Clinton Foundation: Kids' Lack of CS Savvy Threatens the US Economy 208
theodp writes: As the press digs for details on Clinton Foundation donations, including a reported $26+ million from Microsoft and Bill Gates, it's probably worth noting the interest the Clintons have developed in computer science and the role they have played — and continue to play — in the national K-12 CS and tech immigration crisis that materialized after Microsoft proposed creating such a crisis to advance its 'two-pronged' National Talent Strategy, which aims to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Next thing you know, Bill is the face of CS at the launch of Code.org. Then Hillary uses the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) conference to launch a Facebook, Microsoft, and Google initiative to boost the ranks of female and students of color in CS, and starts decrying woeful CS enrollment. Not to be left out, Chelsea keynotes the NCWIT Summit and launches Google's $50M girls-only Made With Code initiative with now-U.S. CTO Megan Smith. And last December, the Clinton Foundation touted its initiatives to engage middle school girls in CS, revamp the nation's AP CS program, and retrain out-of-work Americans as coders. At next month's CGI America 2015, the conference will kick off with a Beer Bust that CGI says "will also provide an opportunity to learn about Tech Girls Rock, a CGI Commitment to Action launched by CA Technologies in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America that helps girls discover an interest in tech-related educational opportunities and careers." On the following days, CGI sessions will discuss tech's need for a strong and diverse talent pipeline for computer and information technology jobs, which it says is threatened by "the persistent poor performance of American students in science, technology, engineering, and math," presenting "serious implications for the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. economy." So what's the long-term solution? Expanding CS education, of course!
You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of the chance to compete against low-balling H1B applicants...
Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:5, Informative)
Guess who is a big proponent of H1B?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That is, unless she flip flopped on that too.
Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll tell you who...folks from overseas who don't know the area and can get suckered into moving there!
If you've ever lived in any tech heavy area, you get to know it sucks, you get out and you never go back again. Overpriced everything, the girls who like nerds are picked over or non-existent. If you bring your wife be prepared to face an increasingly demanding attitude and possibly divorce as she eyeballs the legions of available nerds who got lucky on an IPO and have fatter wallets, who are throwing themselves at her incessantly.
People who come from overseas learn these things too and GTFO. So when your entire workforce is really motivated to leave because no one likes suffering the buying power of a feudal serf, yes a perceived shortage is understandable. But completely manufactured by the culture of the companies themselves, and BS when you consider the entire market. The idea of the "tech hub" town needs to die in a fire. Their existence lowers the standard of living for practically everyone.
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You hit the nail on the head - compensation isn't worth the work. There are more STEM graduates than jobs, but 3/4 leave the field due to substandard working conditions and pay. There is no recruitment problem, there is a retention problem.
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Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can sure support him on that. Paul Volcker says the same thing. Reading through his Wikipedia entry, I don't agree with him on everything, but he seems like a clear-minded and decent guy.
Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
If an institution is too big to fail, then Politics was involved in getting it there, and politics will be involved in keeping it there.
As a Libertarian, I'm okay with failure, for the sole reason that failure is what fuels innovation.
That being said, Bernie is an interesting cat. He is a true socialist, who believes government has the ability to manage and shape the economy without unintended consequences. My experience is that most of the economic problems are due to (caused by) government interference, and not allowing the natural forces to work themselves out. Sometimes the lions eat the gazelles, sometimes the bugs eat the lions.
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That being said, Bernie is an interesting cat. He is a true socialist, who believes government has the ability to manage and shape the economy without unintended consequences.
You have to balance that against the fact that there will probably be Republican control of one or both houses of congress. Any time either party gets too much control, they go crazy, including payouts for constituents, etc.
In any case, how would you see him compared to Hillary?
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In any case, how would you see him compared to Hillary?
With Bernie Sanders, there's no mistaking what you'll get. He tells you exactly what he thinks. I probably disagree with him on over half of his positions, but I admire the fact that he honestly says what he believes. If Hillary did that, there's no way she'd get elected. Or Barack Obama [washingtonpost.com] for that matter.
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I probably disagree with him on over half of his positions
I don't think there's any way to avoid that. You'll never get someone who agrees with you 100% unless you run yourself.
The things I look for are:
1) Competency
2) Good character
3) Won't mess up the world by starting wars
4) Won't mess up the economy with weird domestic policies (privatize social security, for example, or a $20 national minimum wage).
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Th
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There is nothing natural about markets.
Markets don't just happen automatically, they are created by governments that level the playing field, provides fair jurisprudence and enforce contract law.
I am all for good governance with checks and balances precisely because I like free markets and personal liberties.
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"My experience is that most of the economic problems are due to (caused by) government interference, and not allowing the natural forces to work themselves out. Sometimes the lions eat the gazelles, sometimes the bugs eat the lions."
Balance is required, as your last sentence points out.
If you let socialists get their way all the time, you're screwed (unless you're one of the super poor).
If you let capitalists get their way all the time, you're going to be just as screwed (unless you're one of the super rich
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If an institution is too big to fail, then Politics was involved in getting it there, and politics will be involved in keeping it there.
As a Libertarian, I'm okay with failure, for the sole reason that failure is what fuels innovation.
That being said, Bernie is an interesting cat. He is a true socialist, who believes government has the ability to manage and shape the economy without unintended consequences. My experience is that most of the economic problems are due to (caused by) government interference, and not allowing the natural forces to work themselves out. Sometimes the lions eat the gazelles, sometimes the bugs eat the lions.
Can you mention one country outperforming the crisis that does not have way more and stronger goverment institutions then the US?
The liberatrian "small state" is as far as i have been able to tell religious in nature, with all empirical data contradicting the theory.
Shock therapy in eastern Europe is a good example of what happens if you simply dismantle a even a horribly inefficient government, and something similar have happened everything the small state "libertarian" theory have been tried i
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Bernie is more of a last century liberal, as am I, so I agree with a lot of (but not all) of his stands. Any real liberal would of been against the Patriot Act, Citizens United, etc, as none of us pot smokin', free lovin' hippie types would of wanted expanded government and po
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You have pretty much nailed it. The whole Clinton thing, a massive political scam, trying to make the corporate whore look better, funded and planned in advance to coordinate with the election and then be promptly forgotten about once the election is over. It is all so lame. Free higher education for those with the skills and let them decide what they will learn and what they will do for it and this for the rest of time not just for the next two years.
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From government programs that are under utilized where they will pay your tuition if you work, and get paid, in places they want you to and in position related to your degree for a few years. To programs that will give you the money with the provision that if you make a well above poverty income you have to pay them back a small percent. If you go help the needy and make no income
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Is there any candidate who does not support H1Bs? Serious question.
It makes sense for them to support expanding the H1B program, and very little sense to oppose it. They look pro-growth, and can get campaign donations from many big corporations. The only people that oppose H1B are tech workers, who tend to be geographically diffuse, except for a few concentrations in non-swing states, like California, New York, and Massachusetts. Even for these tech workers, the H1B is not a priority issue, and the vast majority will cast their vote for other reasons.
Re: You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:2)
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More likely they have more money because they work in the only expanding job area - Sales.
Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:4, Insightful)
The irony is that most of these programs to "promote STEM education in the U.S." are just thinly-veiled attempts to *INCREASE* H1B visas.
the Clinton Foundation, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. have no damned intention of education Americans in STEM. They just want more ammo so they can go to Congress and scream for more legalized slavery.
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Oh it is much cheaper to let other countries educate their kids and then lure them in with H1B visa. Then you pay them more than in their home country, but without social benefits. When they want them you dump them and replace them with other people from abroad. If that does not help. Outsource it. If politician where interested in supporting the people, they would tax the rich and spend it on education, healthcare, and social benefits. However, they do not care. So they whine about it and then point finger
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The only way to ensure the possibility of a good paying job is to match labor supply with labor demand; that is, to make sure there aren't 100,000,000 computer programmers and 4,000,000 programming jobs.
"Keeping the US Economy competitive" is ludicrous. It's like eating shitloads of donuts to keep a sumo wrestler competitive: your body gets sick and you die, and all you really need is good sumo skills to wrestle people in your weight class successfully.
The US economy won't be competitive if it's comp
Re:You know what would REALLY motivate kids? (Score:5, Informative)
Civil and Environmental Engineering are also hard to offshore. As are forestry, extractive industries, agriculture, recreation and tourism. There are probably more but I can't think of them.
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Except that Civil Engineering is licensed by each individual state. There is also the requirement that in order to get a PE you have to have a certain number of years of experience under a PE that will sign off on it. Plus, there are basic competency tests required, and continuing education requirements.
That is why my wife who has a PE in CE doesn't work with any H1B's while I do. She does work with a number of permanent residents, but most of them moved here, went to school here, and got their PE's after w
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I think you missed out on a few things and underestimated the complexity of the law and of accounting (beyond simple bookkeeping/process execution)... plastic pipes don't replace plumbers who are still needed to install them. You still need HVAC techs to do the install/replacement, and shipping 100 pounds of copper overseas, is insanely expensive.
I noticed you didn't put electricians in your list.
There's no plastic pipe solution you can buy to replace the need for a human to hook up your 120 / 240 v
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I think you missed out on a few things and underestimated the complexity of the law and of accounting (beyond simple bookkeeping/process execution)... plastic pipes don't replace plumbers who are still needed to install them. You still need HVAC techs to do the install/replacement, and shipping 100 pounds of copper overseas, is insanely expensive.
I think you missed out on a few things and underestimated the effect on an industry when perhaps 50% of the jobs go away. No one will claim there will be no electricians or plumbers in the near future, but new technology could displace a large number of those jobs. So telling kids to become a plumber when in 10 years they may be competing in an industry with 30% unemployment and a protectionist union presence that values senority is no different than telling them to go into STEM which is being invaded by H1
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Let them pay the H-1B applicants the same salary as before, but pay the extra amount straight to the government - You guys would have your debt cleared before you know it.
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Other than academia, what exactly are those jobs again? Because I've not heard of them.
Corporations aren't doing theoretical computer science. They're creating products.
Right, all of those purely theoretical type jobs which do advanced research in CS just because it's pretty.
Sorry, but I've known people with masters degrees, and a co
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I've met a few people who had Masters degrees but were terrible coders ... which means they were useless as coders, and somehow expected to have a job in which they could just think of cool things. And I don't think that's a real thing. Those people generally serve no purpose in industry.
It is, and that is where industry is going. I work with PhD and MS Engineers that couldn't code their way out of a wet paper bag. Coding is a tool, not a profession. Engineers use coding to automate something else. Now we're designing entire control systems for vehicles with Simulink.
Cost of entry has come WAY down [mathworks.com]. Now you can buy a $12 board that interacts with the real world that can be programmed with block diagrams. People that don't or can't learn C can now make their "cool things" that they think of
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Coding is a tool, not a profession.
"Programming" is not a profession any more than a "hammer" is a profession.
Both of these analogies are silly. They should read Computers are a tool, not a profession. and "Computers" are not a profession any more than a "hammer" is a profession..
Programming is a set of skills that utilize computers, just like carpentry is a set of skills that utilize saws and hammers. Programming is most certainly a profession.
Programming is not a skill that is limited to those who choose it as a profession, just like carpentry. People who choose it as a profession are usually much better at it th
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I think you missed the previous poster's point. "Programming" is a way in which a task can be automated. As such, it can be viewed as a tool. If someone can come up with a way to get things automated without writing a program, then the tool called "programming" is no longer required.
Almost anything can be viewed as a tool. It was the previous poster's insistence that programming is not a profession, and the comparison of it to a hammer, that led me to refute his statements.
Every job can be automated. Every single job. Some programming jobs will be automated in the future, although usually when tools like compilers take away certain programming tasks it only makes development more affordable so even more programmers are hired. Programming, like most careers which require critical though
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Many programming tasks are hard, and are best done by professionals. I make my living by addressing the hard parts of getting processes automated. While a smart ten-year-old can program some interesting things, they're not going to produce high quality software about things difficult to automate. While you can do neat things with a cheap board programmed by block diagrams, that's not going to cut it in my job, where we control machines that cost in six figures.
There's lots of fields that many people c
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You are clinging to your misconception about what CS is by arguing something entirely new: there are no CS "jobs." You are mistaken, btw. And what we are talking about is not a negligible chunk of change, as outside academia the starting salary of a B.S. computer scientist with zero experience is close to $70-80K these days, while I think you know any software developer graduating with any degree with zero experience won't touch that. Your ignorance of any positions for an actual, bone fide "computer scient
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Oh, go fuck yourself you idiot.
I have a degree in CS. I've been in the industry for almost 20 years, I've spent time as a coder and a consultant. I've designed and built stuff. I've maintained stuff. I've done many things.
I have never personally known any of these people you refer to. I have never worked in a place which has these "computer scienticians" who don't actually do anything.
So, enlighten me. Please, feel free to suggest examples of thes
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There are a lot fewer CS jobs than you think. Most of the jobs I've had haven't taken much theory at all, more like engineering than science. If you want a machine designed, you hire a mechanical engineer and not a physicist.
There is actual science related to computers, and a large amount of specialized mathematics, but most of it is largely irrelevant in most roles outside academia. It does come up from time to time, but not often. What's important is understanding how to get things done, which is p
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Why would a CS grad want to be a software developer?
Because it pays better than academia.
They should have studied software development and programming.
Programming is useful as a tool for studying computer science, so it tends to be something that CS grads learn, to varying degrees. The software development process can be learned on the job. Companies look for CS degrees to mean "software developer"; I don't see many job postings around me for someone who has a SW Dev degree or certification. It's less of a fight to just major in CS and learn to apply the theory to practical engineering problems than it would be to conv
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Why would a CS grad want to be a software developer? That doesn't make any sense. They should have studied software development and programming. That's like an MD hoping to get a job as a medical tech... a noble profession, but the MD can earn much more, be more fulfilled properly applying their education as a doctor, and the same is true of a CS grad. Their ideal employment will have little to do with coding.
Do people really believe this nonsense or do they just want to sound smart because they understand what pure computer science is?
The fact of the matter is CS education in the U.S. (and probably abroad) is primarily treated as a way to train software developers at the vast majority of universities. I couldn't find any statistics on how many CS graduates work in pure CS related jobs after graduation, but I would bet it is under 5%. Perhaps even under 1%. The vast majority work as software developers, IT worke
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My motivation is that I like to keep things straight. There is a science called computer science, a relatively young science. It has little to do with programming, although programming is a very useful skill in the field. However, as you say, most people think of computer science as some sort of vocational degree, which a degree in software engineering (an even younger field) would be.
The result is that you don't know what a computer science degree means. I've had people who thought the computer scie
Learn by running own email server at home (Score:5, Funny)
These kids should learn by running their own email server at home!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a deeper point here. the commenter is correct. When I hire IT staff, I ask them about their test server. Ideally they have an old pc reformatted as a Linux or Windows server. Or they have a vps at AWS, Linode, or Digital Ocean. Or they have a VMWare guest on their laptop. If they don't have one of those things, they don't get an offer. We shouldn't be trying to interest people in IT: we should hire people who are interested in IT.
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Re: Learn by running own email server at home (Score:3)
I work in IT. I enjoy it however I also have a life outside IT. I wouldn't work for an employer who expected me to never leave the computer just to meet their own weird view of what an IT expert should be.
Joke heard today (Score:5, Insightful)
-Women aren't in tech because the STEM world is misogynistic
-I'll bet you are a women's studies major
-Yes I am, what has that got to do with it?
-Why didn't you study STEM?
Re:Joke heard today (Score:4, Funny)
If she completes her Women's Studies degree, then under no circumstances let her anywhere near your kids.
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got a PhD in CS, and I grew up with the U.S. education system of the 1970's and 80's. I had playground time, and little formalized national testing. I'll bet few of the Turing award winners or ACM Fellows were educated in the manner advocated by today's politicians and Plutocrats.
If they're so eager to make good computer scientists, one might ask if they're willing to reproduce the educational environments of those luminaries.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously though, you're right. The best thing I ever learned was that sometimes, "the best I had" simply wasn't good enough.
As other posters have noted, they aren't really interested in creating good computer scientists, they're interested in creating:
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Red pens and *gasp* telling children they got the wrong answer! A failing grade inflicts unforgivable trauma on the psyches of our little snowflakes.
if little johnny snowflake cant handle a red mark on his paper, then compiler errors are gonna beat his ass and steal his lunch.
The RED mark! (Score:2)
Red pens and *gasp* telling children they got the wrong answer! A failing grade inflicts unforgivable trauma on the psyches of our little snowflakes.
if little johnny snowflake cant handle a red mark on his paper, then compiler errors are gonna beat his ass and steal his lunch.
OMFG! The RED mark!
You've solved the gender inequality problem in STEM!
More men than women are red/green color blind!
They didn't have their souls crushed by getting red marks, they thought they were doing well, and so continued on in STEM! By the time they realized that they had actually been screwing up the whole time, they had already been writing Java and .Net code for 2 years!
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Well, perhaps compiler writers shouldn't be so harsh in their error messages. Maybe something a bit more fun... [mackido.com]
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I think it's a little too easy to say that the problem is "we're being too easy on children". And yes, I think that there's a sort of Mrs. Lovejoy "Won't someone think of THE CHILDREN" every-child-is-a-perfect-snowflake political correctness that is a problem. However, I also think it is important to be accommodating to the different needs of different children.
There's a larger problem, which is that we don't know what we're doing, and we don't even know what we're trying to do with education. Are we pr
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1) H1B code monkeys write apps but they suck since ignorant of cultural context
2) spoiled johnny snowflakes make and manage the big tech companies of the world
3) profit for shareholders, anyone can get a piece of the action
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I've got a PhD in CS, and I grew up with the U.S. education system of the 1970's and 80's. I had playground time, and little formalized national testing. I'll bet few of the Turing award winners or ACM Fellows were educated in the manner advocated by today's politicians and Plutocrats.
They're not going for more Turing award winners, they're going for more people being able to understand CS and possibly do CS. Their goal isn't more genius's, their goal is just ... more.
Do you really think that not teaching a subject to kids will get more of them to learn it?
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they're going for more people being able to understand CS and possibly do CS
Do you really think that not teaching a subject to kids will get more of them to learn it?
I truly believe they have misnamed the subject in question, and couldn't possibly be talking about CS, but perhaps skills, incidentally related, often attributed to CS incorrectly. IT WOULD BE AWESOME if some CS got into lower education. It shouldn't be expensive... no PCs necessary. But symbolic logic corses would be just as useful. Again, I don't think this is their (Clinton Foundation's) intention, but (perhaps slashdot editors) are misusing CS to mean either programming or confident graphic interface op
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I truly believe they have misnamed the subject in question, and couldn't possibly be talking about CS, but perhaps skills, incidentally related, often attributed to CS incorrectly.
I agree that there should be a division between computer science and software engineering, but given that most Universities don't make that split, we can't expect the politicians to do so either. As ideal as teaching the science of computing without computers is, only a very select few can wrap their minds around that. I know for myself that it took a few iterations of learning the concept in the class room, tinkering around with a program, and begin dazed and confused in class again before I really started
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IT WOULD BE AWESOME if some CS got into lower education.
It would, although they'd probably taint it in peoples' minds, teaching it as a part of a mathematics course, or something. Looking back, a lot of my high school geometry course was similar to some of my theoretical computer science classes.
It is maddening the damage Slashdot has done to Computer Science
Slashdot is a minor player. The smallest TV news networks have larger audiences. Mainstream media and industry have done more to add a second definition (the one that you disagree with) to "Computer Science", in the minds of the public. Human language in general is stuc
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
Given the ability of schools to turn what should be joy into drudgery... it's not out of the question that teaching it is worse than not teaching it. Nothing can get a kid out of the habit of reading like a high school literature curriculum, for instance.
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I've got a PhD in CS, and I grew up with the U.S. education system of the 1970's and 80's. I had playground time, and little formalized national testing. I'll bet few of the Turing award winners or ACM Fellows were educated in the manner advocated by today's politicians and Plutocrats.
If they're so eager to make good computer scientists, one might ask if they're willing to reproduce the educational environments of those luminaries.
Do you realize they aren't complaining that there are no PhD CS students in the US right? They are complaining that there aren't enough. So if there aren't enough now, there obviously weren't enough in the 70's and 80's to meet today's needs. And therefore we absolutely cannot expect to have enough CS students if we mimic the education system of the 70's and 80's.
I'm not saying their approach is the right way, but I guarantee the 70's approach is the wrong way (not necessarily every aspect is wrong, just th
Education vs. H1B (Score:3)
Does it really make sense to spend money on CS education while importing cheap H1B labor?
As long as you're spending someone else's money.
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Does it really make sense to spend money on CS education while importing cheap H1B labor?
Yes it does. Unless you do a job that requires direct person-to-person interaction (medicine, nursing) or tied to regulation by necessity (law), or that requires hand-on work (utilities), you are going to compete with H1B and and global workforce no matter what.
Deal with it. That has been the norm for, what now, 15 years? For 15 years I've been told that my career is going to go poof because H1B labor or because some guy in Bangalore makes 1/5 of what I make, as if software/IT work can be directly compar
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The propaganda machine is at full speed. (Score:3)
One 'institute' after another banging that drum. We need to make sure a different story gets out.
Message to Chelsea Clinton (Score:3)
Please come and show us your CS skills so lovingly inculcated by your parents. Also, we would like to know how they helped you in your career so far? Or were there other factors in your success?
I agree with this somewhat (Score:5, Informative)
One big problem with equating CS with "coding" is the fact that low-skill and high-skill jobs get lumped into the same bucket. Same thing in my side (IT) where systems architects and help desk guys get painted with the same brush. If you teach a student to just "code" then all they're going to know is a few web front end tricks and they'll be difficult to train for the next thing. The students coming into the profession now need to have a science background, not just a 9-week coder bootcamp. Remember MCSE bootcamps from the late 90s/early 2000s? We in IT are _still_ working with some of the products of these.
If anyone is serious about fixing the skills problem, the following needs to happen:
- Salaries need to be stabilized at a level that will attract new entrants to the field. No one is going to waste time and money studying something that doesn't pay off later on. Look at all the little private colleges that are going out of business after burning through their endowments. Lots of students know that they can no longer expect a job after graduating studying just anything.at any college. (I was one of the last graduation years where that was true.) Unfortunately, college is a trade school now for most people.
- Jobs need to be available. Companies can't cry "skill shortage" while outsourcing their IT department to the lowest bidder or throwing people away when they turn 40. I think a technical career provides a very fulfilling job if you're lucky and choose your employers well. But, if I were faced with a choice of what to study, and saw stagnant wages, mass layoffs, and a career that can end at 40, I would probably pick something else.
- A career progression needs to exist. My career progression was help desk monkey --> desktop support monkey --> data center guy --> system administrator --> the strange hybrid admin/designer/architect/integration combo I do now. Now, it doesn't exist to the same degree. Help desk is in India, desktop support is significantly reduced and the pay is much lower than it was, data center monkey jobs now consist of replacing parts in Google or Amazon or Microsoft data centers, and so on. Where are the next generation of IT people and software developers going to be trained? On the dev side, the QA and maintenance coder jobs are increasingly in India or automated. Getting rid of low level jobs means that new entrants can't grow into the better jobs.
I'm an advocate of taking the different tasks in IT and dev, and splitting them into "technician" and "licensed engineer" tracks. Licensing the top tiers of the job field might mean higher quality of systems and software, fewer major security hacks, etc. The technician track would allow people to grow into these jobs, steadily gaining responsibility and salary over time. The thing we would have to avoid is what lawyers are going through now...the Bar Association threw open the doors to the profession a while back, opened tons of law schools, and allowed the offshoring of routine legal work. Now, look online sometime -- lawyers who spent $250K on school and passed the bar exam can't find work. The only way to make money as a lawyer now is if you manage to graduate at the top of your class at Harvard, Yale or Stanford -- otherwise, don't even bother.
So yes, definitely find ways to keep students interested in STEM -- but don't be shocked if no one signs on for the long haul when they see what's coming at the end...
one hand gives, the other hand takes (Score:2)
sure, let's do more CS education in schools. but let's also eliminate H1B visas so computer science jobs are available in the US.
Dear Clinton foundation... (Score:2)
It's because the USA schools SUCK. utterly SUCK. Most schools do not teach a lick of CS, and MOSt of the money the school has is not put into sciences and math, but the worthless sports programs.
American kids will graduate as scientifically illiterate dum dum's until this is changed.
The REAL story here (Score:2)
which aims to increase K-12 CS education AND THE NUMBER OF H-1B VISAS
Emphasis added on what this is REALLY all about.
There are plenty of coders (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah the Clinton Foundation (Score:2)
Scam that spends more on office supplies and expenses than it gives to actual charity. Tax fraud investigation in progress....
what job offers? (Score:2)
I've had interviews go wrong many times, for dumb and dishonest reasons. It comes down to the fact that the employers weren't actually interested in hiring, had too many candidates to consider. So they hoke up an excuse that you don't have enough experience in a bunch of narrowly defined areas, and you're out. Deep down they know perfectly well that you could do the job. But they manufacture some desired experience that you supposedly lack, and start thinking of you as a liar for even applying. Never m
Does anyone really know what CS means? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not talking about the Slashdot crowd. I'm talking to the politicians pushing the ludicrous idea that "not enough" kids learn CS/STEM and the nodding heads in the audience that think the problem isn't so nuanced that all "winning the future" is really going to take is pushing enough kids to do things that they weren't interested in doing to start with.
Outside of that, I'm regretfully not terribly surprised that the logical conclusion of pushing the misbegotten idea that kids need computer science (despite everyone in the conversation not knowing what it means) hasn't made its way to the mainstream press: that is, flooding the employment pool with applicants to drive down salaries, for positions that aren't filled with H1Bs anyway. It's funny how none of these talking heads talk about THAT part.
Nope, it's always about how sexy these jobs are; spoken by people who have at most done little more coding than the obligatory "Hello World" script. Except, no, they really, really aren't. In the immortal words of Jonathan Coulton, in a song about this very topic: "This job fulfilling in creative way/such a load of crap."
It can be long, grueling, and irritating. It's filled with demands for certification by people who barely understand how to use Outlook. And it's a career that requires lifelong learning. Which, for the record, I find nothing wrong with, BUT if you have a life-plan that doesn't involve any severe paradigm shifts and long hours of self-teaching (fuck's sake, half the languages people use now weren't even a thing fifteen years ago), then CS, coding, or whatever the hell non-techie types are calling is isn't sexy or fun. And the people who make the big bucks doing this ARE the kind of people that are willing to put up with all the long and grueling stuff that comes with the turf.
I don't blame anyone for the life choices they make. I just get pissed when I hear politicians make a career field out to be sexier than it actually is, and trying to turn people into miserable worker-bots.
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Not enough people with the required capacity (Score:2)
You know, in the past, they used to equate the amount of skill and experience it took to be a good coder to being similar with a skilled surgeon. There is some truth in that. In fact, being a surgeon is easier because you don't have to worry about basic human anatomy changing every few years. In IT, however, platforms and languages evolve and your skillset has to cope with these changes all the time.
Now they would have us believe that you can take regular people, and teach them to be "skilled surgeons" i
More like the business/finance graduates. (Score:2)
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So not just kids (Score:2)
Not just CS, a bigger problem is more lack of understanding about networking and more operational details.
You see it especially well in educated people in other fields in their interactions. A particular friend of mine is a chemist. He is aware enough to recognize a web browser with noscript, but his answer to that is to go to a site and based on (when discussing it after) "this site is reputable" hit "allow all temporarily" without any awareness of the actual issues involved like whether affiliate sites ca
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I am stealing your analogy and making it a thing. I hope that's okay with you.
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Please do, I can't think of any better way to explain it to people in a context they will understand intuitively.
Need to flood the market! (Score:2)
The only way we're going to be able to drive wages into the ground while simultaneously getting/abusing the creme of the talent crop will be to flood the market with CS people. Doesn't matter if it's schools or immigration... just flood the damn market already!
--All Fortune 100 Tech Company CEOs.
Keeping costs down, etc. etc. (Score:2)
IMO, the "bigger picture" problem is simply that America has jettisoned most of its decent paying jobs in favor of automation and/or outsourcing. What do we really produce here in significant quantities, that we can actually export to the rest of the world? Entertainment and software. (And both of those keep hitting limitations because many parts of the world don't respect the whole concept of intellectual property as something you give heavy legal protection to.)
Furthermore, the music industry is struggl
Let's call it what it really is.. (Score:4, Informative)
Need some weapons deals pushed through? Donate millions to the foundation! http://www.ibtimes.com/clinton... [ibtimes.com]
And who really cares where the money goes.. Charity Navigator won't even rank them due to their "atypical business model." It's a slush fund for the Clintons to doll out favors to their political toadies. Nevermind Hillary's absurd "I can't carry two devices" excuse for hosting a private mail server in her house to conduct State Department business.
Computer engineering? (Score:2)
After reading a interview with Randall Munroe (XKCD) i find myself wondering if what is needed is a computer engineering course alongside existing computer science courses.
http://www.maa.org/publication... [maa.org]
"And there's another distinction: There's coding, and then there is computer science. The best explanation I've ever heard of that is that coding is writing programs, and computer science is the study of computers only in the sense that astronomy is the study of telescopes. I think that's a really concise
Poor Performance (Score:2)
Wait, why aren't there initiatives to determine why STEM in general is experiencing "poor performance"?
I know! Not enough women!!
But if there's a problem with the US falling behind and not doing well, could it be a problem with teaching methods? If we don't have enough people in STEM but the ones in STEM are doing well, then it's a problem with not enough people in STEM. But if the people in STEM are doing poorly, is it a problem with the teachers? Why add more people if the teaching methods are not working
I smell a rat.... (Score:2)
This seemingly contradictory policy - asking for more H1B visas while promoting more CS education at home - has a sinister end game.
Either way, big business wins. More H1B's means an endless supply of cheap labor. More CS grads at home means that the market gets flooded with CS grads, thereby driving down the labor rate.
The real goal here is not to get more women into CS or get more people of color into CS. The goal is to provide a steady stream of cheap labor that places like Microsoft and Facebook and Goo
CS? (Score:2)
I'm glad I never had a single CS class in school (Score:2)
I really doubt I'd have a career as a web application developer if I had programming classes in school, at any level.
Clintons' lack of CS savvy (Score:2)
How about this: Clintons' lack of CS savvy in setting up an email server threatens US national security.
bs; need more robotics and manufacturing engineeri (Score:2)
Wrong solution to the wrong problem (Score:2)
Or continue to crank out students that know how to take a test. Which is a surprisingly useless skill once you're out of school.
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You know the GP has a point .. if the children are learning that science is what we want it to be, or that the world is 6,000 years old, or that humans rode dinosaurs, or that fossils are a big scam ... then at that point you might find they lack the critical reasoning and logic skills required to do anything in the STEM fields.
Reality exists. Cause and effect are real things.
But an increasing amount of people (it seems) choose to go "la la la" and loudly say reality is whatever their beliefs tell them i
Re:It's not CS, it's critical thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
I know you just want to dig at creationists, but keep in mind - since "scientific consensus" is considered an alternative to hard evidence, the problem is just as bad on the other end of the spectrum.
Worse, really - at least creationists don't pretend to have scientific backing when they're making shit up.
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Scientific consensus is based on hard evidence. Scientists are creative, and if there's no strong evidence about something they'll come up with all sorts of ideas that can't currently be verified. When they all agree, there's solid evidence and theory behind it.
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Critical thinking is not wanted. People might understand the present economic system and fight for another (no not communism or socialism. both terms are burned and most people only understand suppression when they hear them). If you want that kids can leave the trailer park, they need to share class with kids from the middle and upper classes. You don't have that in the US. You can find that in Sweden, Finland and Norway. Work perfectly. However, this eliminate those trailer parks. And then you need someon
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The offshoring of high tech skills in computer related sciences will soon turn into a flood as more and more state universities loosing funding to instead support building and staffing more prisons and more draconian law enforcement necessary to maintain the status quo, more tax deductions for the 1%, and more special tax breaks for corporations, all further driving up the cost of education and sending the best faculty overseas and increasing the costs of tuition. Improvements in world-wide networks will o
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What developments? The emails are a SNOOZE. They show nothing other than the mundane.
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You are definitely framing the perspective correctly. However, H1B visas are only a symptom of the larger problem, the ideology and politics of trickle down economics.
One can see the hand of corporations in the new Transpacific Trade agreement, which locks in Malaysia's use of slave labor and America's and China's use of prison and parolee labor as acceptable parts of the agreement. No wonder Obama and virtually the entire GOP are working together to keep the whole things secret until after it passes. It
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Clinton giving MFN status to China did more damage to the US than anything else. We have created more surplus working class than we have Fergusons to warehouse them.