I always hesitate when talking to professors about trying to improve the percentage of people who graduate with a CS type degree compared to the number that start out thinking that is what they want. On one hand I really do think it is important for professionals to be involved and give this feedback, on the other hand it would be better if less sub-par students ended up with CS degrees.I don't think every mind is built for this field and you have to be a good life long student. You have to have a high degree of patience and problem solving skills just to eek by. If you do have the right kind of brain, those hard problems are what drives you to continue. If you just get a long list of easy problems you get bored so these people are actually not good at more repetitive jobs. I don't need to go into all the details... if you are reading this you probably know what I'm getting at.So the question is: How do you find the balance of a degree program that is accessible to enough people to be funded and considered successful but also doesn't turn out people who aren't really cut out for the job? Maybe a better question is, what metric do you use to know if the changes you are making in a degree program are making it better? I don't know that a higher graduation rate is a good metric. And it seems that the feedback that you could try to capture many years later about the jobs that the graduates hold would be too far delayed. I've struggled with this question for a long time, mostly because I don't think there is an answer. But I thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows of any research that has actually been done on it.Addition: I recently had a very wise professor remind me that not everyone who graduates with a CS degree even wants to be a full-time programmer once they have actually discovered what that means. But, with the education that they received they could possibly make great Project Managers, Managers, system admins, etc. I think this was a very good point that I hadn't thought to consider here. There are a very high percentage of people who don't end up working in the field they majored in, CS isn't an exception to that. Having the extra folks helps not only in budget for the degree but also to expand the percentage of non-programmers who still know enough about it to work with programmers.
Who can learn to program?
skills
Ok, by popular demand ... Let the free market figure it out. You know, 95% of psychology majors end up doing something else. Not everyone with a CS degree/minor ends up programming, but they make better managers, analysts, project managers than those without. Do not carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. CS degree is just a piece of paper. Those with math, physics, chemistry, biology degrees go on to become programmers, and not everyone with a CS degree becomes a programmer. Without millions of kids aspiring to be the best baseball player, we would not have such great stars. The system is self-regulating.