This old rant came up in a conversation with a colleague, here is a link or two. Warren Harrison (former PSU CS chair and IEEE Software editor) wrote an excellent take on what’s wrong with CS education. He does a little bit of old man rambling; and, of course, it is the students, but his article really does expose a lot of problems in the system itself.

A colleague’s reaction was: “this is hopeless, if people draw information about their future field from movies then nothing could be done.” While the idea that undergrads would be inspired by popular culture to choose their major sounds silly, there nothing too astonishing about it. I think the main reason this happens is information vacuum surrounding STEM disciplines in the US. While everyone thinks Computer Science pays well (and therefore you should chose major in it), but no one really knows what is it about; therefore there is such a stark contrast between what people think we do and what we actually do. A separate problem is what is taught in CS classes (the primary reason students stay ignorant to the nature of their field for so long), but that is a big enough topic for a separate post.

While Warren hits it right on about team players and ability to express thoughts in English, Computer Science and especially “algorithm-heavy” parts of it should be viewed as something close to high-level finance industry: there are things there that have drifted pretty far away from “everyday” reality and require a lot of special knowledge to understand.