TalkA Techie, Absolutely, and More

Source: NYTimes

For quite a few months, there was a talk prevailing in U.S. about the downfall of the research in the computer science sector. Here is an article which tells about the drift of students interests towards core computer science. One of the major reason behind the shift of students interest is mainly due to outsourcing of jobs to India and China. Students are more concerned about their future.

Here is an extract of the article with few of my comments added.

"If you have only technical knowledge, you are vulnerable," said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of "The Future of Work" (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). "But if you can combine business or scientific knowledge with technical savvy, there are a lot of opportunities. And it's a lot harder to move that kind of work offshore. Design is the area where Asian countries need to stress much on.

On campuses today, the newest technologists have to become renaissance geeks. They have to understand computing, but they also typically need deep knowledge of some other field, from biology to business, Wall Street to Hollywood. And they tend to focus less on the tools of technology than on how technology is used in the search for scientific breakthroughs, the development of new products and services, or the way work is done.

For people who stay in computing, the job outlook is brightest for those skilled in the application of technology. While jobs in categories like programming have declined since 2000, according to the Labor Department, the need for information technology experts has not. Now its the time where application of technology to the other business pays much.

n fact, jobs that involve tailoring information technology to specific industries or companies, like software engineers who make applications and specialized systems, have grown. Total employment among information technology professionals, the government reports, reached nearly 3.5 million by the end of last year, surpassing the previous high in 2000, when the technology investment boom peaked.

At the same time, the march of computing is rippling across all academic disciplines. Even as computer science students are being encouraged to take more courses outside their major, students in other disciplines are finding more often that they need to use, design and sometimes write computer programs.

This trend has troubled Bill Gates, the co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, who traveled to several elite universities in a campaign-style tour in the spring of 2004 to stir up enthusiasm for computer science. He plans another campus tour this fall.

"There isn't the buzz and excitement about computer science that there should be," he said. "We're on the threshold of extraordinary advances in computing that will affect not only the sciences but also how we work and our culture. We need to get the brightest people working on those opportunities."

Ofcourse a very big article, stressing the decline in the people preferring for computer science as their core disciplines. From my perspective on this article, there are two points worth a stress.

1) People who believe in making money by tailoring the information technology for business.

2) Person who are more concerned on bringing new things in to the field mostly R&D, which only major players could afford.

I belong to the second category, where my thirst for knowledge and excellence stays ahead of money. I believe in making everyday a challenge, rather than literating the clients on the technology, which should be quite demanding for many. I always like to stick to the second category.

Category: Research, Computer Science