[iyulaev]

To give some evidence to the parent, look at a chart of STEM graduates vs liberal arts, comparing 1985 to 2009 [1]. Across the board we've pushed a wider range of people into college. Nevertheless, in absolute terms the number of graduates has dropped in CS, Math, and sciences, while it has skyrocketed for arts, communications, and psychology. What we've found is that there just aren't very many scientists and engineers on the margin. In other words, there appear to be relatively few "potential" engineers that just need a nudge towards engineering. This seems especially true when you consider that across this time period (1985 - 2009), the career prospects for STEM graduates have been very good. Even this incentive doesn't seem to push any marginal college students towards these fields.

My takeaway is that there isn't a huge pool of potential programmers that just need a nudge towards programming. If offering huge salaries and making higher education a social requirement doesn't increase the number of people who chose the engineering career path, what does?

[1] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/col...