Detailed picture of US bachelor's programs in computing
Significant increases seen in software engineering enrollments

Date:
September 10, 2020
Source:
Association for Computing Machinery
Summary:
With the aim of providing a comprehensive look at computing
education, the study includes information on enrollments, degree
completions, faculty demographics, and faculty salaries.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, recently released its
eighth annual Study of Non-Doctoral Granting Departments in Computing
(NDC study).

With the aim of providing a comprehensive look at computing education,
the study includes information on enrollments, degree completions,
faculty demographics, and faculty salaries. For the first time, this
year's ACM NDC study includes enrollment and degree completion data from
the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSC).


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In previous years, ACM directly surveyed Computer Science departments,
and would work with a sample of approximately 18,000 students. By
accessing the NSC's data, the ACM NDC study now includes information on approximately 300,000 students across the United States, allowing for a
more reliable understanding of the state of enrollment and graduation
in Bachelor's programs. Also for the first time, the ACM NDC study
includes data from private, for-profit institutions, which are playing
an increasingly important role in computing education.

"By partnering with the NSC, we now have a much fuller picture of
computing enrollment and degree production at the Bachelor's level,"
explained ACM NDC study co-author Stuart Zweben, Professor Emeritus,
Ohio State University. "The NSC also gives us more specific data on the
gender and ethnicity of students.

This is an important tool, as increasing the participation of women and
other underrepresented groups has been an important goal for leaders
in academia and industry. For example, having a clear picture of the
current landscape for underrepresented people is an essential first step
toward developing approaches to increase diversity." "The computing
community has come to rely on the ACM NDC study to understand trends in undergraduate computing education," added ACM NDC study co-author Jodi
Tims, Professor, Northeastern University. "At the same time, using our
previous data collection methods, we were only capturing about 15-20%
of institutions offering Bachelor's degrees in computing. The NSC data
gives us a much broader sample, as well as more precise information about enrollment and graduation in specific computing disciplines -- such as
computer science, information systems, information technology, software engineering, computer engineering and cybersecurity. For example, we've
seen a noticeable increase in cybersecurity program offerings between
the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 academic years, and we believe this trend
will continue next year. Going forward, we also plan to begin collecting information on data science offerings in undergraduate education. Our
overall goal will be to maintain the ACM NDC study as the most up-to-date
and authoritative resource on this topic." As with previous NDC studies, information on faculty salaries, retention, and demographics was
collected by sending surveys to academic departments across the United
States. Responses were received from 151 departments. The average number
of full-time faculty members at the responding departments was 12.

Important findings of the ACM NDC study include:
* -Between the 2017/2018 and the 2018/2019 academic years, there
was a 4.7%
increase in degree production across all computing disciplines. The
greatest increases in degree production were in software
engineering (9% increase) and computer science (7.5% increase)
-The representation of women in information systems (24.5% of
degree earners in the 2018/2019 academic year) and information
technology (21.5% of degree earners in the 2018/2019 academic year)
is much higher than in areas such as computer engineering (12.2%
of degree earners in the 2018/ 2019 academic year).

-Bachelor's programs, as recorded by the ACM NDC study, had
a stronger representation of African American and Hispanic
students than PhD programs, as recorded by the Computer Research
Association's (CRA) Taulbee Survey. For example, during the
2018/2019 academic year, the ACM NDC records that 15.6% of enrollees
in Bachelor's programs were African American, whereas the CRA
Taulbee survey records that 4.7% of enrollees in PhD programs were
African American.

-In some disciplines of computing, African Americans and Hispanics
are actually over-represented, based on their percentage of the
US population.

-Based on aggregate salary data from 89 non-doctoral-granting
computer science departments (including public and private
institutions), the average median salary for a full professor
was $109,424.

- Of 40 non-doctoral granting departments reporting over 56
faculty departures, only 10.7% of faculty departed for non-academic
positions.

Most departed due to retirement (46.4%) or other academic positions
(26.9%).

In addition to Stuart Zweben, and Jodi Tims, the ACM NDC study was
co-authored by Yan Timanovsky, Association for Computing Machinery. By employing the NSC data in future ACM NDC studies, the co-authors are
confident that an even fuller picture will emerge regarding student
retention with respect to computing disciplines, gender and ethnicity.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Association_for_Computing_Machinery. Note: Content may be edited for
style and length.


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Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200910110859.htm

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