In 2024, 21% of all bachelor's degrees awarded were Computer Science from University of Maryland College Park.
It was 3% in 2011.
I don't agree with the article that AI is wrecking job prospects. I see it is as companies are just now trending towards running leaner vs hiring every good engineer available during ZIRP.
Nonetheless, it's gotta be tough out there for new grads.
https://www.usmd.edu/IRIS/DataJournal/Degrees/?report=Degree...
The current phrasing makes it sound like they’re a diploma mill producing 21% of all bachelor degrees in the country.
This sounds more like overproduction of entry-level computer scientists than anything AI or hiring managers are up to.
I was told that a student can now get a CS degree without courses in OS, Compilers, Programming Languages, theory of computing etc. The argument being that a vast majority of jobs do not ever use the above. That may have caused a flood of grads with a shaky knowledge of the basics. The idea that software engineering is not really a science but more of a trade for which anyone could be trained without a formal degree has some shades of truth.
But in my experience, technology changes so fast that someone with a better grasp of the basics can evolve with the tech since they understand the fundamentals better. LLMs really separate those who can critique and correct its output, and those that blindly follow it, and the former will continue to have jobs.
Yikes. At that point, it's really not much of a "CS" degree. It's a trade program that teaches you how to use particular programming languages and frameworks.
Someone with that background is in a brittle position. They won't be able to pivot as easily to different technologies when things inevitably change. And they'll be ill-equipped to handle interesting open-ended projects where it's up to them to decide what approaches to use, how to bound problems, how to reason through trade-offs, and what lessons to take from prior work.
Source for CS graduates?
I'm saying that a source from more than a decade ago describing a general trend doesn't explain why recent CS graduates are facing a worse job market than folks five years ago did.
Grade inflation, per your source, has been happening for decades across the board. That does not tell us why "since the widespread adoption of generative AI, early-career workers (ages 22-25) in the most AI-exposed occupations have experienced a 13 percent relative decline in employment even after controlling for firm-level shocks" [1].
[1] https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/...
A rational actor is going to be more likely to pursue something they think they can actually pass.
If grade inflation is happening to all degrees, that doesn't explain increased enrollment in CS. (I'm generally curious if part of the explanation is a reduction in CS education quality.)
Part of my explanation was a possible increase in quality of CS education for industry, as I mentioned, it is possible they geared it more towards industry than pure CS encouraging more students to go in.
>If grade inflation is happening to all degrees, that doesn't explain increased enrollment in CS.
It does because CS is (was?) a notoriously more difficult program. Since it is one of the highest paying degrees, making that difficulty of passing more accessible would naturally shift money oriented people more into CS.
I really believe it's just for the headlines.