Computer Science ranked as one of 20th most useless degree major
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
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5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
Who wrote that, ChatGPT? Complete nonsense. Computer science is the number one degree in demand in the job market right now. Not that there aren't other paths to the same end goal, and yes, you probably need to specialize.
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
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5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
I'm not sure what they call computer science in the U.S. In my country CS was little more than a specialization of applied mathematics, just as my career, computer engineering, was a specialization of electronics engineering (we still needed to understand how to model the voltage and current of a transistor over time, and then understand how a bunch of those create gates, latches, flip-flops and so on.) So if you're not here to improve on what Nvidia has already built, for example, then why bother going into the career at all?
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
Quote:
5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
Well said... Many such degrees are becoming useless as they do not really concentrate on the necessary subject matter that students will be able to use when they graduate. I have always recommended that people who want to enter the Information Technology field go to a 2-year community college and get their basics in design and development, which are much better foundations for such a career. After the begin work, if one wants to specialize in an area other then general business development, there are many better avenues for education than a 4 year Computer Science degree.
Steve Naidamast Sr. Software Engineer Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@outlook.com
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edsmart.org. Now there's a voice of authority. :laugh: /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Notice the degree programs are listed alphabetically. CS is not (necessarily) the 5th most useless degree even on their list. Also "most useless" appears to mean "not leading quickly to employment" rather than "not helpful." This may have more to do with every employer of CS grads being on a continuous unicorn hunt for 10x developers and less to do with the value of the degree curriculum. It may be a valid complaint about CS degrees that it's hard to break in to that first job. CS is like medicine in that it requires some supervised apprenticeship after graduation. Only the tech world doesn't provide that.
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Got mine as a MS combo of CS, Math and SD (Systems Design & System Analysis) in 1978. Loved it. Worked for me. Not sure it works these days, but CS alone would not be enough.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day" Badfinger
Early on a lot of the Specialties that are in demand now did not exist. Evolution in the industry is fast enough that the Basic CS degree isn't enough. But we learned the theory, best practices, and how tos. Then we built the Specialties from the ground up. Even then in CS101 first day, the professor asked for a show of hands. "Who here has experience coding in procedural languages?" After 90% of the class raises their hands, he says - "It is the opinion of this school that you are all ruined for practicing coding in the future. Object Oriented languages will be that future." They didn't even teach any object oriented languages at the time.
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
Quote:
5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
It's also on the list of https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/most-useful-majors[^] I graduated with my CS BS in 2006. I've been laid off 3 times in that interim and never spent more than 2 months unemployed. Over that period my pay has increased by 337.5% relative my first job as a programmer. I have certainly not found it to be even remotely useless.
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There's no such thing as a job "in coding," and Computer Science is indeed the right path towards it.
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
Quote:
5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
The landscape of computing jobs has changed substantially since CS was introduced. The number of specialized jobs has exploded, and many don't rely on the generalized knowledge in the same way--the needs are more specific, and there are interdisciplinary components that aren't necessarily covered in the CS degree itself that are part of specialized programs. However, I also think the number of CS general jobs has grown. They just haven't grown anywhere near the degree of the specializations. I use a bunch of my CS degree, partly due to the nature of my work within and around game engines. Some stuff I don't need to worry about anymore (like dealing with algorithms for optimizing reads of data from DVDs and BluRay), but new challenges and opportunities are constantly surfacing. One of the issues we've had with hiring new people is they claim to know a language but do not understand how the underlying implementation works, resulting in problems with what is produced. It depends on the work you want to do. If you are going to invest in any degree, particularly one that leads to a narrower field, make sure it is what you want to do every day.
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
Quote:
5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
When I was enrolled in a Comp. Sci. bachelor's degree, the courses actually taught you about machine architecture, how computers worked, compared architectures (in my case, IBM versus CDC), explored various programming languages, including assembler, and taught how to apply a computer to the solution of a problem. Over the years, I found that most so-called computer science degrees looked more like mathematics degrees than computer science. In my case, I didn't finish my degree because the money and jobs being offered were simply too good to ignore. In the early 70s, if you understood how to make a computer dance and sing, companies didn't care about whether or not you had a degree -- it was all about what you could do. In my case, I entered the career workforce as a junior programmer-analyst in the summer of 1973. Since that time I have not had a single day of unemployment. I have since held almost every job title that exists in our industry. After 50 years, I am still designing and building systems, designing databases, writing code, and advising clients, and I still love what I do. I certainly do not consider my CS education to have been a waste of time or money. Cheers
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20 Most Useless College Degrees 2023[^]
Quote:
5. Computer Science Pursuing a computer science degree may appear to be a promising path towards a thriving career post graduation. However like many of the most useless college degrees, computer science is a challenging degree to use after you graduate. This is because a general computer science degree is broad just like a degree in communications. Some students enter computer science to get a job in coding, information technology, or cybersecurity. However there are specific programs for these career paths that look much better on a resume. Upon completing a computer science degree, you might find yourself uncertain about the next steps to take. To get a job you may require higher education in your field or more specific education and focus in an area like coding or cybersecurity. You may instead find yourself looking for a job with your current education and experience, which may prove unsuccessful.
The site pretty much looks like something designed to sell ads to colleges. Personally, I have a CS degree, have found it quite useful, and generally look for others who have CS (or related) degrees when hiring programmers. I find those without degrees often lack the well-rounded experience I'm looking for and will often struggle with basic concepts (like parsing, optimizing, ...). Of course, I've known some pretty good self-taught programmers. Ultimately, applicable experience counts more than education, which is pretty much true for any position (except those with rigorous licensing requirements that require degrees, like doctors).