Which Majors Have Best Career Prospects?

Human resources executives advised college freshmen to study engineering, computer science, or healthcare rather than marketing or law to avoid being unemployed when they finished their studies. The advice came in a survey of 150 HR executives by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “This recession may have many freshmen second-guessing career plans. Certainly those who were contemplating a future in financial services or home building may be looking for new options,” said CEO John Challenger. “It is impossible to predict what the job market will look like in four years. Young people entering college this fall could graduate into a job market that is still recovering from recession.”

CS Grads Should Fare Better Than Most
Job prospects are on a lot of minds these days, especially those of college seniors about to enter the workforce. What’s the outlook for new computer science and engineering grads in this fragile economy? Will they continue to be highly sought after by private industry, academia, and government? Despite the reduced job market outlook for college grads overall, CS grads will have somewhat better opportunities than most, due to the law of supply and demand. “We don’t have enough CS grads and employers can’t get enough of them. The supply is small this year and will remain small for a few more years,” said Phil Gardner, director of Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute and author of MSU’s 2008-2009 Recruiting Trends study.

Computer Science Doctorates Gaining Popularity

North American universities last year turned out twice as many computer scientists with doctorates as they did five years ago, but despite the bumper crop, industry and academia had no trouble absorbing them. According to the Computing Research Association’s annual Taulbee Survey, US computer science and computer engineering programs awarded 1,775 PhDs between June 2006 and July 2007, up 26 percent from the previous year and double the number awarded in 2002. 

“It was hard for people with bachelor’s degrees to get jobs. They all went to graduate school. Now six years later, they’re emerging with PhDs. There’s no other explanation for this phenomenon,” said Lazowska, the University of Washington’s Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering.

Know Your Programming Style

C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup believes the sweet spot for writing software is located somewhere between generic programming, object-oriented programming, and concurrency. However, until there’s more clarity on concurrency, software developers will have to make do with finding the sweet spot between generic and object-oriented programming styles.
Stroustrup shared his perspectives on the two different styles. He said those who focus on algorithms will naturally drift over to generic programming, while those more concerned with relationships will fall into object-oriented programming.

Pushing for Quality Data Design

Scott Ambler hasn’t seen too many places where data and quality intersect. One exception from the real world is the intersection of Data and Quality streets in the city of Sacramento, California. However, even that intersection features a prominent stop sign. Ambler, the outspoken expert on software process improvements, believes the database community needs to acknowledge its “huge blind spot” and make the fundamental changes need to resolve the major challenges it faces. “The database community needs to come up to speed on this big whack of stuff it’s chosen to ignore,” he says.

Perception Problem Dogs Computer Science 

Not a week goes by that a report doesn’t come out on high salary ranges for software developers or the need for more high-technology workers. Yet at the same time, there’s a lingering perception that computer scientists are being laid off or outsourced, if they’re even able to get hired in the first place. That disconnect is partly to blame for computer science failing to rebound after the 2002 dot-com collapse.

“The downslide seems to have stopped. But if there’s any recovery, it’s not yet apparent,” said Stuart Zweben, an Ohio State University professor of computer science and engineering who analyzes the Computing Research Association’s annual Taulbee Survey.