Engineering Enrollment is Up in 2009
In an article published yesterday, on March 18, 2009, Scientific American noted that “enrollment in undergraduate computer science and engineering programs is up in the U.S. and Canada for the first time since the dot-com bust.”
Engineering at a Plant
This might indicate that, in the current recession we are in, more students are turning toward “real” majors (of course, we are biased here at Engineerography) with more of a concrete focus than a traditional liberal education. The article focuses mainly on computer science applicants, where enrollment has increased 8 percent last year 2007-2008 over the previous year 2006-2007.
In January, Scientific American wrote that “85 percent of teens and tweens say they’re interested in science, tech, engineering and math, according to the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, an annual survey.”
Click through to the Scientific American article here.
Also, USA Today elaborates futher here:
The dramatic shift should ease concern within the tech industry that the U.S. does not graduate enough computer-science students. For years, that has driven tech vendors to outsource low-level programming jobs to India, China and elsewhere.
The spike in majors comes as especially comforting news for IBM and others that often could not fill enterprise-computing jobs because of a paucity of qualified college graduates.”(Information technology) skills are now required to be more competitive in all professions — not just a technical company,” says Mark Hanny, vice president of alliances and academic initiative for IBM Software Group.
President Obama’s $787 economic stimulus package underscores the importance of such skills in building a smart energy grid, modernizing health care and expanding broadband networks. Indeed, eight in 10 U.S. college students see a growing need for more IT professionals as technology advances, according to a survey by IBM and the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, also released Tuesday.
The change is easy to spot at Carnegie Mellon University, says Sameer Chopra, a junior majoring in computer science there. It used to be fairly easy to get into most classes. Now, some have waiting lists of up to 40 people, he says.
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