In a Science column, Ed Lazowska, a well-known University of Washington computer scientist, discusses the future career prospects for students studying computer science. Here are a few excerpts:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that two-thirds of all available jobs in all fields of science and engineering during this decade—in the mathematical sciences, the physical sciences, the life sciences, engineering, and the social sciences—will be in computer science. …
There was an undergraduate enrollment downturn in the past decade. This was a side effect of the tech downturn. Simultaneously, there was a graduate enrollment upturn — great undergraduates chose graduate school due to diminished employment opportunities. The field is producing 50% more Ph.D.s than a decade ago. Today, undergraduate enrollments are through the roof at all major programs across the nation. …
In most other STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] fields, the vast majority of graduates at all levels take jobs unrelated to their field of study. In computer science, the opposite is true: The vast majority of graduates at all levels take jobs that are in their “sweet spot.” …
Here’s the bad news: Very few IT companies today have research organizations that are looking out more than one or two product cycles. And even at companies that do — such as Microsoft — this constitutes a tiny fraction of overall R&D expenditures. … This illustrates the critical role of the Federal government’s investment in computing research. …
And here’s the good news: First, while Microsoft Research is a small proportion of Microsoft’s overall R&D investment, it’s a lot of money. Microsoft spends about as much on MSR as the National Science Foundation spends on its Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. Ditto for IBM. …
Certainly, there’s a huge role in cybersecurity, both in research and in practice. Our nation is far behind in this field. We have made great progress in recent years. Our progress in software engineering — in tools to create secure software — has been remarkable. …
Computer science is a field of limitless opportunity, and limitless impact. We are terrible at predicting the future: We overestimate what can be achieved in 10 years, and we underestimate what can be achieved in 50. Look back 10 or 12 years. Did we foresee the revolutions in search, Web-scale systems, digital media, mobility, e-commerce, the cloud, social networking, and crowdsourcing? No way! These were barely on the horizon in 2000, and they are part of our everyday lives today. …
Here’s one thing that’s certain in the next 10 years: We will put “the smarts” in everything: smart homes, smart cars, smart health, smart robots, smart science (confronting the data deluge), smart crowds and human-computer systems, smart interaction (virtual and augmented reality). …
Science policy in this nation, and STEM education, is in the iron grip of chemists, physicists, astronomers, and biologists. They don’t want any interlopers. But increasingly, advances in these fields are being driven by computer science. There is no field that is more important to the future of the nation and the world.