It's not a secret that CS/IT enrollment in colleges is on decline. There are ongoing discussions trying to find the reason(s) of this trend. Usually the following are mentioned:

1. Outsourcing of junior programming jobs
2. Low salaries (plumbers with no or little education earn much more than junior programmers)
3. Computer programming is difficult to master

When my friends tell me that they do not advise CS major to their kids because they are not too good with math, I usually sing them the same song: "99% of business applications do not require any special math skills other than algebra and a simple logic: if this do this, otherwise do that". I'll change my tune after the yesterday's episode...

I was waiting for the bus and there was a couple of young people standing by. She was about 25 and he was about 17. She was talking about some event in the past.
She said, "This happened about nine years ago, when I was 16..."

He answered, "I can't believe this. You're 25 now? Hold on...". After that he picked his cell phone and started pressing the buttons. I though that he was going to call another witness of this event for a confirmation. Boy, I was wrong! He was using his cell phone's calculator to subtract 9 from 25...

Now if some one will ask me if their 18 years old kid should take CS/IT major, I'll give them the following advice:
"Ask you kid to subtract 9 from 25. If it'll take him/her more than 1 second, they should pick another major".

If the USA wants to increase the number of CS/IT students, they should invite kids from China, Russia and India, which are good at arithmetic, at least now. 

posted Monday, 18 October 2005 6:30 PM