We were born in the age of the internet. The success of the earlier tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Oracle in early 2000s paved the way for the post recession dominance of Amazon, Facebook and Netflix.
Companies like Apple and Microsoft command more than a trillion dollars in market capitalization. These companies continue to splurge exorbitant amounts on their most important resource: their developers and engineers.
The Pay
Offering starting salary packages well above the industry average, these companies have lured many prospective Computer Science graduates to their gates. This in turn, has seen a mass migration to the go-to majors for these companies: Computer Science.
Education on the Rise
The top 50 public research universities in the US have seen an exponential growth in their Science departments, both in terms of student enrollment, faculty hiring and of course, endowment. The popularity of Computer Science as a major has also made universities that specialize and excel in tech courses more attractive destinations than liberal arts colleges.
This can be seen in US News and World report rankings as liberal arts colleges like Brown have slipped while public research universities like University of Michigan and University of California at Berkeley have climbed up.
It’s not what it appears to be…
All these numbers and statistics paint a picture of glitz and glamour for Computer Science as a major. However, the reality is far removed from this utopian dream that companies and universities alike try to sell to their prospective students.
Looking back at Computer Science as a major, I can definitely see that my expectations were far removed from the facts. For starters, it is not easy. Yes, this has been said countless times. Many would consider this a statement with no basis, but the fact is that most university undergraduates constantly rate CS courses as the hardest they have encountered.
Struggles of Education
The topics are not hard to understand per-se, but the workload is often so overwhelming that it causes students to fall behind. Oftentimes, when I have found myself working late on an assignment in the lab I see that many other students are struggling to complete the same problem in the very same lab.
Hiring Trends
Considering the hiring trends of companies, there has been as increasing emphasis on hiring and training Computer Engineers more extensively than Computer Science majors. This is because companies require multifaceted individuals to tackle the changing hardware and software requirements of users.
Large scale manufacturing and automotive companies actually prefer hiring Mechanical Engineers and Electrical Engineers and training them to write software applications on the job. Their rationale is that those majors would have handy knowledge of the hardware and therefore would be better equipped to write code that best supplements the hardware.
In Comparison
While the 2 reasons explained above were based on external factors, the most important one isactually your personal view on the subject. Undergraduate college is a once in a lifetime experience. You are going to base your professional life off the 4 years you spend here.
What Should I Do?
I would therefore recommend that your major should be something that is of interest to you. If you like coding and software development, go ahead and choose Computer Science. However, do not be afraid to choose a History or Literature major if that is what interests you. The workforce is larger and more diverse that it has ever been and any major or skill that an individual possesses is required somewhere.
In conclusion, do not select something that seems forced upon; follow your heart’s desire!
