Computer studies get a touch of glamour
When Keila Fong arrived at Yale, she had never given much thought to computer science. But then last year everyone on campus started talking about the film ''The Social Network,'' and she began to imagine herself building something and starting a business that maybe, just maybe, could become the next Facebook.
“It’s become very glamorous to become the next Mark Zuckerberg, and everyone likes to think they have some great idea,” said Fong, a junior, who has since decided to major in Yale’s newly energised computer science program.
Never mind that Zuckerberg, like other tech titans, did not major in computer science. Enrollment in computer science programs is rising after a decade of decreases, despite much handwringing about the decline of American competitiveness in technology from President Obama on down. And educators and technologists say the inspiration is partly Hollywood’s portrayal of the tech world, as well as celebrity entrepreneurs like Steven P. Jobs of Apple and Zuckerberg.
“It’s a national call, a Sputnik moment,” said Mehran Sahami, associate chairman for computer science education at Stanford, referring to the Soviet satellite launching in 1957 that pushed the United States into the space race. “Students are users of Facebook or Google, and they think about how the people who created it are not that much different than themselves. The realisation that I can do this too is a powerful motivator.”
The number of computer science degrees awarded in the United States began rising in 2010, and will reach 11,000 this year, after plummeting each year since the end of the dot-com bubble in 2004, according to the Computing Research Association, which tracks enrollment and degrees. Enrollment in the major peaked around 2000, with the most degrees — 21,000 — awarded four years later.
To capitalise on the growing cachet of the tech industry, colleges nationwide, including Stanford, the University of Washington and the University of Southern California, have recently revamped their computer science curriculums to attract iPhone and Facebook-obsessed students, and to banish the perception of the computer scientist as a geek typing code in a basement. The new curriculums emphasise the breadth of careers that use computer science, as diverse as finance and linguistics, and the practical results of engineering, like iPhone apps, Pixar films and robots, a world away from the more theory-oriented curriculums of the past. “The old-fashioned way of computer science is, ‘We’re going to teach you a bunch of stuff that is fundamental and will be long-lasting but we won’t tell you how it’s applied,’ ” said Michael Zyda, director of the University of Southern California’s GamePipe Laboratory.
Professors stress that concentrating on the practical applications of computer science does not mean teaching vocational skills like programming languages, which change rapidly. Instead, it means guiding students to tackle real-world problems and learn skills and theorems along the way.
“What we’re seeing now is a better-motivated upsurge,” said Ed Lazowska, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, “students who understand that they really need to know this material.”
And the movie can’t hurt, he said, because at least it has transformed the image of a programmer. Computer scientists are finally getting the treatment that doctors got with “Grey’s Anatomy” and reporters with “All the President’s Men.”
