The CRA Enrollment Committee was formed in 2015 to investigate increasing enrollments. This section describes the background and process of producing this report.

The number of CS majors enrolled at North American doctoral institutions more than tripled from its low in 2006 through the most recent available data for 2015, and continued growth seems likely.

In addition to the growth in majors, more nonmajors are taking computing courses past the introductory level, and more students are minoring in CS. Analyses that look only at the number of CS majors understate the demands being placed on academic units.

The computer science community learned several hard lessons about diversity in earlier booms, so there is concern that actions taken to manage increased enrollments today might have a side effect of reducing diversity. While more data is needed, there is some good news regarding both the numbers and percentages of women and underrepresented minority students involved in computer science as majors and as students in CS courses; unfortunately not every unit that responded to the survey is experiencing this growth.

Both doctoral and non-doctoral units have experienced stresses in available space, instructional resources, and faculty workload.

Units are using or are planning to use a wide range of approaches to manage enrollments, manage enrollment related resources, and reduce the demands on faculty while trying to meet the needs of both majors and nonmajors. Many doctoral- and non-doctoral granting units have increased class sizes and reduced some course offerings and faculty activities.

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects information on degrees awarded by detailed field from all U.S. postsecondary institutions. While IPEDS does not have enrollments by field, and degrees lag enrollments by several years, a review of the IPEDS data on computer science allows comparison of trends in the CRA Enrollment Survey responses to trends across all institutions.

The Methodology section provides more detail on the data collection and analysis of the CRA Enrollment Survey.

View a list of the figures published in the report. Data spreadsheets behind each of the figures in the report will be made available in the near future.

Acknowledgements to those who assisted with the survey, data, analysis, or report.