Computer Science Doldrums

Andres Valloud writes...

Roger teaches Smalltalk at SDSU (as you can see from his link). Here are some interesting things I did not know...

Enrollment is way down, there are 4,000 students for about 10,000 places. Computer science, in particular, is down 40% since the dot com bubble bust. This figure is consistent with other campuses.

I can back this up with a recent visit my son and I made to another university's CS department. At least in some cases, CS appears to be in the doldrums. At this point my son is considering a CS minor, probably not a major.

For someone considering "applied computer science", i.e. programming, I think a minor is probably a good choice. Way back when I was in school programming had yet to make a wide and visible impact in most other disciplines. Programming has always embraced people from other backgrounds. I think the minor approach is an extension of that, and an acknowledgement that application in some domain is at least as dependent on domain knowledge as on programming knowledge.