Total enrollments among U.S. computer science undergraduates increased 10 percent in 2010, data from the most recent annual CRA Taulbee Survey show. This is the third straight year of increases in total enrollment and indicates that the post “dot-com crash” decline in undergraduate computing program enrollments is over.

The CRA Taulbee Survey is conducted annually by CRA to document trends in student enrollment, degree production, employment of graduates, and faculty salaries in Ph.D-granting departments of computer science (CS), computer engineering (CE) and information (I) in the United States and Canada. CRA today released the enrollment and degree production results (available as a pdf) from the latest edition of the survey.

Overall bachelor’s degree production in computer science, computer engineering and information sciences departments in 2010 rose nearly 11 percent from that in 2009 . Bachelor’s degree production in computer science departments was up more than 9 percent. The increases in new students observed during each of the past two years have resulted in increased degree production, a welcome turnaround from the past several years of declining bachelor’s degree production.

Also notable from the survey:

• Ph.D. production in computing programs held steady in 2009-2010, following a drop in production last year.
• Among CRA member schools, the share of bachelor’s degrees in CS granted to females rose to 13.8 percent in 2010, an increase of 2.5 percentage points over 2009. The share of bachelor’s degrees in CS granted to minority students held nearly steady at 10.3 percent in 2010.

The full report, which also includes information about faculty size, demographics and salaries, graduate student support and research expenditures, will be available in May 2011 on the CRA web site.