Columbia Computer Science

"The Perils of JavaSchools"

2005-12-29T15:45:00.000-05:00

Joel Spolsky claims that Java-only CS curriculum make it too difficult to tell if a graduate can handle hard and abstract concepts such as pointers and recursion. Columbia CS uses C in Data Structures...

Colleges fail to improve teaching methods

2005-12-19T16:04:00.000-05:00

Derek Bok writes in the Boston Globe that faculty are unwilling to change their teaching methods and uninterested in results that show that existing methods are not working well.

"In Computer Science, a Growing Gender Gap"

2005-12-19T09:17:00.000-05:00

Boston Globe: "Introductory classes zeroed in on programming and other technical aspects of the field, rather than explaining big ideas or talking about how computing can impact society, many professors say. That approach led to a misconception among students that computer science is the same thing as computer programming. Computer scientists say that view shortchanges the field, which is far broader and more intellectually rich. It is applied math and design, they say; it is about modeling human behavior and thinking about the simplest way to accomplish a complex task."

Numbers of Chinese and Indian engineering students inflated

2005-12-15T10:27:00.000-05:00

BusinessWeek reports on a report by Duke University researchers that finds that the numbers of Chinese and Indian engineering students commonly reported are hard to compare with United States numbers. They often include specialized or short-term degrees that are more comparable to associate's degrees than BS or higher degrees.

Prof. Unger on engineering jobs

2005-11-17T14:23:00.000-05:00

The Nov. 16 Wall Street Journal carried an article ("Slim Pickings") about different perspectives of the shortage of engineers vs. the shortage of engineering jobs. It argues that part of the problem is that many companies are only willing to consider candidates that precisely match their job requirements, rather than having the new person pick up skills on the job. A broader view is discussed by Prof. Unger (Columbia CS) in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine and IEEE Design and Test of Computers. More detailed information can be found in work by Norman Matloff, CS Dept., UC Davis.

NSF reports on graduate enrollment for 2003

2005-09-25T09:59:00.000-04:00

NSF reports that "graduate enrollment in science and engineering programs is up in 2003, but declines for first-time foreign students".

Graduate enrollment in 2003 grew in all major S&E fields and in all subfields except computer sciences. Computer sciences enrollment dropped 3 percent from the previous year, the first decrease in that field since 1995. Of the fields of study with the largest graduate enrollments (10,000 or more), mechanical engineering led with an 8 percent gain, followed by mathematical sciences and physics, each with 7 percent gains.

"Closing the gender gap"

2005-09-23T21:06:00.000-04:00

Computer Weekly.com: "a large number of girls associate computing with mundane office or secretarial work." "The number of women in IT has been falling since the 1980s and is now thought to be about 20% of the total workforce."

"Where jobs are and students aren't"

2005-09-23T20:54:00.000-04:00

Globe and Mail, September 21, 2005: "Dean McKeown, manager of the school of computing at Queen's, says enrolment in the Kingston, Ont., university dropped 20 per cent during the 2004-2005 school year and levelled off this year." "Universities, faced with declining interest, are starting to adapt to the shift. The Queen's school of computing recently introduced a biomedical computing program, which has become the most popular option at the school. Ryerson now offers a program that teaches students with a tech background management skills."

"Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software"

2005-09-23T13:06:00.000-04:00

In a WSJ article, the author describes the transition from a largely ad-hoc software development process to a more structured, tool-based one, after the Longhorn project foundered and was repeatedly delayed.

Rick Rashid: Mobile applications to bring back excitement to CS

2005-08-31T20:00:00.000-04:00

In a keynote address at MobiSys 2005, Rick Rashid speculates on reasons for the decreased interest in Computer Science, such as "maybe computers aren't getting faster, maybe the jobs aren't going to be there, maybe IT really isn't helping people". He then discusses developments such as the capture of all of life via SenseCams:

we've made a transition from what I would say is just being able to store files to the point where disk drives are now large enough, the storage we have available is large enough that we're at a point now where an individual can store much of what they would generate during their lives.

Rashid also mentions new input and output devices using any flat surface, SPOT (the watch network) and "self-managing, self-connected and interactive" networks.

Computer Scientists and Analysts jobs grow by 54,000 in 2004, but software engineers lose

2005-07-01T19:43:00.000-04:00

According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and summarized in a press release by IEEE-USA, the BLS reported a gain of 54,000 jobs among computer scientists and systems analysts. The total change in technical employment was less than 0.1%, with the biggest drop among computer hardware engineers (18,000), followed by computer software engineers (13,000), computer programmers (8,000), electrical and electronics engineers (8,000) and computer and information systems managers (5,000).

"Preparing Women and Minorities for the IT Workforce: The Role of Nontraditional Educational Pathways"

2005-06-28T11:52:00.000-04:00

A new AAAS study on women and IT:

"This study examines the role of nontraditional educational pathways in preparing women and underrepresented minorities for the information technology (IT) workforce. It was sparked by the finding that the nation's number one producer of bachelor's degrees in information technology and computer science (IT/CS) was not a major research university, but instead was Strayer University, a for-profit institution with many campuses in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Not only was Strayer the top producer overall, but it also produced the largest number of women and African-American graduates with baccalaureates in IT/CS."

This report is also discussed at msnbc.com.

"Programming Jobs Losing Luster in U.S."

2005-06-20T11:23:00.000-04:00

According to an article by AP:

"U.S. graduates probably shouldn't think of computer programming or chemical engineering as long-term careers but it's "not all gloom and doom," said Albert C. Gray, executive director of the National Society of Professional Engineers. He says prospects are good for aeronautic, civil and biomedical engineers, the people who design and build artificial organs, life support devices and machines to nurture premature infants."

"The U.S. software industry lost 16 percent of its jobs from March 2001 to March 2004, the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute found. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology industries laid off more than 7,000 American workers in the first quarter of 2005."

"The research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that up to 15 percent of tech workers will drop out of the profession by 2010, not including those who retire or die. Most will leave because they can't get jobs or can get more money or job satisfaction elsewhere. Within the same period, worldwide demand for technology developers — a job category ranging from programmers people who maintain everything from mainframes to employee laptops — is forecast to shrink by 30 percent."

Computer Science woes in Australia, too

2005-06-15T12:50:00.000-04:00

The Wired Campus reports that "several of Australia's colleges, concerned about the nation's decreasing numbers of technology majors, are giving pink slips to computer-science professors. Monash University has laid off 22 information-technology staff members in the past year, and last week Bond University quietly axed its entire technology faculty. Officials at Bond say they hope to re-energize their technology program by folding it into the university's business department." Among the reasons given are: parents influencing students to pick more marketable disciplines, time lag between job prospects and enrollments, concerns over job security, academics [who] do not understand business concerns, more advanced [computer program] development environments, offshoring, students wanting more business content, popularity of games design. (The Australian)

"An Endless Frontier Postponed"

2005-05-10T10:09:00.000-04:00

Edward Lazowska and David Patterson write in an editorial in this week's issue of Science magazine on the impact of the changing federal landscape for support of computing research. The issue was discussed at a House of Representative science committee hearing.

Vint Cerf on CS research

2005-04-20T21:29:00.000-04:00

Vint Cerf discussed challenges in networking and opportunities in computer science.

CNN: CS starting salaries up, CE down

2005-04-17T21:03:00.000-04:00

Computer science starting salaries for undergraduates will increase to $51,292 this year, up 2.6%, while computer engineering is dropping 2% (to $51,496) and information sciences by 0.8% to $43,732, says CNN.

CRA: "Interest in CS as a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen"

2005-04-16T00:16:00.000-04:00

According to the CRA, an analysis of results from a survey conducted by HERI/UCLA indicate that the fraction of incoming undergraduates that plan to major in CS declined by over 60 percent between the Fall of 2000 and 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than its peak in the early 1980s. Women's interest dropped 80 percent between 1998 and 2004, and 93 percent since its peak in 1982.

Results from CRA's Taulbee Survey show that the number of newly declared CS majors has declined for the past four years and is now 39 percent lower than in the Fall of 2000.

SearchCIO also discusses the issue, but stressing that the reduction may have kept less-interested students from enrolling in Computer Science.

Far Eastern Economic Review: "The Next Wave of Offshoring"

2005-04-09T09:25:00.000-04:00

The Far Eastern Economic Review, an English monthly newsmagazine published by Dow Jones in Hong Kong for the past 60 years, writes about outsourcing primarily in information technology. Among the predictions is that 60% of all U.S. software jobs could be moved oversees. The reason: it increases world wealth (including that of the U.S.) and lowers prices. "Every dollar of spending that U.S. companies transfer to India creates $1.46 in new wealth, according to McKinsey & Co. research. India keeps 33 cents of that gain, while the U.S. keeps $1.13 for every dollar spent on offshoring." "Hardware and software prices will continue to drop as more computers are built in China and more software code written in India, according to the Institute for International Economics."

Some other quotes:

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: "By the end of 2005, one of every 10 jobs at U.S. information technology vendors and service providers will have moved offshore."

Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel: "I don't think most people appreciate the magnitude of the change in the world's workforce. Over the next 10 years you are going to see major, major dislocation."

Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley: "We're now outsourcing investment banking to Mumbai. I don't know why we would ever hire another software programmer in New York again."

InformationWeek: IT Employment On Upswing

2005-04-06T21:54:00.000-04:00

InformationWeek "Unemployment among IT workers stood at an annualized rate of 3.7% for the four quarters ended March 31, according to an InformationWeek analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data issued late last week. A year earlier, IT unemployment hit a post-boom high of 5.5%." "The two IT job categories to see the biggest percentage of year-to-year employment growth are database administrators and network and computer systems administrators, increasing at an annualized rate of 28% and 19%, respectively. The biggest drops came from network-systems and data-communications analysts, down 7%, and computer programmers, off 4% for the year." "The size of the IT workforce--those employed and seeking work in IT--rose last quarter by 22,000 to an annualized level of 3.51 million at the end of the first quarter, a 1.2% increase from the previous quarter."

New York Times: "A Blow to Computer Science Research"

2005-04-01T21:20:00.000-05:00

"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended "blue sky" research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff." New York Times, April 2, 2005

IEEE USA: "Offshoring Is Major Cause of Technical Unemployment"

2005-04-01T19:12:00.000-05:00

A survey among US IEEE members reported that offshoring is the second-highest cause of unemployment among U.S. technical professionals. "The leading cause of unemployment, cited by 62 percent of U.S. IEEE members who reported being laid off, was a business downturn. Fifteen percent reported that their jobs were transferred offshore, while 10 percent pegged merger or acquisition as the cause of their layoff." "Other findings reveal that 37 percent of the 988 respondents said they considered leaving engineering entirely, and 41 percent said they would not recommend the profession to their children."

PITAC advises increased cybersecurity funding

2005-03-20T19:01:00.000-05:00

The full report here

Paul Graham: Undergraduation

2005-03-18T21:02:00.000-05:00

Paul Graham writes about things to do (and not to do) as undergraduates and in grad school.

CRA: pair programming is claimed to increase retention of CS students

2005-03-16T13:34:00.000-05:00

An article in the March 2005 edition of Computing Research News claims that pair programming can significantly increase the number of students that choose a CS major after their first CS class:

On individually taken final exams, paired students performed as well as solo students, were just as likely to pass the subsequent programming course where pair programming was not used, and were more likely to be registered as CS-related majors one year later. ... Among the group of women who indicated on the first day of the introductory course that they planned to major in a CS-related field, those who paired were more likely to have declared a CS-related major one year later than those who worked individually. Out of 42 women who indicated they planned a CS-related major and worked in a pair for CS1, 25 (59.5%) of them had declared a CS-related major one year later, compared with only 2 out of 9 (22.2%) of the women who worked alone. ... Among the group of men who indicated on the first day of the introductory course that they planned to major in a CS-related field, those who paired were also more likely to have declared a CS-related major one year later than those who worked individually. Out of 150 men who indicated they planned a CS-related major and paired in CS1, 111 (74%) of them had declared a CS-related major one year later, compared with only 17 of the 36 (47.2%) who worked alone.

CRA: CS bachelors's production grows in 2004; poised for decline

2005-03-16T12:56:00.000-05:00

A report in the March 2005 issue of Computing Research News" describes the development of enrollments in undergraduate computer science.

The median number of degrees granted by the top 36 departments has declined for the past two years, to 109. [Thus, Columbia CS is fairly close to a median-sized department in this regard.]
While the current undergraduate CS degree production numbers are strong, they appear set to decline in coming years. The number of students that declared their major in CS has declined for the past four years and is now 39 percent lower than in the Fall of 2000. The number of new CS majors among departments ranked 37 and above has declined steadily since 2000, and since 2002 for those ranked in the top 36.
The impact of these declines is now being felt among enrollments, which have decreased by 7 percent in each of the past two years. The greatest decline in the past few years has occurred among the top 36 departments, which saw enrollments fall by 19 percent between 1999/2000 and 2003/2004.

"Why women leave IT"

2005-03-11T08:53:00.000-05:00

The article describes that the fraction of women in information technology dropped from 41% in 1996 to 35% in 2002. (46.6% of workers in the US are women.)

Computer Science Supreme Court Amicus Brief in Grokster case

2005-03-02T16:23:00.000-05:00

Today, seventeen computer science professors, including Columbia's Steve Bellovin, are filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the Grokster case. Here is the summary of our argument, quoted from the brief:

Amici write to call to the Court's attention several computer science issues raised by Petitioners [i.e., the movie and music companies] and amici who filed concurrent with Petitioners, and to correct certain of their technical assertions. First, the United States' description of the Internet's design is wrong. P2P networks are not new developments in network design, but rather the design on which the Internet itself is based. Second, a P2P network design, where the work is done by the end user's machine, is preferable to a design which forces work (such as filtering) to be done within the network, because a P2P design can be robust and efficient. Third, because of the difficulty in designing distributed networks, advances in P2P network design -- including BitTorrent and Respondents' [i.e., Grokster's and Streamcast's] software -- are crucial to developing the next generation of P2P networks, such as the NSF-funded IRIS Project. Fourth, Petitioners' assertion that filtering software will work fails to consider that users cannot be forced to install the filter, filtering software is unproven or that users will find other ways to defeat the filter. Finally, while Petitioners state that infringers' anonymity makes legal action difficult, the truth is that Petitioners can obtain IP addresses easily and have filed lawsuits against more than 8,400 alleged infringers. Because Petitioners seek a remedy that will hobble advances in technology, while they have other means to obtain relief for infringement, amici ask the Court to affirm the judgment below.

The professors are: Harold Abelson (MIT), Thomas Anderson (U. Washington), Andrew W. Appel (Princeton), Steven M. Bellovin (Columbia), Dan Boneh (Stanford), David Clark (MIT), David J. Farber (CMU), Joan Feigenbaum (Yale), Edward W. Felten (Princeton), Robert Harper (CMU), M. Frans Kaashoek (MIT), Brian Kernighan (Princeton), Jennifer Rexford (Princeton), John C. Reynolds (CMU), Aviel D. Rubin (Johns Hopkins), Eugene H. Spafford (Purdue), and David S. Touretzky (CMU).

"Forum to Address Low Enrollments in IT College Programs"

2005-02-14T14:16:00.000-05:00

"IT World Canada (02/11/05); Pickett, Patricia The organizers of last November's National Information Technology Human Resources Forum (NITHRF) plan to hold a follow-up forum in May so that educational and industry players can reach a consensus on why enrollment in IT college and university programs has been falling, and what this trend's ramifications are. The first NITHRF led to the organization of the IT Affinity Group, a collection of deans and IT directors from various Canadian institutions whose objective was to convene and talk about shared problems. IT Affinity Group Chairman Morris Uremovich, dean of Algonquin College's School of Advanced Technology, said that falling IT enrollment often forces colleges to disband programs and produce fewer graduates, which makes ramping up IT graduate turnout to meet increased demands from business and industry all the more difficult. He reported that new IT program graduates, especially those with hardware and networking skills, have favorable job prospects, while the market is less favorable toward software development graduates. Algonquin has experienced its steepest decline in software development enrollments, and Uremovich thinks that concerns about offshore outsourcing may play a part; however, analyst John O'Grady believes perceptions of a weak IT labor market are a more likely culprit. The NITHRF organizers issued a press release warning that failure to raise IT college enrollment levels could lead to a labor shortage in the next decade as baby boomers retire, though O'Grady countered that "the IT workforce is generally younger than the workforce as a whole so the demographic factors are not going to have an impact on IT like they will on the other segments of the labor force." In fact, he said the IT labor market, particularly the computer hardware sector, is starting to bounce back."

Grand Challenges for Computing

2005-01-26T05:52:00.000-05:00

The British Computer Society published a list of grand challenges for computing. Unfortunately, for many of them it will be hard to tell when we've accomplished the challenge.

Toward concurrency in software

2005-01-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

The Free Lunch is Over: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software describes why we are unlikely to see higher clockspeeds and other simple scaling soon, so that performance increases in software will have to come from concurrency to exploit multicore processors, with a bit of assist from larger caches. 64-bit processors may actually decrease application performance.

Joel on Software: "Advice for Computer Science College Students"

2005-01-05T16:03:00.000-05:00

Joel Spolsky provides some Advice for Computer Science College Students, including

Learn how to write before graduating.
Learn C before graduating.
Learn microeconomics before graduating.
Don't blow off non-CS classes just because they're boring.
Take programming-intensive courses.
Stop worrying about all the jobs going to India.
No matter what you do, get a good summer internship.

16-bit counter grounds airline

2004-12-30T13:16:00.000-05:00

As reported in the Cincinnati Post, a limit on the number of crew changes to 32,000 per month led to the crash of the Comair crew booking system, grounding the airline for a day. Comair is a regional airline affiliated with Delta with a hub in Cincinnati. I suppose this incident makes a good example for an introductory programming class...

U.S. Slips in Status as Hub of Higher Education

2004-12-20T21:25:00.000-05:00

U.S. Slips in Status as Hub of Higher Education (New York Times, December 21, 2004)

"Foreign applications to American graduate schools declined 28 percent this year. Actual foreign graduate student enrollments dropped 6 percent. ...

Certainly many American universities continue to be extraordinary global brand names. Shanghai Jiao Tong University has compiled an online academic ranking of 500 world universities, using criteria like the number of Nobel Prizes won by faculty members and academic articles published (here). Of the top 20 on the list, 17 are American. Of the top 500, 170 are American. [Columbia is #9 - ed.] ...

During 2002, the most recent year for which comparable figures are available, some 586,000 foreign students were enrolled in United States universities, compared with about 270,000 in Britain, the world's second-largest higher education destination, and 227,000 in Germany, the third-largest. Foreign enrollments increased by 15 percent that year in Britain, and in Germany by 10 percent. ...

The number of Indian students in the United States has more than doubled in a decade, to 80,000, the largest representation of any country. The 62,000 students from China make up the second-largest group. "

IEEE USA resource page on outsourcing

2004-12-07T09:29:00.000-05:00

IEEE USA maintains a web page with resources and media coverage on outsourcing.

0wn3d in 200 seconds

2004-12-01T23:23:00.000-05:00

This article on The Register said that, based on tests conducted by USA Today, an unprotected Windows XP machine was breached within four minutes, and became a zombie in less than ten hours.

"Stay current, stay lucky, stay employed"

2004-11-24T08:45:00.000-05:00

In another article in November 2004's IEEE Spectrum: "Twenty years ago, full time EE's who weren't self-employed earned ... close to $4000 more than the average for a salaried doctor. ... In the meantime, IEEE members' median salaries have fallen from about the 92nd percentile of U.S. household income in 1971 to about the 85th two years ago."

Spectrum R&D 100

2004-11-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

IEEE Spectrum summarizes the top 100 R&D spenders. Microsoft, Ford, Pfizer, DaimlerChrysler, Toyota, Siemens and General Motors are the top seven, with traditional telecom companies like Nokia (13), Ericsson (21), NTT (25), Cisco (29), Lucent (57, dropped from rank 36 in 2002) spread throughout the index. Most of the spending is in development and applied research, however. "Universities have become extraordinarily greedy and aggressive in prosecuting their patents and, in the process, have backed away from their responsibilities as defenders of open science," says Richard R. Nelson, a professor of international and public affairs and an expert in the economics of technological advances at Columbia University, in New York City. Some academics, too, seem to be more concerned with money than with the quest for knowledge. "When I talk with faculty at the medical school or the engineering school, the notion that there should be some restrictions on their ability to take out patents and license them any way they want to just raises a tremendous storm," Nelson adds.

"Sea Change in Grad Student Rolls"

2004-11-24T08:15:00.000-05:00

IEEE Spectrum summarizes the change in graduate enrollment: "In 2002, there were 58 262 students from abroad enrolled in U.S. graduate engineering programs and 61 346 U.S. students." Applications to U.S. graduate programs declined 28% between 2003 and 2004, with engineering program applications dropping by 36%. Applications from China dropped 45%, while applications from India decreased by 28%.

Video entertainment as career for CS graduates?

2004-11-20T20:16:00.000-05:00

Prof. Pausch (CMU) describes Electronic Arts (EA), the largest game company. According to the article, it was the fifth largest publicly traded software company in the U.S. By revenue, three of the ten largest software companies are in the video game business. An article in the New York Times (Saturday, Nov. 21) talks about alleged working hours at EA: "For around $60,000 a year in an area with a high cost of living, he had been set to work on a six-day-a-week schedule. On weekdays, his team worked from 9 to 10 (that is, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.), and on Saturdays, a half-day (that means 9 to 6). Then Sundays were added - noon to 8 or 10 p.m. The weekly total was 82 to 84 hours."" These sound like CS faculty working hours...

NSF spending cut by 2%

2004-11-19T10:00:00.000-05:00

The House late last night approved an $800 billion increase in the debt ceiling. More importantly, they moved closer to approving a spending bill which will cut the NSF budget by more than 2% (by over $100 million), the first cut to the NSF budget in more than a decade.

New Google search for papers, theses and reports

2004-11-18T08:39:00.000-05:00

Google Scholar indexes papers, theses and reports. There are 301,000 entries for Columbia University.

"Fewer Women Joining the IT Ranks"

2004-11-17T19:52:00.000-05:00

The American Association of University Women estimates that about 20 percent of IT professionals and fewer than 28 percent of computer science graduates are women, who also constitute a mere 19 percent of engineering graduates, according to the National Academy of Engineering. (ACM News Service) Full article

"Specialty Majors Are the Rage on Some Campuses"

2004-11-17T19:38:00.000-05:00

Specialty Majors Are the Rage on Some Campuses" NorthJersey.com (11/15/04); Adler, Jessica

Offshore outsourcing and a listless U.S. economy are encouraging more students to pursue specialty majors such as video game development, casino studies, homeland security, and sports sales in the hopes that they will lead to lucrative careers. Students are adopting lessons outlined in "The College Majors Handbook," which states that graduates generally command much higher wages in jobs closely related to their major than they do in unrelated jobs. Bloomfield College professor Roger E. Pedersen, who offers a game design major, explains that the skills students are picking up apply not just to games, but also to films, TV advertising, and Web applications that utilize the same programs. The gaming/casino major offered by Morrisville State College in New York includes emphasis on facial-recognition software and habit-tracking software. University of Denver professor Scott Leutenegger has co-launched a video game development major with a traditional computer science component, and he believes such a strategy can make computer science more interesting and challenging to students, which could perhaps help mitigate a shortage of computer scientists projected within the next five years. The cost of education is another factor driving students toward specialty majors, while still another is the high value accorded to college degrees. "College Majors Handbook" co-author Paul Harrington, a professor at Northeastern University, reports that students with bachelor's degrees were earning 66% more money than high school graduates in 2000, up from between 15% and 17% three decades earlier.

Introduction

2004-11-02T19:16:00.000-05:00

This is a new blog where members of the Columbia Computer Science community post articles and viewpoints related to all fields of computer science - research, education, and community issues.