[wrong_variable]

The real problem is not computer science.

Everyone in the United States cannot be a programmer - its going to lead to the same problem we have with law, business, etc. Too many graduates leading to labour oversupply.

Government will always be slower to respond then markets.

So even though right now there is a shortage of programmers - it might not be the case once these student's graduate.

So Govt is always one step behind the movements in markets.

What is more important is helping students understand how important learning is. Even though my skills in programming helps me get paid - I use the knowledge I have in biology ( learnt in school ) to make informed decisions as a consumer. My knowledge in writing helps when I need to explain a difficult concept to my bosses. My skills in mathematics helps me model problems in much more efficient ways.

Being a programmer in a society with no doctors, or chemists is no fun.

Its understanding that the economy is extremely complex - and rather than create bursts of inefficiency in one area - the best thing to do is facilitate the system to perform better - maybe make it easier for labour ( students ) to choose what they want to do with their lives - rather than burden them with student debt ?

[gherkin0]

> Everyone in the United States cannot be a programmer - its going to lead to the same problem we have with law, business, etc. Too many graduates leading to labour oversupply.

I agree. This just seems like an attempt at a poorly thought-out quick fix. The country has a lot of problems with unemployment/underemployment, so they're fixating on to one job category that's "hot" with a high pay/education ratio as the solution.

But since the real solution is to do something effective about economic inequality, misguided quick fixes are what we're going to get.

Plus, the more CS grads, the more competition for jobs, and the less they have to be paid and the more disposably they can be treated. I'm sure big employers are salivating over that just like they do over an increase in the H1-B quota.

[curun1r]

> Everyone in the United States cannot be a programmer - its going to lead to the same problem we have with law, business, etc. Too many graduates leading to labour oversupply.

This is misunderstanding the future state of the programming professions of the future. This is understandable, since you're merely projecting the current state forward, but things will almost certainly change.

Up until now, the majority of programming jobs have been filled by people trained in CS and we've had to learn whatever disciplines which we're asked to apply our programming discipline to. But as we're able to layer more and more abstractions on top of the machines that do our computing, programming will become much more accessible and the situation will change. In the future, the majority of programming will be done by domain experts who learn enough programming discipline to automate their field. There will always be a small, niche of core CS practitioners that advance the state of the art of the tools used at the higher levels. But they will be that will be a very small percentage of the workforce.

The important thing isn't that we create more CS graduates. That will cause the problems you foresee. What we need to do is ensure that all graduates outside of CS are trained in basic computer programming.

[dragonwriter]

Understanding computing and programming is useful in careers that aren't specifically centrally about programming, in much the same way that being able to write is useful in careers other than professional writing. But, sure, more people programming will mean more people who are can take jobs that are centrally programming jobs, which is a good thing for everyone except incumbent workers in the field who have more competition.

It also means people working in other fields who can more efficiently applying computing to their own domain, either directly or by being better able to identify opportunities and work with people who are primary programmers.to realislze them. That's also a general win.

[mempko]

Makes me wonder if education maybe should not be about satisfying markets.

[txru]

The trouble is, things are always about satisfying markets, whether we like the market it satisfies or not.

For example, in the early days of the university in England and France, higher education served to satisfy the market of younger-child aristocracy who needed something to do to make them valuable to their family. It's no coincidence that monastaries, reading, and higher education were very often neighbors, and sometimes part of the same organization- they served chunks of the same market. That the universities started opening themselves to lower scions of aristocracy was a side-effect of how profitable that market could be, and the value that graduates could provide. [0]

In a more modern example, the disciplines of higher education that have less-certain ROI, but are still judged to be valuable, or serve education for education's sake: I would say that those serve the market of people who are either idealistic, or believe they understand some long-term feature of humanity that the 1-year, 5-year, or generational time-scale markets ignore. They pay the price, but they still do hope for ROI of some sort- even if not in cash.

Even more nebulous things, such as very low-overhead charities, serve a market- the market for people to feel generous, to avoid guilt, or to serve causes that the traditional free market overlooks. That so many charities are very high-overhead, or so bad at satisfying the ends they ostensibly aim for, seems to be a symptom that people don't care so much about the assuaging, as the fact that they have attempted to assuage.

So, are there ways to remove education from the capricious, short-term, short-sited nature of the modern free-market? Of course. State action, benevolent organizations, and other more attempts at far-sitedness are a good way to adjust the externalities of education. However, you simply cannot remove education from the market.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university