Penn State Computer Science and Engineering: Succeeding Sean M. Walsh December 14, 2009 1 Introduction Computer Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University is an important field that shapes the way we live every day. CSE at Penn State involves the core areas of theory, algorithms, programming languages, systems, computer vision, and networks. The core areas also includes security, cyber enabled discovery and data mining, computer architecture, and high performance computing. According to the Penn State Computer Science and Engineering website, “it will pervade all aspects of our life including the way we live, work, learn and are entertained.” Do you remember the scare of Y2K? Without computers and electronic devices we would be practically be sent back to the Stone Age. Every year many students enter the Penn State University with hopes of becoming a computer scientist or computer engineer. Many students find that going to a Commonwealth campus for their first two years can potentially save them more money than going right out to University Park. This is an excellent idea as it allows smaller classroom sizes and more studentteacher interaction all while striving to get their degree from Penn State. Many students have the concern that starting at a Commonwealth campus will not get them the same academic experience but they are mistaken. As Dr. Damon Sims, Vice President for Student Affairs, has said, “Penn State is one university geographically dispersed across the Commonwealth.” This means we are one university with the same academic standards and experience. The hope that many students have to become computer scientists and computer engineers soon becomes an uphill battle as a student spends time learning what all needs to be completed to even enter into this major. Even reaching those requirements can lead to problems as the two majors only allow so many students into the program each year. The academic curriculum is difficult and has many challenges that students are yet to face. 2 The first day a student embarks on their adventure at Penn State’s College of Engineering they will be presented with a handbook. This handbook breaks up each semester for each major in the college and guides a student on a path to graduation. The academic courses needed for the computer science or computer engineering major at first does not look all that difficult and students figure that they have four years to complete all these courses. What the advisors tell everyone is that you have to enter your major by the end of the fourth semester with a C or better in a list of mandated classes. Almost everyone I know underestimated this list of courses. This was the first mistake that many people made, myself included. Most students in CSE will take their first semester which basically consists of a first year seminar course, an English composition course, a Mathematics course, a Computer Science course, and a bunch of general education courses. The second semester comes and students realize that now most of the other students striving for a computer science or computer engineering degree have given up and changed their intended major. This is where another problem comes into play especially for those at a Commonwealth campus. The registrar and the Department of Academic Affairs on the student’s campus have a set number of minimum students that can be in a class. According to numerous emails sent from Penn State Hazleton’s Director of Academic Affairs, that number appears to be around five students minimum. This becomes a major problem for a student’s academic career when they need certain classes but find that they are being cancelled. CSE students soon find that classes that are required rather do not fit into the student’s schedules or they are simply not available. This leads to taking around 12 credits a semester which is not good considering the course load a computer science and computer engineering major have to deal with. 3 By the third semester students have been found to be struggling in courses such as Math 141 and Physics 211. Some students are found to be changing their major or simply worrying about their entrance into their major and looking into alternative majors. After a College of Engineering meeting, on Penn State Hazleton’s campus, it was clear that most students were not meeting the requirements to declare their computer science or engineering major and risked not getting into their hoped major. This is not a good thing at all. According to an article by Jonathan Bassett, “National studies have indicated that attrition rates of engineering majors average around 50 percent after the first two years of college.” This percentage is proportional to those in the computer science and computer engineering majors as well. The other significant problem that students face as CSE majors at Penn State is the cost of tuition. With today’s economy it is nearly impossible for a student to go to college without taking out some sort of loan. Paying back those loans after graduating can be even more fearful as some students can be in debt of around $50,000 by graduation at Penn State. The job outlook of today is not the best that it could be. The newly graduated computer scientists and computer engineers could potentially be without employment and still be obligated to pay back these loans. The Problem Breaking the problem into sections can better represent the overall problem that many computer science and computer engineering students face at the Pennsylvania State University. These sections can be broken up into the follow parts: Amount of Excepted Students Entrance to Major Requirements Tuition Costs 4 These three sections express the significant concerns of a computer science and engineering major at Penn State. The amount of accepted students into the two majors is a considerably low number. For the Fall semester of 2008 only 328 students were enrolled into the Bachelor of Science degree program for Computer Science and Engineering. This information was found right under enrollment statistics on the Penn State website and can be real shock to a new student at Penn State. According to Dr. John J. Romano, Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses, at a student government meeting, “We have just shy of 44,000 at the University Park campus, 6,000 to 7,000 in the world campus, and a number of thousand at Penn College of Technology. In total, we have 94,000 across the university.” If this is the case then the amount of students accepted into the CSE program is a very small percentage. The entrances to major requirements are steep for these two majors. According to the programming guide in the engineering handbook the following classes are required for a just to declare the student’s major. o MATH 140 o MATH 141 o CSE 120 or CSE 122 or CMPSC 122 or CHEM 110 o PHYS 211 All of these classes need to be completed by the end of the student’s sophomore year with a C or better. A GPA of 2.0 is also required. This may not seem like a very hard thing to accomplish but in fact it is very demanding in such a short period of time. This is also a significant problem when classes are cancelled due to not enough students in the class. 5 The last problem is the tuition costs. As said above, with the current state of the economy, it is very hard for a student to pay for a Penn State’s tuition. The chart below shows a comparative view of Penn State’s tuition costs against other universities. The following is a print out from Penn State’s tuition cost calculator for a full time computer science major that resides in Pennsylvania for the 2009-10 academic year at a Commonwealth campus. Fall Spring Total Tuition: $5,721 $5,721 $11,442 Activity Fee: $74 $74 $148 IT Fee: $230 $230 $460 Facilities Fee: $75 $75 $150 Total: $6,100 $6,100 $12,200 That is a considerable amount of money a year and does not include room and board. 6 The Solution For as many computer science and engineering students there are out in the 2000 plus four year colleges across the United States, there must be a resolution or idea that can improve our current situation at the Pennsylvania State University. As we look at our problem in individual sections we can see that there are some significant obstacles for a computer science and engineering student to overcome. The first thing we need to address is the amount of students allowed into their major at Penn State. This would allow the students and the university to flourish. The second thing we need to address is getting help for students that are struggling with the entrance to major requirements so fewer students have to drop out or start over. The third thing we need to address and quite possibly the most important is the cost of tuition the students are presented with at Penn State. Amount of Accepted Students For Penn State being one of the largest universities in the country it should be surprising that there are so few students accepted into their computer science or computer engineering major. The easy solution would be to simply allow more students into the majors. Even with the limited professors that the university might have to teach the courses required for the major the university’s high tuition rates should be able to cover this. The university plans to expand the size of its main campus by 50% making Beaver Stadium the center of the campus. This was discussed at the last Council of Commonwealth Student Governments meeting and could clear open up any issues with space that may come about with allowing more students into the two majors. 7 Entrance to Major Requirements If the amount of accepted students is increased then it would be simple to lower the requirements that are necessary for entrance to major for computer science and computer engineering majors. Allowing more academic help for the difficult classes would be a start to helping students. There are tutoring centers set up on campuses, however usually the professors that help in those areas such as Math Dimensions are not very proficient in the higher level math courses and cannot help. Also instead of cancelling courses that are needed they can just allow them to take place. When the registrar initially sets up the classes, the classrooms are arranged. So there should be no issues with classroom space either way. In terms of salary costs for the professors, that is already accounted for so there should be no problems there. Advising can also be changed around some to allow students more transparency and allowing them to clearly see that certain classes need to be done by a certain time. Also allow students to see how demanding the course is so students aren’t faced with two very demanding classes and forcing the student to fall behind. This can be made easier by extending the Drop/Add Period at the beginning of the semester to allow students to review all of their syllabi and make a knowledgeable decision. Tuition Costs Tuition costs are always a battle for students. Dr. Graham Spanier, President of the Pennsylvania State University, did say that salaries would be frozen to help stop tuition from increasing. He also stated that Housing and Food Services were working to cut costs in housing. These are all great ideas but it still does not help alleviate the high costs students pay each semester. Constant campaigning and lobbying for higher state appropriations is the only way to surely obtain lower tuition costs. Although students on a yearly basis go to Harrisburg, 8 Pennsylvania to rally for more appropriations, I feel as though it is not enough effort. We are one of the largest universities in the country and we should all stand together as one university as a whole and lobby for more help. Another approach would be for Penn State to have more information sessions regarding things such as FAFSA which is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Any financial aid that a student can receive will drastically help a student pay for their tuition. More information sessions will allow students that were not informed on these things could become aware and use them to his or her advantage. Summation Of our three general problems with the amount of excepted students, entrance to major requirements and tuition costs, there are certainly a few different solutions to the problems of computer science and engineering students. There is no real simple solution to fixing these problems but with some work and effort these things can be accomplished to produce some of the finest and most education computer science and engineering majors that this country has ever seen. As more and more of these obstacles come apparent to these students they will eventually lose hope and possibly leave the university. This is not what we want to do. This is not what the Pennsylvania State University wants to do to some of the greatest minds in the country. Helping to make changes like this will inspire students to do even better than now raising the university to an even higher standard. 9 Works Cited Bassett, Johnathan. “Severe Shortage of Engineers Dxpected Due to Dropout Rate.” The Collegian. 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Hobsons, Inc., Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/71235how-many-colleges-there-america.html>. Romano, John J. Council of Commonwealth Student Governments Meeting. Penn State CCSG State College, PA. 30 Oct 2009 Sims, Damon. Council of Commonwealth Student Governments Meeting. Penn State CCSG. State College, PA. 2 Oct 2009. Spanier, Graham. Council of Commonwealth Student Governments Meeting. Penn State CCSG. State College, PA. 4 Dec 2009. "Tuition Cost Calculator." Penn State Tuition. The Pennsylvania State University, Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://collegecostestimate.ais.psu.edu/cgibin/CollegeCostEstimate.exe/launch/CollegeCC/shortcalc>. "Undergraduate FAQ." Penn State Department of Computer Science and Engineering. 13 Jun 2008. The Pennsylvania State University, Web. 10 Dec 2009. <http://www.cse.psu.edu/current/faq>. 10