[dpflan]

Thanks for sharing. Is this similar to what was attracting students to medicine/doctor (guaranteed position with high salary)? But the med-school-to-full-time-physician pipeline is long and can weed out. CS is a difficult subject, certain ways of thinking are difficult but certainly can be learned, like recursive thinking.

Did colleges expand their computer science departments or even just create them to meet the demand for the degree? The pipeline to possible employment with a CS degree is quite short, doesn't require residency and board-certification so it's a quicker route to employment, but then you are competing with peers with stronger backgrounds and educations and seasoned professionals for the same positions.

[vintermann]

Salary isn't traditionally what motivates people to study medicine. It's prestige. The difficulty is part of the prestige, which is probably why they still do things like memorize long lists of cranial nerve names. I haven't heard that they have a problem with dropout rates.

A good CS education only gives you prestige with fellow nerds.

[km144]

I actually think prestige is a contributing factor for CS as well. People assume you must be smart to be a software engineer, and FAANG companies are prestigious to normal people because they have name recognition. Definitely not on the same level as a Doctor/Surgeon/Lawyer or whatever but certainly could be more than a typical 4-year degree will get you. And I suppose there's also the fact that those companies were viewed very differently 10-15 years ago and now there is a lot more cynicism about big tech in general.

[dpflan]

Absolutely, and the _prestige_ of being a CS person that has a high salary. Society admires those with wealth.

[dpflan]

Yes, prestige, perception of self by others, but certainly salary and job guarantee are attractors to medicine. First hand anecdata from educators and doctors alike supports this.