Job concerns prompt people to return to school

With 27 of the state’s 46 counties facing an unemployment rate of 10 percent or higher, many people are going back to school for better job training or to get an advanced degree.

Stephen Fenner went to college as a self-proclaimed math geek. After a semester of calculus that didn’t go his way, Fenner tried physics, which he also discovered wasn’t for him. So, as he’ll tell you, he just kind of slid into an upstart program called computer science at the University of Chicago in the 1980s.

Today, that upstart program is one of the hottest — and fewest — job markets in the nation that is hiring. The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that less than a third of the projected 1.5 million computing jobs will not be filled during the next decade.

The problem? Not enough students are majoring in computer science at universities across the country, including here in South Carolina.

“The job market is actually better now than it was at the height of the dot-com boom,” said Dr. Duncan Buell, who serves as chairman of the department of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina. “But that’s not the message that seems to have gotten out.”

For every computer science graduate, there are roughly three jobs waiting for them to fill, Buell said.

The latest estimate from the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that between 2006 and 2016, the field of computer science is expected to grow by 37 percent — much faster than the national average for all occupations.

Computer scientists work as theorists, researchers or inventors, mainly with computer software or programming language — in other words, what makes your computer work. In recent years, some of the more promising areas of research include virtual reality, designing robots and extending human-computer interaction.

Fenner, who also teaches computer science at USC, said part of the problem is trying to debunk the myths about outsourcing to such countries as India and China.

“Why hire an American software engineer when you can hire an Indian one for a fifth of the price?” he said. “It’s clearly a misperception.”

At USC, enrollment in computer science has continued to drop since 2001 but last year started to tick upward again, primarily in the master’s degree program.

With the university working on trying to attract such high-end technology companies as Intel and IBM to its new Innovista campus in the heart of downtown Columbia, Buell said it’s crucial South Carolina produce qualified people to warrant these companies investing their business here.

The university recently announced a new alliance with BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina and IBM to draw students back into careers in computer science and information systems.

Many students coming from high schools in the state are rarely exposed to computer science before coming to college, Buell said. That’s a major part of the problem.

“We are letting these kids slip through the cracks at a time when the world needs them,” he said.