Post #2773895

2026-02-07 23:37 UTC

@jason @vie@hachyderm.io @theotherbrook@sunny.garden When I started my CS degree ~30 years ago (Which I did because I enjoy programming and working with computers), the first year was huge due to all the people seeing programming as good money. Most of those people didn't make it to into second year, and even fewer into third year. My understanding is the intake started to drop shortly after I finished.

Replies (3)

@va2lam@mastodon.nz 2026-02-09 03:07

@puck@mastodon.nz @jason @vie@hachyderm.io @theotherbrook@sunny.garden timing is not quite right on "20 years ago": that was 2006 and enrollments were still pretty tiny post dotcom bust. (source: I was on the faculty job market in 2006.) Maybe 10-15 years ago is closer.

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@eschaton@mastodon.social 2026-02-09 05:27

@puck@mastodon.nz @jason @vie@hachyderm.io @theotherbrook@sunny.garden Unfortunately the universities’ “solution” to this was to make the first year of the standard computer science course less difficult, rather than to try to figure out how to better direct students to the appropriate degree. I say this as someone who dropped out of a top-tier undergrad CS program for academic reasons in the mid-1990s: I strongly suspect I’d have done just fine today, and that’s not actually good.

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@rollspelosofen@mastodon.nu 2026-02-09 08:57

@puck@mastodon.nz @jason @vie@hachyderm.io @theotherbrook@sunny.garden Sounds like my program. When I started my degree we were about 70 students and after the third year later we were about 20.

Open ##2773903