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You seriously need to appreciate the distinction between CS and coding. Let me break it down: computer science is really difficult. It's not the CS jobs that go to India. It's the coding jobs.

Also, here's something you many not know. K-12 CS education in India is actually pretty good. My school started computer science in the fifth grade. Internalizing the Turing machine (even if it is not formally explained) at that age gives you a huge advantage should you decide to become a computer scientist later.

So how come India doesn't produce good computer scientists? Actually we do. If you look at the top CS conferences, the proportion of Indians is pretty high compared to the number of people we graduate. It's just that Indians choose to move to the U.S. to do research because there are no good government funded research programs in India.

Next up, innovation and design. I think PG pretty much answered that one. It doesn't matter if you have talented people, if you don't have a nurturing environment like Silicon Valley, it's just not gonna happen. There's not much incentive for an Indian firm to innovate because our business climate is just so bad. Success depends more on how well you can bribe government officials than on innovation.

That leaves coding jobs. If you teach everyone how to code, of course you're going to have a lot of coders who aren't particularly good designers or computer scientists. That's what we have. Many of my friends who are actually good tried to kick it in one of the outsourcing firms, couldn't take the boredom, and left to go to grad school or do something else. It's a self-perpetuating cycle.

To summarize: K-12 CS education is not hard, and it's important for producing good computer scientists. You just have to be prepared to accept that not every kid will be interested.

Computer Science is a discipline applied to something, such as doing coding at a startup. Most CS students turn out to be coders. Not many people, for example, are going to go off and write new compilers and program in MIPS assembly. Most will end up doing the typical Java and C/C++ development stuff. My roommate for example doesn't have any interest in AI or machine learning or data mining (although I'm not necessarily referring to those fields as being easily outsourced).

The complaint I'm making is one that has been voiced already by many universities, including my own (Illinois.edu). It's the reason schools like Olin College are getting built and considered by Newsweek and Kaplan as "one of America's next Ivy League schools." It has nothing to do with computer science being difficult, it's because it's not interesting. This isn't about how to distinguish CS from coding, it's about fixing the outdated curriculum from the Cold War when we basically said "forget drawing and practice in the Computer Science and Engineering degrees, we're strictly math science and analysis now."

Java and C/C++ development is what most CS students will end up doing (coding). Those are the people I'm talking about; I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. If you think success is all about bribery, you (as defined by Michael Arrington) have a losing attitude and have no place in Silicon Valley. Not my words, but Mr. Arrington's. And I for one side with him in saying that hard work produces more results than flattery.

My point is this: nobody wants to learn coding with zero application. I'm saying that higher education doesn't have it right because 50% of students dropout, so you're going to try and move it into k-12 and expect better results? How on earth do you propose to do that exactly?

This is an interesting exchange between Mark Guzdial and Alan Kay: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKVUNBWIDAS9YQ

The focal point of the argument seems to be whether CS "education" and "vocational training" should be separated.

P.S. Nice to see another UIUC student. I've been accepted there and would possibly end up enrolling unless I get into some long shot universities. How is the scene there?

You are coming in at a good time, actually. We are just now launching the iFoundry program, keep your eyes on it. E-mail me sometime, I'm always interested in meeting people from HN at school. Check out my profile.

CS isn't about coding. I understand where you are coming from, but high level governament educational initiaves shouldn't focus on consumer products. Smart people are meant to build great things. The United States would have never come on top of things if it had focused on shiny stuff.

Maybe I am old school, maybe I want the next mission to Mars to work instead of looking good on TV. And maybe I haven't slept today so I am bitter. But you have to thing bigger than Ipods.

"You think you're going to figure out how to teach it to younger students if you can't even understand why half of everyone loses interest in higher education?"

Our public school system taught Logo in third or fourth grade. That's how my friends and I got interested in coding.

The problem with graduates in the Western world is: there are too many of us already. Even in the "hard" disciplines of science and engineering, there are too few jobs. How many physics graduates go on to become full-time physicists? How many of all graduates go onto jobs where they need what they learnt in undergrad? Not many.

Meanwhile, try finding a plumber or an electrician... Our physical infrastructure is quite literally crumbling around us while our heads are in the clouds.

Do you have any numbers or stats on this? I haven't heard that theory before.

I just watched a video interview with Bill Gates yesterday and he said that we're now behind in software. The entire robotics industry (according to Gates) is behind not because of hardware, but because we don't have the software. He went on to say that software will continue to be a field where we need even more people involved, where we have most of the hardware we need.

Philip Greenspun's essays are a good starting point:

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/

Also that's kinda nonsense; what's really lacking in robotics is a suitable power source.

Here are stats on math. In short: 1157 PhDs given out, and 761 have academic positions (the main place to get a job as a mathematician).

Plus, a reasonable fraction of the academic positions are purely teaching.

http://www.ams.org/employment/2007Survey-DG.pdf

I know physics is similar.

Here are stats on math. In short: 1157 PhDs given out, and 761 have academic positions (the main place to get a job as a mathematician).

Actuaries, quant finance (it's not dead yet), crypto-related programming, logistics... there are lots of non-academic jobs (most of which pay better than all but the best academic appointments). It may be the case that giving up four years of earnings is not worth it from a purely pecuniary standpoint, but I seriously doubt that there is an overabundance of math PhDs given the jobs they can take.

The private sector is, of course, much less visible than academia.

One assumes that a math PhD went to the trouble of writing a dissertation so they could do something with it. I know little about the other fields you mentioned, but a PhD isn't needed for actuarial work. A bachelor's (heavy on the statistics) with some finance courses covers you, and after that it's self-study for the seven (7!) exams you need to be a fellow.

A math PhD in an actuarial setting is out of place, like a CD grad working at Geek Squad (a hypothetical Geek Squad with pay comparable to programming).

Most of those jobs don't require a PhD. Perhaps a few of the quants, a few crypto programmers and a few operations research people. But certainly not all of them. As I noted, even many academic jobs (teaching positions) don't really need it.

While having the degree helps you get the job ("omfg you have a PhD you must be so smart!"), it isn't necessary. The number of jobs where PhD level mathematical knowledge is necessary is actually quite small. Producing more PhDs will probably not be as helpful jmtame seems to think.

Agreed. A PhD is an apprenticeship to become an academic. It doesn't actually say anything either way about how smart someone is (i.e. most people smart enough to get a good first degree could probably complete a PhD if they chose to). In industry a PhD is only of value when hiring into the R&D group (or in the case of investment banks, wanting to impress unsophisticated clients).

Free PDF that does a good job of describing the situation:

"Into the Eye of the Storm -- Assessing the Evidence on Science and Engineering Education, Quality, and Workforce Demand"

http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html

Abstract:

"Recent policy reports claim the United States is falling behind other nations in science and math education and graduating insufficient numbers of scientists and engineers. Review of the evidence and analysis of actual graduation rates and workforce needs does not find support for these claims. U.S. student performance rankings are comparable to other leading nations and colleges graduate far more scientists and engineers than are hired each year. Instead, the evidence suggests targeted education improvements are needed for the lowest performers and demand-side factors may be insufficient to attract qualified college graduates."