Penn State Computer Science and Engineering: Succeeding
Sean M. Walsh
December 14, 2009
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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Works Cited
Bassett, Johnathan. “Severe Shortage of Engineers Dxpected Due to Dropout Rate.” The
Collegian. State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
"CCSG Council Minutes." Council of Commonwealth Student Governments. 2009. Council of
Commonwealth Student Governments, Web. 10 Dec 2009.
< http://php.scripts.psu.edu/clubs/up/ccsg/index.php/documents/doc_download/74council-minutes>.
"Center for Excellence in Academic Advising." Penn State Division of Undergraduate Studies.
06 May 2009. The Pennsylvania State University, Web. 10 Dec 2009.
<http://www.psu.edu/dus/cfe/etmen.htm>.
"Comparitive Tuitions of Top Universities." Working Class Lions. Web. 10 Dec 2009.
<http://www.workingclasslions.com/files/quality.jpg>.
"Enrollment Statistics." Penn State College of Engineering. 2008. The Pennsylvania State
University, Web. 14 Dec 2009. <http://www.engr.psu.edu/AboutCOE/enrollment.aspx>.
"How many colleges are there in America? ." College Confidential. 14 Jun 2005. 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>.
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