[jimbokun]

Sounds more to me like a bunch of computer science professors trying to market 4 year degrees and 10s (or 100s) of thousands of dollars in debt to lower income African Americans, with questionable benefits in terms of employment outcomes.

[nmrm2]

> computer science professors

generally speaking couldn't care less about the marketability of their degree programs among the general public, much less the lower income general public. Enrollment numbers just aren't important enough currency in higher ed to devote enough effort to get the president and a bunch of celebrities on board.

Deans, maybe. But not run-of-the-mill professors.

And even then, almost all CS programs have the exact opposite problem right now -- too many people and too much hype so that it's hard to predict the future and grow sustainably.

Besides, it is a very well-documented fact that the current push for STEM -- and specifically CS -- education is coming from political types and insdustry folks.

[cableshaft]

I had a CS professor that said that during the dot com heyday they were seeing hundreds of cs majors every year, and it was a mess as most of them didn't belong and were just there because it was pretty much guaranteed work for high pay and keeping up with everything was a pain in the ass.

But then the dot bust happened and enrollment went back down to much more reasonable numbers, and she was a lot happier for it.

So yeah, I doubt professors are the ones pushing too hard for this.