While we see articles about the decline of computer science majors, particularly women, almost daily, the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting piece (sub. req’d.) about what a couple of universities are doing to attract and retain women in computer science programs.
Lucy Sanders of the National Center for Women in Information Technology has perhaps the key quote in the piece about the problem of recruiting and retaining computer science majors. “You walk into an intro class, and you start learning a programming language that eventually gets a machine to spit out a string of numbers,” says Lucy Sanders, chief executive of the women-and-technology center. “That’s not what computing is about. Computing is about solving real problems in medicine, or oceanography, and that’s what people who do it love. But the intro courses don’t teach that at all.”
We’ve also noted on CRA’s Computing Research Policy Tumble Log a couple of related articles in the last few days. One from Ars Technica, and another that’s an AP story.
Update: The article does confuse enrollment and interest in computing at one point. Interest in computer science as a major among women dropped 70 percent between 2000 and 2005, not actual enrollment….