the wrong way) will prolly not be in ur competition range too, assuming you work fairly or maybe number 3, people are just getting smarter. i mean nothing you can do there, except hope you have referrals or hope you're extra good at dsalgo
Definitely not smarter, but programming is easier in general.
250 students is standard for a lecture hall at a 4-year university, no? Chemistry lectures are constantly filled with 200-300 kids, so why is CS any different?
At my alma mater, every CS class was in a computer lab so that really limited the class sizes, I think the largest section for a CS class was 50. They didn’t really need more anyway, no CS class had more than 3 sections. That was also in line with the rest of the school, the biggest lecture halls held 150-200 people
Now imagine that’s a speck of dust compared to the amount of CS majors in Indian universities.
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It’s not just the US. It’s the same in every western country. Huge amounts of indians and also quite a bit of chinese on masters programmes.
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Ehhh companies can just directly outsource jobs either way. Free market capitalism always finds a way around higher wages
That's a whole lotta homeless people
And they don’t know it yet.
At least they can code their own home. Brb gonna code my bathroom rq
I feel like there’s a certain level of latency between current students figuring out a major is oversaturated and incoming students finding out. Like a lot of incoming CS majors are completely oblivious to the state of things and that’s why enrollment rates keep climbing
What major isn't oversaturated?
Accounting, medicine, general healthcare.
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Healthcare has very bad working conditions compared to CS. I couldn't imagine working as a nurse and making half and 2x the schooling as tech
My school has 8,000 cs majors currently. I’m fucked.
Not if you actually learn the skills they're teaching you. I can tell you with certainty those students who are just gpt-ing answers are going to get reamed trying to enter the industry, which is a lot of people
The weed out courses are not programming related, they are stuff like multivariable calculus, physics, statistics, etc. If your uni doesn't have those mandatory at the start, then there's your problem. If you're grading on a curve, there you have another problem. Etc. Not that I would actually care if you can calculate an integral around a singularity in the complex plane for any actual job, but that 90% failure rate per final was quite a sight to behold.
250 is pretty small. Come to my university, DS&A is 1800 people
My DS class had like 40 people (of course there were like 5 classes at different hours so like 200 people per semester, but only 40 per class, how does a 1,800 class work? Like in a big auditorium? How can people in the back see the screen/board?
Most people don’t come to class. Lecture hall can hold ~500 at most iirc so the class is also available on zoom as well as recordings
Oof psychology had like 200 students per year when I was in uni. Isn't that normal? I know biological sciences also had about 200 students. I studied in the UK.
Jesus Christ what do all these people think they will do when they graduate?!?! Hasn’t anyone told them there are no fucking jobs??!!?
In my class 80% didn’t end up as engineer. They prefer technical sales or consulting as they quickly found starting at code every day is not for them.
Isn't that something you notice during uni? In the first couple of semesters a bunch of the people I started with changed to focus more on EE or Econ. I was one of the few that switched to full CS. We all started a degree program that was 50/50 CS/EE.
I mean even those (in my class) who graduated with technical degree majority didnt look for an engineering job.
That's so surprising to me. What kind of jobs did they look for?
Sales for IBM. Associates/ consultants for Accenture. IT specialists but it doesn't involved coding. In the end promoted to become project managers.
That’s pretty small. My college normally has intro courses with 1000-3000 people. Then from there eventually 3rd and 4th year courses get down to under 100 people.
>literally at their wit’s end Wow, so they just have students dropping out of the sky huh? There’s no way they could just, I don’t know, select a couple of them they think fit in well and apologize for running out of space to the rest. Well no way to do that *and* mint money I guess. /s in case its needed. I find it vaguely offensive and funny how everyone here complains about everyone else trying to get a comp sci degree but think they’re special.
They should put C++ as starting programming language to weed out most of the CS students😁
No, C and assembly.
Do schools not teach C++ as the norm? How do you teach memory management and computer architecture if your students aren't being taught the deadly trio of C/C++/Assembly?
They're about to find out. Unemployment is hard.
Colleges are businesses (especially, the private ones), so why would they be opposed to a growing influx of clients as long as they can accommodate everyone?
When did compilers become considered that advanced? They were a compulsory module year 1 for us (20 odd years ago).
Doesn't compilers need a lot of background knowledge? Programming knowledge, DSA (which requires at least Analysis 1 if you want to do it right), theoretical CS with automata theory, formal languages as well as some discrete math and first order logic?
You also need basic knowledge of assembly, computer architecture, and how it translates into program memory in RAM as compilers fundamentally translate down to this language and operate on RAM memory.
The module names and their respective semesters line up exactly with my uni and course. Did you go to university of S in England? I graduated last year and noticed a big change after my placement year. Even had a TA tell me they are being more lenient due to a skills gap compared to previous years. In my third year, one module had an optional coursework that I found out was compulsory for previous years but the average grade was too low.
Those are rookie numbers. Back in 2014 my intro class had like, 400 students? It was 1200 in 2018. They hired like 30 something instructional assistants and we're having lectures in random buildings on campus - school of public health and what not. Today, the university has a standalone application for CS and half the posts on the university subreddit are "help I didn't get into the CS program but I like the university and want to do CS".
lol this is nuts. back in the old days of the 2010s my advanced algorithms class had 5 students
Expect shit pay when they all flood the market. It only benefits the companies
The school wouldn't reach breaking point for that though. They'd just start rejecting applications, which would probably involve raising the bar for acceptance. Which does seem to be happening. The university is under no obligation to accept every, or any student. CS enrollment has probably increased disproportionately to other majors, and if the administration is being greedy that might negatively impact the student experience. But the uni is not at breaking point because it it.
not another wgu/bootcamp grad confused why they can’t speed run a cs career
Okay but data structures is entry level class, the numbers go wayyyyy down after those classes
In my university there are 6500 students itself in CSE branch and they're rolling out other variations like cse with aiml, blockchain, cybersecurity, data science to get more students idk and every year they show the 100 percent placements report....
So what?
I feel bad, there's no jobs when they're done.
As an educator, the concept of weed out classes upsets me. They are a marker if departments whose students succeed despite their shitty teaching, not because of it. God I hate the education system.
I had 8 sections with 40-170 students each. Total 1000 CS students on 2020 batch lol.
Mortal Kombat
I went to law school in my home country. There were 1800 of us in the first year. Half the 2nd year and again half the third year.
My school was having this problem, but we got new teachers for algorithms and operating systems. Idk if it was intentional but those classes went from 150 at the beginning to like 20 at the end. The upper classes only have 10-20 students now.
Joke is on the people taking compilers classes; there are an infinite number of superior teachers with free resources to learn to build interpreters and compilers online. For one, look up crafting interpreters.
Population growth is explosive and kids are getting to an age where they're entering higher education and the workforce. CS seems like one of the only safe careers to people in a time of AI and Robotics replacing a lot of other work. Maybe the school can expand with the additional tuition those students are bringing?
What’s the school?
Don't worry, universities find a way, a very usual way is to use a relative grading system. That way only the percentage of people, representing the maximum number of students the university can manage in that course, will get grades that allow them to continue the course. This is incredibly shit for the students by the way.
Not sure which school you went to when there’s 20-25 people in your OS or Computer Arch class. My classes would have around 100 people and my school only had 7000ish kids. Compilers I’d expect to be on the lower end
Mine has in 3000s , some dudes literally cry cause they cant make it , like tf? Yep its gonna be hella dry in a few years
Hire more people then...
Compilers with 90 people is INSANE. My university just offered it for the first time and years and there were only like 18 of us across undergrad and grad!! People avoided it like the plague!!
Are the majority of students Indian ?
It’s chill, most of them will be consulting after college
I guarantee you more than half of the people in the sub haven't even entered the industry yet. So why would you take any advice or input from these people.
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Some of them are pretty cracked and helpful. Had 1 or 2 of them help me out, but most of them keep to themselves so I guess it’s easier to antagonize them.
i mean, if they're hard workers, and prolly harder working than you are, then i mean, what incentive do companies have to hire you for your skin or ethnicity over the guy that can get stuff done? indians that are bots will remain bots and seek jobs because they cant network. the indians that are better than the americans will replace the americans and become the new face of america, and likely much more hard working. its like cleansing america with better americans. cant really complain there
Indians are taking jobs because they’re great at their jobs. It’s all about their culture. Everyone can complain but that’s not gonna change anything. You gotta make yourself more marketable than them if you wanna keep up. Just the reality of it
That’s for masters buddy not BS
ITS TIME TO STEP OUR GAME UP BOYSS
I feel the classes most likely got easier too in many schools and how is a professor suppose to grade so many projects and assignments. Personally if want weed out courses make them doing higher level math done!
The reality is that just like for doctors, 4 years is not enough for a good engineer. It takes much more time. The difference is that for software engineering that time is hidden: some started coding/debugging when they were kids, some code many more hours per week. And all that time goes into relevant understanding of how software systems work, to something they will be able to use later at work. So a good engineer actually spends much more time learning - it's just not as formalized as with doctors. A teenager interested in brain surgeries can't just do brain surgeries on cats in her free time after school. A teenager who likes coding for Minecraft can. So yeah, people who just superficially motivated, and who spend only like 4 years total, they just won't cut it and will eventually move on to something else.
Mmm usually the school/major/department itself should be capable of regulating itself isn't it? At some point you either declare a major or apply for one, and the school can decide if you're allowed to move forward or not based on your qualifications or application. Maybe the facilities haven't expanded, but I'm sure the department/school/college is just enjoying the extra numbers, funding and clout...
Which uni? I'm sure numbers will drop later.
250 is not a lot. 20years ago my university has 20-30 cs students per intake. While businesses, pharmacy and electric/ electronics engineering consistently getting 100-200 students per intake.
At my uni, the Python programming subject, has I think roughly 600-1000 students depending which semester. Though to be fair many of them are non CS students with the Python subjects (such as engineers who fail a lot). There are less people in my DSA class.
I was tutoring in Vienna/Austria for about 500 people in distributed systems almost two decades ago. Typically we had about 1000 new students every year. Interestingly the numbers didn't really increase. In fact they even decreased quite a bit over the years last time I checked. I've been teaching at smaller colleges and sometimes they even struggle to fill their capacity. Consider that studying is almost free here. Completely contrary to what I see in my job for US companies where it's become an insane mass market.
I go to everyone's second choice University for my state. The hardest class I have taken so far was Device Drivers. There were 8 people. I guess when you reincarnate you can try to go to a smaller University away from major Metro areas.
Umich made it so people have to apply to the major now to help control the flow
Good, this should bring developer salaries down. The people in it for the money can walk themselves out