How many more engineering and CS majors do we need?

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand the premise of this thread.
Why are kids doing engineering/CS? Bc it’s so interesting, way more interesting than most humanities for many kids. I don’t think bankers are passionate about their job. But I think engineers are passionate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand the premise of this thread.
Why are kids doing engineering/CS? Bc it’s so interesting, way more interesting than most humanities for many kids. I don’t think bankers are passionate about their job. But I think engineers are passionate.

+1 all the innovative, futuristic, exciting, interesting stuff are all coming out of engineering/CS/Tech.

[Anonymous]

I have posted this previously on a different board. Over the past year, I was looking to hire two data analysts. I received hundreds of applications for both positions, and 98% were from foreign students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like that’s all kids are majoring in. Many without the passion for it. Both fields are oversaturated with a lot of kids having no business being in these programs. Can we get a pendulum swing and have a push into humanities and trade schools?

Pay shit ton of $$$ and major in humanities ??

The two humanities grads we know (top10 undergrad) are headed to JPmorgan and harvard law. Most of their friends secured similarly impressive next-steps. The stem majors also have excellent opportunities lined up but folks do not seem surprised by stem doing well. However the stem majors from nonelite schools do much better than humanities at the same school. Major is not as important as the undergrad prestige

No, major is more important overall.
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/

Harvard English = $64,155
Boston College Finance = $135,373
Northeastern CS = $149,127

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have posted this previously on a different board. Over the past year, I was looking to hire two data analysts. I received hundreds of applications for both positions, and 98% were from foreign students.

So the 2% US citizens would have very good advantage?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have posted this previously on a different board. Over the past year, I was looking to hire two data analysts. I received hundreds of applications for both positions, and 98% were from foreign students.

So the 2% US citizens would have very good advantage?

Maybe…or the 98% were North Koreans or Chinese trying to execute corporate espionage.

WSJ just ran an article where a company posted a position and within minutes received 100+ resumes that all seemed nearly perfect for the job posted.

They were all created by AI based on the posting and it turned out it was all spy farms from North Korea and China, even though the resumes said they were located in the US (but were foreign students).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Engineering and CS majors can work in many industries including going to law school and taking jobs at investment banks, no need for them to be humanities majors

They don’t often have the other soft skills necessary to complete those jobs though. So they would never be hired to begin with.

Actually, engineering majors are often the best read and most empathetic kids you'll meet these days. Because they are smart and they are curious. At my kid's top 20 school, the engineering majors are highly recruited by MBB and Wall Street. So I think your assumptions are very dated. It's not 1987 anymore. The smart kids aren't going into history or political science or other soft majors these days. Engineering is vacuuming a lot of the talent now. Whether it's the right fit for everyone is a different discussion. I would never encourage anyone who doesn't have the aptitude and discipline to choose engineering. It is a very tough major everywhere.

No need to overdo it. The big reason so many students are majoring in STEM is the shift by institutions to make STEM accessible. CS, particularly, has been softened to play-doh at many institutions and you can coast through a degree with the hardest math class maybe being an application-based linear algebra course. Smart kids still major in any and everything, and there's many social science students going into banking/finance and consulting.

+1, look at the top LACs where CS is almost eclipsing Econ for the lazy mans degree. It just isn't as difficult as other STEM degrees and doesn't weed as many students out. Physics could pay you $300k starting salary right out of college and hardly any would make it through still.

A BS Physics degree rarely rarely would pay so much fresh out of school. Exceptions surely exist, but that is quite far from being a typical, median, or mean starting salary for a BS Physics degree.

It was a hypothetical. I’m well aware physics grads don’t make much money.

[Anonymous]

The market is tough, because we’re producing so many mediocre to awful programmers every year. If you’re passionless and want a good career, students should start in consulting

[Anonymous]

So interesting what is considered “success” on this thread

[Anonymous]

I did engineering major in undergrad. Now I’m in a (highly educated) trade. I work with my hands. I don’t have a desk job or sit in front of a computer. Engineers are more qualified to a trade than humanities majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The market is tough, because we’re producing so many mediocre to awful programmers every year. If you’re passionless and want a good career, students should start in consulting

CS majors can go into to consulting too. 🙂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So interesting what is considered “success” on this thread

Combination of
a job/work that can lead to career/future advancement + that you don't hate + that well pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand the premise of this thread.
Why are kids doing engineering/CS? Bc it’s so interesting, way more interesting than most humanities for many kids. I don’t think bankers are passionate about their job. But I think engineers are passionate.

+1 all the innovative, futuristic, exciting, interesting stuff are all coming out of engineering/CS/Tech.

And all that the humanities majors gave us are DEI, ESG, and Microaggressions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are still more majors in psychology, communications, etc. What do they do with that?

CS is at last better than those.

Good point.

Personally, I think having a college degree is beneficial from an educational and career standpoint. With that being said, there are a ton of Biology majors out there. I don’t see any "How many more?" threads on that. There are hundreds of different majors graduating colleges each year - many in humanities. For males who don't want to major in engineering or CS, there’s a business major that DCUMers ridicule ( for some strange reason). Or Economics: one of the softest majors out there (but, but consulting!).

Now people are parsing CS major requirements at SLACs.

Let the kid major in what they want. A college degree will pay off over the long run.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Engineering and CS majors can work in many industries including going to law school and taking jobs at investment banks, no need for them to be humanities majors

They don’t often have the other soft skills necessary to complete those jobs though. So they would never be hired to begin with.

Actually, engineering majors are often the best read and most empathetic kids you'll meet these days. Because they are smart and they are curious. At my kid's top 20 school, the engineering majors are highly recruited by MBB and Wall Street. So I think your assumptions are very dated. It's not 1987 anymore. The smart kids aren't going into history or political science or other soft majors these days. Engineering is vacuuming a lot of the talent now. Whether it's the right fit for everyone is a different discussion. I would never encourage anyone who doesn't have the aptitude and discipline to choose engineering. It is a very tough major everywhere.

No need to overdo it. The big reason so many students are majoring in STEM is the shift by institutions to make STEM accessible. CS, particularly, has been softened to play-doh at many institutions and you can coast through a degree with the hardest math class maybe being an application-based linear algebra course. Smart kids still major in any and everything, and there's many social science students going into banking/finance and consulting.

It's actually surprising how little you need to do a CS major at these schools.

Williams: one math course (Discrete), intro course/intro data structures, two core courses (only one in algorithms), and 3 electives...that is hardly a CS degree. That is just baby software engineering bootcamp; you might even learn more in a boot camp.

A CS degree from Williams sounds good to me.

They are well trained given this little blurb from their CS page:

"In just the last several years we have had students admitted to such top computer science graduate schools as M.I.T., Carnegie-Mellon University, Yale University, Cornell University, CalTech, Stanford, University of California-Berkeley, New York University, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, University of Rochester, and the University of Massachusetts."