Have you ever stopped to think about how your phone works? Are you looking for a full-time job that pays $79,000 a year?
What if I told you that there is almost no competition in this field of work? If this sounds like a good deal to you, you should look into computer science, which is the study of designing and programming computers.
December 9th to December 15th is Computer Science Education Week, where people around the world are promoting computer science.
If you’re interested in computer science at all, look at some of these statistics.
Studies have shown that there are going to be more and more jobs in the field of computer science. By 2020, there will be 1.4 million computer science jobs and only 400,000 computer science graduates.
Currently in Alabama, there are 3,500 jobs that use computer science, but only 541 graduates that majored in it! This means that there is not nearly as much competition in computer science as there is competition in fields like electrical engineering.
Sixty percent of jobs in the area of math and science are computer science jobs, yet only 2% of all college graduates obtain a degree in that field.
Many computer science jobs provide fairly high wages, but why do so few people major in computer science? Maybe it’s the fact that Alabama only has twenty-six schools that teach computer science. Or is it because no one knows how to code? Well, it’s not that hard to learn!
Visit http://csedweek.org/learn to learn how to code in just one hour!
Hour of Code is a promotional campaign that is trying to get more and more people interested in coding.
David Gunther, a senior at Bob Jones, tried the Hour of Code lessons and loved them. “It was really fun, and it was a lot easier than I expected it would be.”
Coding is all around us, and it is worth learning about. Hour of Code is a great way to get started on coding–just watch the website’s instructional videos and you’ll be on your way.
So now that you know what computer science is, help others get involved in it.
Mrs. Rountree, Bob Jones’ computer science teacher, said, “Right now, computer science counts as an elective, not a graduation credit. We want it to be a math credit. We feel that people will be more interested in the courses.”
She even has a petition for the cause: https://www.change.org/petitions/alabama-state-department-of-education-make-computer-science-courses-count-toward-graduation-credits#share
Who knows? An hour of code could get you on your way to being the next Bill Gates!
All information obtained from http://csedweek.org/.
