Computer Science in the News

National News Items

  • Computerworld (23 May 2008)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Unemployment rates for those with some of the hottest tech skills — including computer software engineers, computer programmers, network and computer systems administrators and analysts, and computer scientists and systems analysts — were each below 3% in 2007. Meanwhile, computer and information systems managers saw an unemployment rate of 1.3%, and the unemployment rate for database administrators sat at just 0.4%."
  • CRA Bulletin (25 March 2008)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Compared to several other majors, computer and information sciences (CS) graduates were doing quite well. CS graduates were most likely to be employed in business and industry and to be working full-time. At the bachelor’s level, 82% of CS majors were employed in business and industry and 91% of them (along with engineering majors) had full-time jobs. At the master’s level, 76% worked in business/industry and 93% had full-time jobs."
    • "CS graduates also earned high salaries. CS tied for second with health majors for the highest median salary at the bachelor’s level ($45,000) and tied for first with engineering at the master’s level ($65,000). This compared to median salaries among all science, engineering and health fields of $39,000 at the bachelor’s level and $56,000 at the master’s level."
  • eSchool News (25 February 2008)
    Quotes from the article:
    • " 'When we want to hire lots of software engineers, there is a shortage in North America—a pretty significant shortage,' [Microsoft Chairman Bill] Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press."
  • Information Week (12 January 2008)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "The market for IT professionals is strong and is still the fastest-growing sector in the U.S. economy, with more than a million new jobs projected to be added between 2004 and 2014."
    • "Over the next three decades the demand for experienced IT professionals between the ages of 35 and 45 will increase by 25%, while the supply will decrease by 15%."
  • Computing Research Policy Blog (5 December 2007)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Computer and mathematical science occupations are expected to grow by about 24 percent over the next decade, a rate that would add 822,000 new jobs to the field."
    • "Of the six occupations that will be among the fastest growing and register the largest numerical growth, three will be computing related occupations"
  • eWeek Careers (5 October 2007)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Not only are computer science majors faring well in the job market, but starting salary offers since the bursting of the IT bubble have been about 15 percent higher than those that came before it."
    • "Computer science majors saw a 4.5 percent increase in salary offers between 2006 and 2007, bringing the average to $53,051."
  • CNet (25 June 2007)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "The overall unemployment rate for the computer industry at the end of last quarter was 2.1 percent, which is even lower than the 2.3 percent rate during the same quarter in 2000, the peak of the dot-com boom. Things are particularly bright for software engineers, whose unemployment rate was down to 0.9 percent last quarter, compared to 1.9 percent during the same period in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Labor."
    • "Microsoft is looking to hire 2,500 students this year, a combination of full-time and intern candidates. It would like to hire even more, but there are just not enough students with technical skills."
  • Business Week (24 April 2007)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "On average, it is taking 56 days to fill full-time IT positions."
    • "Unemployment for engineers, computer programmers, software developers, and other IT professionals is at the lowest rate in years. Less than 3% of computer systems designers are out of work and less than 2% of engineers are sitting at home searching the classifieds."
    • " 'There would have been a lot more than 147,000 jobs created here, but our companies are having difficulty finding Americans with the background.' "
  • Fort Wayne Journal Gazette(4 March 2007)
    Quotes from the article:
    • " 'Nationwide, there are more jobs in the U.S. in computing than there ever have been, even at the height of the dot-com craze. The 10-year count for growth in new jobs is that there will be 1.4 million net new jobs over a 10-year period. That's the hottest growth area of any area at all in the science and engineering fields.' "
    • " 'If you want your kids to tap into great jobs that are intellectually rewarding and financially rewarding, as well, get them plugged into computer science or computer engineering or information technology. What you can do with those degrees is really mind-boggling.' "
    • " 'This is a field where there's interaction, there are opportunities to do very, very interesting things, to work in groups and collaborate on interesting projects ... We will be at a competitive disadvantage if we cannot fill the job pool.' "
    • " 'Information in health care is everything ... There will be opportunities to design information systems for hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers and patients, including using a patient's DNA to determine which drug or course of treatment will be most effective.' "
    • " 'We're graduating students in the tens of thousands whereas the job opportunities in IT will number about one-and-a-half-million new jobs over 10 years. If you can hit that job market now, you're going to be in especially high demand.' "
  • Stanford News Service(9 February 2007)
    Quotes from the article:
    • " 'There are more jobs in the U.S. today than there were at the height of the dot-com boom [...] We're training far fewer people than we need to fill the available positions.' "
    • "The unfounded fear of disappearing job opportunities is having real effects on the computing industry. 'The real problem is that fear of offshoring is keeping people out of the field,' [Stanford Professor Eric] Roberts says. 'If you believe that there will be no computer jobs in the U.S., that will become true. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.' "
  • Stanford News Service(6 November 2006)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Students pursuing information technology careers but worried about the offshoring of jobs have nothing to fear, according to a report presented Nov. 2 to academics and members of the Stanford Computer Forum, an industrial affiliates program."
    • "'There is a huge mismatch between perception and reality,' Rice University Professor Moshe Vardi said. 'There are more IT jobs now than there were six years ago at the height of the IT boom.'"
    • "Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate companies are creating new IT jobs as fast as or faster than they are exported overseas."
  • CIO Insight (6 October 2006)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Says Kate Kaiser, an associate professor of IT at Marquette University's College of Business, 'Between 2001 and 2005, the number of students graduating in IT-related disciplines has dropped significantly. Right now we have very few. They are nowhere near meeting demand.' She reports a drop in enrollment in IT courses of as much as 50 percent between 2001 and 2004; meanwhile, CIO Insight's own research shows that 45 percent of companies plan to increase the size of their IT staffs in the next year, while just 12 percent plan to decrease them."
  • Ashland City Times (25 September 2006)
    Quotes from the article:
    • " 'We're going crazy trying to find candidates,' said Sridevi Movva, the managing partner of Nashville IT consulting firm Optimum Technologies Solutions. ... Movva said she hasn't been able to find experienced consultants in Nashville, and has had to hire outside the region, including signing visas for foreign nationals, to fill job openings."
    • " 'There are lots of jobs but not enough people are entering this field,' said Sandeep Walia, who is opening an e-commerce software office called Ignify on West End Avenue. With Oracle database experts making as much as $150,000 a year, 'you wonder why more people aren't getting into this,' Walia said."
  • Datamation (15 September 2006)
    According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the top ten fastest growing jobs between now and 2014, five of them are in CS/IT.
  • CNN/Money (April 2006)
    In Money Magazine's list of the best jobs in America, number 1 on the list is Software Engineering.
  • CNN/Money (23 February 2006)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Despite all the publicity in the United States about jobs being lost to India and China, the size of the IT employment market in the United States today is higher than it was at the height of the dot.com boom."
    • "IT workers have seen steady gains in average annual wages for different fields in the sector of between about two to five percent a year."
  • CNN (27 January 2006)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "The following jobs are growing so quickly that all 10 made the Bureau of Labor Statistics' list of the 30 fastest-growing jobs through 2014. But just as importantly, they topped the fastest-growing list in terms of salary. Here are the best of the best:
      1. Computer systems software engineer: $81,140
        ...
      2. Computer applications software engineer: $76,310
        ...
      3. Computer systems analyst: $67,520
        ...
      4. Network systems and data communication analyst: $61,250
        ..."
  • ComputerWorld (27 December 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Despite the notion that hordes of U.S. IT jobs are being sent offshore, in reality, less than 5% of the 10 million people who make up the U.S. IT job market had been displaced by foreign workers through 2004, says Scot Melland, president and CEO of Dice Inc., a New York-based online jobs service. The numbers of jobs posted on Dice.com from January through September for developers, project managers and help desk technicians rose 40%, 47% and 45%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2004, says Melland."
    • "There's a lot of talk about developer jobs being sent overseas, but "most of the stuff that's going offshore is low-level coding jobs," says Craig Symons, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. Over the past year, companies have started working through their backlog of IT projects. As a result, says Symons, demand for developers with .Net and Java skills has increased, as has the need for business analysts and IT relationship managers who work with business managers to understand their divisions' requirements."
  • Information Week (3 October 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "After bottoming out following the dot-com bust, IT employment is back to 2001 levels, about 3.4 million people."
    • "The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts computer scientists, computer-system analysts, and database administrators will be among the fastest-growing occupations through 2012. Admittedly, predicting job growth is tricky. But of the jobs the bureau predicts will grow most quickly through 2012, eight of 11 that require a bachelor's degree are computer-related."
    • "The average computer-science grad started at $50,664, a 3.3% increase from last year, according to the fall quarterly survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers."
  • ZDNet (20 September 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "U.S. IT employment was 17% higher [in 2004] than in 1999 --- 5% higher than the bubble in 2000 and showing an 8% growth in the most recent year --- and that the compound annual growth rate of IT wages has been about 4% since 1999 while inflation has been just 2% per year. Such growth rates swamp predictions of the outsourcing job loss in the U.S., which most studies estimate to be 2% to 3% per year for the next decade."
  • El Paso Times (16 September 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "'Hundreds of thousands of high-tech jobs in the United States go unfilled because of the lack of qualified computer science graduates,' [IBM Vice President Mark] Hanny said."
    • "'The old perception that a career in computer science means being only a technician and nothing else is erroneous,' [Hanny] said. 'Bright computer experts are solving problems all over the world.'"
  • CIO Magazine (9 September 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "IT professionals across the U.S. are expected to be increasingly in demand [this year], according to the Robert Half Technology IT Hiring Index and Skills Report."
    • "An increasing number of available jobs combined with a decrease in new computer science graduates in the market means that IT workers have the upper hand in bargaining situations."
  • eWeek.com (19 July 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Microsoft is concerned about staffing its research and product groups, [Bill] Gates said. 'I'm very worried about it,' Gates said. 'Microsoft is trying to hire every great college graduate that has computer science skills.'"
  • SearchCIO.com (8 June 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Government numbers on IT projections 10 years out show there will be a strong demand for IT workers."
    • "Talented students are having no trouble finding jobs, he added. Large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, as well as financial companies like Fidelity, 'call all the time,' looking for imaginative, well-educated computer science majors."
    • "With 1.5 million new IT jobs projected by 2007 by the U.S. Department of Labor and a steep decline in graduates with computing degrees, a labor shortage is inevitable."
  • Iowa City Press-Citizen (6 June 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • " 'Computer science will remain for this century,' said James Cremer, University of Iowa computer science department chairman. 'It's going to be a great major. It's a really strong base for being a really marketable problem solver for the 21st century.'"
    • "Software design and development, which would include job interests for computer science majors, is listed as one of the top 10 jobs among 2004-05 college graduates with an average salary offer of $53,729, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Information technology jobs, which includes computer science, is the top category for job seekers and employers at collegerecruiter.com."
  • Chronicle of Higher Education (27 May 2005)
    Quotes from the article:
    • "Some computer-science professors say that much of the news coverage is exaggerated, and that jobs in information technology remain plentiful. They point to a Commerce Department study that projects that 70.2 percent of all vacant positions in science and engineering between 2002 and 2012, or 1.6 million jobs, will be in information technology."
    • "Edward D. Lazowska, a computer-science professor at the University of Washington, says computer-science graduates from his university are receiving multiple job offers. And Richard F. Rashid, senior vice president for Microsoft Research, says Microsoft has more jobs for computer-science graduates with bachelor's degrees than it can fill."

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