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Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

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Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#121

Post by fsloth »

ngoel36 wrote: post #21
sliverstorm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So more than 50% of Stanford undergrads are CS? Shit. Does that not sound like aa glut?

No. Very little of a CS degree is "coding" - CS is so much more than that. It's even beyond "engineering". A proper CS degree teaches you how to think , how to solve insanely hard problems, and how to do so with a team of other smart people - often with different personalities. What separates CS from other degrees is that it does filter out those without the horsepower or fortitude on both the quant side (algorithms)…

"What separates CS from other degrees is that it does filter out those..."

This is quite a strong claim. I also find the terminology "filters out" troubling. I thought universities were fundamentally there to teach people and not just sieve them. Well, personally my physics department was operated like a sieve but that simply is not a rational way to run an educational facility. It's just macho bullshit ("We're so tough...").

"That means, that even if the SV bubble crashes, CS majors are the best equipped to handle whatever career is hot next.."

I would claim when changing to a new field, any university major that requires rigorous thinking and understanding of math based systems gives that advantage.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#122

Post by richmarr »

Asbostos wrote: post #46
ngoel36 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now. What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major , and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.

Is that really awesome, or is is bad news for say engineering or physics which could be losing those same women and are traditionally even more male dominated than computer science is? If those subjects are losing as many women, then this is actually bad news for gender same-number-ness.

Good question.

There's been a significant change (at least from my perspective) in the awareness of inequitable treatment of women in tech in the last few years, and I'd like to think that's one of the contributing factors to this change.

If true, that means that the previous levels of entry into other subjects were (in part) due to students rejection of CS. If CS loses its repulsion factor then that brings everyone's metrics back to neutral and will make other problems clearer.

Much as I hate to wheel out the trite "everything is a market" trope, the more subjects like physics will have to work to improve the treatment of women in science (although my perception is that it's not as bad as tech)... and maybe (one day) the way science is run to make it a more appealing career.

I was a physics undergrad and chose to ditch science as a career at my first opportunity. A majority of the people who stayed on to do an MSc or PhD did so only because it would buy them a well payed role at a bank, or PWC, or Anderson (sorry, "Accenture"). It's a shitty career, fighting for funding or tenure, full of victorian-era bullshit.

The sooner physics (for one) cleans house the better.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#123

Post by eru »

droidist2 wrote: post #63
eru wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm too young but I have the feeling working conditions were much better back then. You mean working conditions for programmers? From talking to people who worked in computing back then (like my grandfather), it seems like we have it better today. Of course that's only anecdotal, and my perception of today is as coloured as my choice of people to talk to. Would be interesting to see a more formal study.

Old people always say they had it worse though. "In my day we had to walk 15 miles in the snow to compile our code." Yeah but rent costed 2 days pay back then, not 2 weeks.

Oh, I didn't ask directly about how bad he had it. More like general talking about working conditions (and he sees them as normal).

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#124

Post by tomp »

mitchty wrote: post #43
tomp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I think every time someone says "We need to encourage more women/people to study CS." If you're only doing it for the money, you're probably doing it wrong. Studying CS for 3 years does not a programmer/hacker make; staying up coding all night or while other kids are playing outside, for years, is what it takes.

Umm, what? Do we say this kind of crap to Lawyers? Doctors? Engineers? (scratch the last one i'm sure we do say this kind of crap to them) Why must programming be such a soul sucking life encompassing thing? It doesn't matter if you're a woman or man, this stupid mindset that somehow the only way to be a programmer is to be a stereotype needs to be launched into the sun and forevermore forgotten. Just today I met a g…

> She didn't look like any nerd you might think. She just looked normal. Great fun to talk to as well.

Looks like you're projecting your own ideas and complexes to what I said. Guess what - I look normal as well! But still, my interest in computing goes deeper than finishing class assignments and longer than 3 years.

Most lawyers and doctors don't build stuff. Those that do (do new medical research, or write new laws), I sincerely hope and expect that their knowledge and understanding of their profession goes way beyond an average coprofessional's.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#125

Post by tomp »

reagency wrote: post #40
tomp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the proportion of Asians in CS/programming, it's probably one of the most diverse industries. Don't fall into the feminist indoctrination that "diversity" only means women or that women are a minority.

Having 1 or 2 races dominating the population doesn't make it racially diverse.

More racially diverse than other high-paying industries in the US, which I'm guessing sre mostly dominated by white people (except basketball).

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#126

Post by DanBC »

natmaster wrote: post #26
colah3 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is really a case of Simpson's paradox. What we're seeing is that female students at Stanford are less concentrated on a single major than the male ones. As a result, their top pick isn't as high as the male top pick. I'd guess that the distribution of female majors is higher entropy than the male one. Simpson's paradox would be if there was some second confounding variable that corelated to gender…

I'm genuinely curious why I haven't seen any uproar about the numerous majors where men are in minority.

Because you haven't looked?

Pick any subject where men are under-represented and you can find, if you look for it, groups who are (rightly) trying to fix it.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#127

Post by ivanca »

zasz wrote: post #117
ivanca wrote: post #73

What's with the obsession of gender equality by women in high paying jobs?, is never about lack of women in sewer maintenance or coal mining, or bugs exterminators, or firemen (firewoman? Is that even a word?). Is always CEOs or STEAM jobs at silicon valley. That's a very narrow and convenient definition of "equality" isn't it?

Believe it or not, women have had to fight for the right to work in coal mines. You probably hear only about the fight to get more women in tech, since you are in tech. But anyway, here you go: http://www.women-in-mining.com/news/1389309 Proof that there used to be laws on the books banning women from working in mines, and feminists went and fought them. It's quite possible that the other reason you don't hear about…

Actually I know that, I was talking about _modern feminis_ where this kind of jobs get a lot more attention by them than any other "gender gap"

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#128

Post by douche »

fsloth wrote: post #115
douche wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

University CS programs are kinda shitty for teaching people how to actually write code. It's not really more than that, it's math and theory and proofs instead of that . University faculty, if they ever worked in a professional environment, did it years and years ago before they got tenure. The worst course I took in my CS department was the algorithms and data structures course. Didn't write a line of code. Wrote a…

Yes, I agree theory without attending to implications in hardware in the real world is not very practical. I do wonder to what student material you've been exposed to when you claim most CS majors could not attend a basic practical programming course in C.

Ivy League student material. Oh, how people flailed when they had to wrap their heads around pointers. These were brilliant people, most of them far smarter than I was, but getting into the nitty-gritty details of things seemed to break their brains.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#129

Post by chongli »

yareally wrote: post #41
reagency wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors.

> Because men haven't found gender related hostility or exclusion from high paying jobs in those majors. Men do face discrimination in nursing. However, men are still paid more on average than female nurses[1]. Make of that what you will. The thing I find most striking is that before the 20th century, most nurses were men and in the early days of computing there was a much higher number of women in the field. [1] htt…

That's because 41% of male nurses are nurse anaesthetists, a profession that makes nearly 4 times the salary of a registered nurse.

There is a gender gap even within specific nursing professions but it's not nearly as extreme as that.

Re: Computer science is now the top major for women at Stanford University

#130

Post by eitally »

001sky wrote: post #53
ngoel36 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so women still choose CS at a smaller proportion than men do...that's alright for now. What's awesome is that women are now choosing CS more than any other major , and Stanford is providing them an environment where it's cool to do so. That's incredible.

In all fairness, this is likely a structural data anomaly. ie, it is driven by the number of majors at the school, and their level of abstraction. Here are some historical data points. Notice the arbitary abstraction of, eg Bio Sciences Human Biology 1955 1. History 2. Economics 3. Psychology 4. Political Science 5. Bio Sciences 1965 1. History 2. Political Science 3. English 4. Psychology 5. Economics 1975 1. Psycho…

I suspect that differentiation would make more sense if they replaced "human biology" with "pre-med".

I graduated from UVA In '99 and the biggest majors by far were psychology, sociology, history and economics, possibly in that order, but definitely each having ~500 graduates (out of a class of perhaps 2800-3000). I think the entire engineering school only graduated about 300-400 people each year (at that time).

The current enrollment seems to match Stanford's stats, interestingly: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/about/facts/

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