
A History of Capacity Challenges in Computer Science [pdf] - luu
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/CSCapacity.pdf
======
blt
I hope this faculty shortage is still in effect when I finish my Ph.D. :)

Anecdotally, many of my peers are going to industry instead of academia,
because 1) better pay, 2) no begging for funding, 3) they don't want to teach.
Academia is seen as signing up for a difficult life. Many industry research
labs are allowing their staff to publish papers, so you can even participate
in the academic research community. Look at how many NIPS papers come from
Google-owned companies.

Personally, I'm interested in academia mainly because I'd rather not be part
of an institution whose main goal is making money - but that attitude is not
common in CS.

~~~
glbrew
How sure are you that a university's main goal isn't to make money these days?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Based on the evidence it seems that is very much the point of universities
these days, and research only exists to secure funding and prestige, not to
push the boundaries of knowledge.

This is not a happy situation, but it seems to be where we are. And it
probably won't change for a long time.

It's not impossible to disintermediate teaching and accreditation. But I can't
think of any workable way to disintermediate high quality research, especially
when significant resources are required.

The best approach might be to herd postdocs into research-only facilities -
like Bell Labs and Parc, but independent - and throw money at them to see what
happens.

That's not very imaginative, but research-only labs seem to work well when
they're managed correctly, and a lot of smart people would like the chance to
do pure research without having to teach, mark, and justify their existence
with constant grant chasing and committee meetings.

------
tsumnia
We haven't really had anything as collapsing as the "dot-com" crash occur in
the past decade (knock on wood). As the article points out we are at all time
highs, Congressional Research Service [1] reports that computer science jobs
are projected to continue for the next decade.

I also like to mention [2] because it seems like this is where female
enrollment's number dropped and never recovered. For a short while, I was
researching about how these numbers came to be. Unfortunately, the majority of
articles only talk about how computers were marketed to males and "Revenge of
the Nerds" stereotypes pushed females away.

Instead, Dr. Roberts' article looks at a simple realism - everyone got sick
and tired of CS. Sure, it was lack of resources in the 80s, but it shows a
different perspective than marketing did it. I cannot find any research on CS
perceptions stating it, but there was/is a severe "elitist" attitude among CS
students. I think this is where a lot of the unattractiveness of the subject
comes as well. In the 80s, you had to be the best of the best to get into
these limited programs. I think it inflated a lot of student egos, which is
where that personality quirk was created.

Maybe all STEM people have it, I don't know, but I do see it in CS. It's
getting better as other programs are starting to teach things like coding, but
if we continue to have limited resources, something needs to help relieve the
strain. Better MOOC/Cyberlearning retention, grade automation, novel teaching
approaches, etc. Otherwise, we'll just be repeating the 80s drop soon.

[1] -
[https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43061.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43061.pdf)

[2] -
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-
women-stopped-coding)

