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In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

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11–20 of 176 posts

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#11

Meanwhile, most computer science jobs are not in the U.S.

There is a salary X such that most computer science jobs paying more than X are in the U.S. and the number of computer science jobs paying more than X is substantial. at least several hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#12

It could be that my memory of hypothesis testing is outdated, but being 1 standard deviation away from the mean isn't evidence of a significant difference in skills.

You are likely conflating sample mean with p values.

1 standard deviation in mean is substantial. That means approximately that 80% of one group exceeds performance of the median of the other group.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#16
North Korean universities rank even better!

But the imperialist US university only looked at subpar universities to come up with a flattering result.

(Sarcasm might be hiding around here, somewhere, but I think one could argue whether some US university should really measure the performance of their own students. It feels somewhat biased and like adulation.)

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#17
> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated.

There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with well-paying jobs.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#18

> When it comes to computer science skills, U.S. students approaching graduation have a significant advantage over their peers in China, India, and Russia. So much for "world domination".

meanwhile European CS students, with their fellow students from the UK, Switzerland, Korea, Japan, [add whatever country you like except the 3 which are - on average - worst than the US in CS) are busy getting even more better than the average CS US student

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#19
post #10

Meanwhile, most computer science jobs are not in the U.S.

On average the best paying and most technically interesting ones are.

> most technically interesting

Like making six figures a year for screwing people over at Facebook?

Sorry for being snarky, but lots of jobs in IT businesses in the US tend to be somewhat unhelpful for the society at all and not really providing any benefit in the long term.

In regard of this I'm always somewhat "happy" that we fail in Europe with building "the next Google", "the next Facebook" or whatever.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#20
post #15

I wonder how well US students would ranked on a test written by Russian, Indian, of Chinese testing company instead of a USA testing company.

This is a good point. From the article "Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. The exam was translated for the students in China and Russia."

It seems reasonable to expect a test written for a specific education system (either implicitly or explicitly) will be biased against others.

On the other hand, it is not that surprising that the US is a the top. It is a pretty big country with a long tradition for high quality education and a lot of funds going into CS departments. However, I will be surprised if this is not changing towards more dominance by India and China, because both countries are focusing a lot of resources in this area.

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