Sean,
Now it is the opposite. The rules of the 90s no longer apply today.
I suppose I’m tired of the CS person contrasting his field to… basketweaving… and talking about how ‘hard’ math is and how everyone else can’t do it. There is absolutely no mention from the CS person of other technology fields. What about manufacturing technology which is also very high tech? It’s not ‘cool’. That is why there is no reason to focus on manufacturing in the US because no one is educated for it. Most people have no idea what a PLC is. What about fields in, say, chemistry? Another completed ignored field.
If the CS person was so confident in their field, why do they keep comparing it to basketweaving or to the art degree? Why not compare it to another technology degree?
Math is not hard. I don’t see it as a self-limiting factor because it is not a self-limiting factor in other fields (like accounting). People who go into CS tend to have spent too much of their free time on computers in their youth. With computers and the Internet going mainstream in the mid 90s, we’ll only be seeing more and more people who have grown up with them (including more women). Twenty years from that time, say the 2020s, I expect the CS person to be more generalized than what we saw before with the stereotypical Bill Gates geek.
The question isn’t what self-limits the CS agree but why would everyone want to go for it. The four big reasons are…
Money- It pays well. With the economic recession, people coming up will move towards it and away from other fields that once seemed to have paid well (such as law). People are attracted to money.
Status- Many people enjoy choosing jobs with status. While the CS person didn’t have status prior to the 90s, today the CS person is seen as ‘intelligent, sophisticated, technologist,’ etc. etc. Contrast that to say a manufacturing technology job that deals with technology in factories. Why does that have ‘low status’, I don’t know. It does not share the same lack of status in other countries which is why they build up in manufacturing.
Liability- When software crashes, people don’t get killed. There is no comparison to say an engineer that builds structures. Lack of liability that the digital world presents is very attractive.
Office Job- IT jobs tend to be inside, out of the elements, where it is nice and comfortable. You’re not supposed to say this, but jobs that are outside, in the elements, where it is not comfortable such as working in mines or oil rigs are overwhelmingly dominated by men. Women tend to be interested in work in offices. Since women make up 50% of the potential workforce, that can be a huge amount of supply of workers to bring in. Does Andria Richards ring a bell? That is just the beginning.
Math might have been a self-limiting factor in the pre-recession days. Today, students and returning students aren’t scared of math. And Calculus, Physics, and Trigonometry are not that hard. Look at third world countries that spit out engineers. The reason why they produce so many engineers is because people are desperate to escape poverty. My own family of engineers had their preceding generation be a life of poverty.
Math is only scary if you don’t taste poverty. If you do taste it, math becomes LOL. Today, more and more people know the taste of poverty.