Yet another press article has come out (Tech sector needs to be sexier) saying that the computer industry has a serious skills shortage. At the same time enrolments have been dropping in the CS area over several years, and not just in New Zealand, but worldwide. Again we are being told that the parents and guidance counsellors are giving poor advice to high school students, and not explaining just how strong their prospects of interesting and well-paid jobs are.
Is there a coherent theory that explains this sort of mismatch? It has been several years now – why do parents and guidance counsellors take so long to get the message? Don’t they look at any evidence and predictions by analysts? On what do they base their ideas? It seems rather odd to give advice to teenagers that may have a major impact on their future without using some rigorous analysis. Or am I missing the point?
The message is still not getting through, it seems: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7162935.stm
has a story on Steve Furber, one of the inventors of the BBC Micro, which I recall spending a lot of time with as a teenager. The key quotes:
“People think that the computing story is all played out,” he said.
“But the changes that we have seen over the last 30 years are small compared to what we will see in the next 30 – it strikes me that computer science is still a very exciting place to be.”
There continues to be a lot more of the same analysis, but no major upturn in enrolment yet. This summarizes the issue well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOOJzQRJfIw