At a meeting of the National Education Association, teachers said they want to stem the falling number of college computer students.
Even though many school have adopted computer technology throughout their facilities, there are still a lot of places where classes in programming or application usage don’t exist.
Industry leaders in America have been decrying the continuing drop in numbers of students leaving college without a computer-related degree. Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect for Microsoft, has used this as a reason for urging the government to drop H-1B visa quotas.
Other companies have used the dropoff in graduates as a reason to move their operations to low-wage countries like India, where large numbers of students graduate with engineering degrees.
Computer science teachers want to see more students take courses beyond basic keyboarding. “Some kids, for whatever reason, are missing the opportunity to at least take a bite out of the class, to see what it’s all about … They would use the skills they learn for the rest of their lives,” said Jim Lindberg, a high school computer teacher from Tacoma, to the Associated Press.
There’s a strong perception that jobs in programming and other computer-related fields are leaving the United States as quickly as companies can outsource them abroad. Indeed, despite Mr. Gates’ protestations, Microsoft only added 500 net jobs from 2003 to 2004, according to its SEC filings.
And parents who may have been victimized by the dot-com bust and a near-total evaporation of well-paying high-tech jobs will encourage their children to seek their fortunes in more stable fields, like medicine or law.
But the federal government’s figures on jobs and employment says the high-tech field is growing, not shrinking. The Labor Department notes data communications analysts, health information technicians, and computer software engineers will be among the fastest growing professions through 2012.
For those who seek employment beyond the high-tech sector, they will find the working world expects at minimum a basic proficiency in computer usage. Virtually every high school student who plans to work in a field beyond those of skilled trades can benefit from computer classes.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
