RALEIGH -- Our world-class software industry needs some world-class help. It may not be obvious, but the field is in trouble. The problem? We're not training nearly enough computer scientists.
In 2000, computer science was one of the hottest college fields. Entering freshmen identified CS as a sought-after degree, with about 4 percent of all entering college students indicating CS as a probable major. Computer science departments across the country scrambled to expand their course offerings to meet this demand.
That all changed when the dot.com bubble burst. Parents who had been encouraging their kids to consider computer science as a degree leading to exciting work and financial security were inundated with news reports that all software jobs were moving overseas and that U.S. companies were laying off programmers. Students interested in software development shifted their focus toward what they felt were more practical pursuits.
In the nine years since the bubble burst, student interest in CS has become dismal. By 2005, computer science enrollments across the nation dropped to 70 percent of their previous levels, the lowest since 1982. In the fall of 2006, just 1.1 percent of freshmen indicated CS as a probable major.
This might sound like the normal kind of adjustment needed to balance out a discipline that had been inflated with the high-tech excitement of the 1990s. It was in the '90s, though, that our nation produced a vast amount of innovative technology, almost all of which relied on software to work its magic. That's just as true today as it was then.
Software runs our smartphones, our banks' financial transactions, our car engines, our electrical grid and our favorite social networking websites. When we book airline flights, watch the local news on TV, search the Internet for the best price on shoes or get an MRI, we rely on software.
Despite people's perception that software development has all been sent overseas, we are in dire need of programmers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of software development positions here is expected to increase to 742,000 by 2016, up 37 percent from 2006.
Unless there's a serious change in the number of computer science graduates produced by American universities, we're likely to fall far short of that number. As a result, companies will be unable to fill their programming positions, leading to a slowdown in U.S. software-enabled innovation. Countries where programmers are more abundant will be happy to pick up the slack.
What's to be done? It's not like we can actually do something that pulls hordes of new students into the pipeline, rabid to learn how to write computer programs.
Well, maybe we can, with help coming from an unexpected source: computer games.
We all know that computer games are highly engaging interactive experiences. This interactivity encourages an amazingly creative attitude in game players. Many, many kids who play games are inspired to say, "I can do that - I want to make a game!"
Because kids who play games are so eager to become game creators, university courses in game development have become exceedingly popular. N.C. State and Wake Tech are just two of the schools that have created programs to train new game developers. The University of Southern California created a games-specific B.S. degree that quickly doubled the number of undergraduates enrolled in its computer science department.
Using games as a draw to CS departments is just one instance of a larger trend to infuse CS undergraduate education with real-world relevance. The key idea is for computer science educators to find a way to leverage our students' passions to better engage them with the curriculum and to prepare them for jobs they love. Without this kind of relevance, we'll be vastly ill-prepared for the technical innovation demanded by industry in the coming decades.
R. Michael Young is an associate professor of computer science at N.C. State University, where he co-directs the NCSU Digital Games Research Initiative. He is also a 2010 GlaxoSmithKline Faculty Fellow in Public Policy and Public Engagement at the NCSU Institute for Emerging Issues.
