The 1980s All Over Again?

By William Aspray

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the information technology worker shortage. A press release from the office of Vice President Gore noted that 95,000 new information jobs are being created each year in the national economy, but the universities are not graduating enough trained people (only 24,000 bachelor degrees were awarded in 1994). A recent white paper on the subject by a Washington-area trade association noted the drop in undergraduate computer science enrollments between 1984 and 1994, and one could not help coming away from this report feeling that computer science was being indicted for its failure to meet societal needs for more information technologists. The comparison in this report between 1984 and 1994 led me to consider how things stood both then and now.

First, the current situation, based mostly on anecdotal evidence: Undergraduate enrollments are up-way up-during the past several years. One major Midwestern university reports increases in undergraduate enrollment in computer science (as compared to the previous year) of 20%, 18%, and 28% during the last three years, respectfully. At that school, 1997 enrollments are 10% higher than they were in 1987. A western state university reports increases of approximately 50% in the number of freshmen and sophomores declaring computer science majors. Graduate student enrollments, especially for the Ph.D. degree, in computer science are flat-indeed, one eastern state university reported having to make a major effort at graduate student recruitment just to stay even. Many departments report that they are having a hard time attracting qualified faculty, and that the best candidates are being hired by industry or had previously chosen to go into industry without first obtaining a doctorate. Industrial lab managers tell me that some of their professional positions are going unfilled for lack of good candidates. The number of professional advertisements in Computing Research News has increased significantly both last academic year and this year, and other anecdotal information suggests that the number of faculty positions is increasing-but not nearly at the rate of undergraduate enrollments.

The similarity to the early 1980s is striking. Undergraduate enrollments skyrocketed. Many students did not stay in school to complete the Ph.D. because of opportunities in industry. Faculty fled to industrial positions. Space, facilities, and salaries were inadequate in the universities. Teaching loads were extremely heavy. Morale was low. There was discussion of the community "eating its seed corn."

The problem was resolved-or perhaps weathered is a better term-in the 1980s by a series of actions. CRA and other professional organizations studied the problem, suggested solutions, and made the public aware of the issue. The National Science Foundation's Coordinated Experimental Research program had a salutary effect in broadening the base of universities that were strong in computer science, providing equipment so that faculty and students could continue their research in a university setting, and stimulating experimental research to supplement the mathematical orientation from which the field originated. Over a period of years, university administrations were able to increase the space, faculty slots, facilities, and research support allotted to computer science. And to a certain degree, the problem was self-correcting. As the initial gleam of microcomputers wore off, so did the rapid growth in high-school students wanting to enter this new field.

So what do we do today? The answer has two parts. One has to do with maintaining the health of computer science departments. Just as in the 1980s, CRA and other professional organizations need to take the lead. We need to study the problem, identify solutions, and persuade the government, industrial, and academic sectors to act decisively. It is too soon to tell if history is repeating itself. Anecdotal evidence, such as new Java courses with enrollments of 500, suggests that the current undergraduate enrollment growth is dependent on the gleam of the Web. This new gleam may fall off just as the gleam of the microcomputer did as the 1980s went on. If the problem persists, however, federal agencies, professional societies, and industry will all have to contribute to improving the academic environment so as to retain and increase the number of high-quality people on computer science faculties. The current level of degree production, Vice President Gore calls for, cannot be maintained without larger and stronger faculties, and the resources for them to do their jobs efficiently-for both teaching and research. University administrations need to be persuaded that, painful as it might be, resources must continue to be reallocated from fields with lower demand and opportunity.

The second part of the solution has to do with the place of computer science in the university. Even if the current blip in undergraduate enrollments is a short-term artifact of the Web, technological and social forces are making the world ever more information intensive, and this will almost certainly lead to a sizable, long-term increase in the demand for adequately trained information workers. Only a few of the 95,000 new jobs for information workers each year will be appropriate for computer science majors. However, virtually all of these jobs will require some computer training. Computer science departments should be leading their universities in curricular reform that will bring appropriate computer training with adequate technical content into those many parts of the university that will be producing the graduates for the information technology workforce-but more on this in another editorial.