The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting

https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/06/computer-science-bubble-ai/683242/

by bookofjoe • 1 year ago

5 7 1 year ago

bookofjoe2• 1 year ago

“ All of which makes the latest batch of numbers so startling. This year, enrollment grew by only 0.2 percent nationally, and at many programs, it appears to already be in decline, according to interviews with professors and department chairs. At Stanford, widely considered one of the country’s top programs, the number of comp-sci majors has stalled after years of blistering growth. Szymon Rusinkiewicz, the chair of Princeton’s computer-science department, told me that, if current trends hold, the cohort of graduating comp-sci majors at Princeton is set to be 25 percent smaller in two years than it is today. The number of Duke students enrolled in introductory computer-science courses has dropped about 20 percent over the past year.”

I don’t understand what this means exactly, Stanford must have chosen not to enroll so many comp sci majors right? Like I can’t imagine not enough people applied. Wouldn’t you see trail offs maybe start at small schools, not leading schools?

fasthands9• 1 year ago

It is interesting. My two theories would be a) people at top schools follow these meta-discussions more and are therefore are more likely to be ahead of trend b) someone who could do comp-sci at Stanford could easily become something like a doctor, but at small schools there's not an obvious second option that's also high earning.

techpineapple3• 1 year ago

That’s interesting, so maybe - Stanford enrolls say 50k people and lets the chips fall where they may in terms of majors and doesn’t like prescriptively try and recruit x numbers of comp sci majors. — and the chips are falling away from CS.

Or they are recruiting for growth, but as students progress the natural rate of major change is not as biased towards CS.

tines• 1 year ago

This year, enrollment grew by only 0.2 percent nationally, and at many programs, it appears to already be in decline, according to interviews with professors and department chairs.

Curious what is making up the slack, or if people are just choosing not to go to college.

The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting

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