This article is published in the January 2022 issue.

Analysis of Current and Future Computer Science Needs via Advertised Faculty Searches for 2022

By: Craig E. Wills, Professor and Department Head, Computer Science Department, Worcester Polytechnic InstituteIn: /

This work uses the same methodology applied over eight years to study where Computer Science departments are choosing to invest faculty positions using data obtained from advertised tenure-track searches for the current hiring season.  This work also provides an opportunity to continue to understand the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty hiring in Computer Science for hires starting in 2022.

We analyzed ads from 400 institutions seeking to fill hundreds of tenure-track faculty positions in Computer Science.  This number is a 70% increase from last year at this time (mid-November) and is a comparable number to the 394 institutions searching for 2020.  The number of tenure-track positions sought is doubled from last year and up 6% from two years ago indicating a recovery in demand after a one-year drop due to the pandemic. The number of BS/BA institutions seeking faculty is at an eight-year high with top PhD and private PhD institutions at eight-year highs in the number of positions being sought.

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We clustered the specific Computer Science topics mentioned in ads into 16 areas.  In terms of specific areas, we again found that the clustered area of AI/Data Mining/Machine Learning accounts for the most with 18% of all sought positions and Security again second at 17%, although these percentages are a bit lower than last year.  The area of Data Science is at 11% of positions, but aggregating the Data Science, AI/DM/ML and Databases clusters again resulted in close to a third of all hires sought in these data-oriented areas.  The area of Systems/Networking was fourth in the percentage (9%) of positions sought.

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Differences are also seen when analyzing results based on the type of institution.  As was the case last year, positions in the clustered area of AI/Data Mining/Machine Learning have the highest percentages for PhD institutions.  Again positions related to Security have the highest percentages for MS and BS/BA institutions. Theory/Algorithms is the second-most sought area for PhD institutions while Data Science is the second-most sought area for MS and BS/BA institutions.

The full study is available at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~cew/papers/CSareas22.pdf