Computer Science –
Facts and Fantasies
Ed Lazowska
Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in
Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington
August 2011
Today
UW Computer Science & Engineering
Education for the 21st century
Why computer science?
Why a research-intensive university?
What your students will experience in UW
Computer Science & Engineering
UW Computer Science & Engineering
Ranked among the top 10 programs in the
nation
MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Illinois,
Washington, Cornell, Princeton, Georgia Tech,
Princeton, Caltech, Wisconsin …
Two undergraduate programs
Computer Science (College of Arts & Sciences)
Computer Engineering (College of Engineering)
160 Bachelors students per year
We also grant ~85 Masters and ~20 Ph.D. degrees
annually
Admission
“Regular Admission” for UW students who have
fulfilled a set of prerequisites (math, physical
sciences, computer science, etc.)
Offered twice each year – for autumn and spring quarters
“Accelerated Admission” for students who do
extremely well in our introductory courses
Offered every quarter
“Direct Admission” for top high school students
Offered in the spring, for autumn quarter, coordinated
with the UW Admissions Office and the UW Honors
Program
Extraordinary students
A deep commitment to providing a top-tier
undergraduate education
Winner of 5 UW Distinguished Teaching Awards
Winner of the inaugural UW Brotman Award for
Instructional Excellence
Housed in the spectacular Paul G. Allen
Center for Computer Science & Engineering
Message #1
There are various reasons to go out of state for
college
Getting the best computer science or computer
engineering education in the nation is not one of
them
Education for the 21st century
Once upon a time, the “content” of the goods
we produced was largely physical
Then we transitioned to goods whose
“content” was a balance of physical and
intellectual
In the “innovation economy,” the content of
goods is almost entirely intellectual rather
than physical
What kind of education is needed to produce
goods whose content is almost entirely
intellectual rather than physical?
Correlated with education:
Employment
Earnings
Health
Volunteerism
Voting
0
1
6
5
Washington's ranking among the states
1
5
6
9
9
10
15
20
25
30
35
35
38
40
42
45
50
Engineers
employed /
10,000
workers
Computer
specialists
employed /
10,000
workers
Life and
physical
scientists
employed /
10,000
workers
US Department of Commerce
Persons with
recent
science &
engineering
Bachelors
degrees /
10,000
workers
Recent
science &
engineering
Ph.D.
degrees /
10,000
workers
Percent of
Percent of
employment
payroll in
in highhightechnology
technology
NAICS codes NAICS codes
Bachelors
degrees
granted (all
institutions,
public and
private) /
population of
18-24 year
olds
Percent of
Bachelors
degrees
granted in
science &
engineering
Science &
engineering
graduate
students /
population of
18-24 year
olds
0
1
6
5
Washington's ranking among the states
1
5
6
9
9
10
15
20
25
30
35
35
38
40
42
45
50
Engineers
employed /
10,000
workers
Computer
specialists
employed /
10,000
workers
Life and
physical
scientists
employed /
10,000
workers
US Department of Commerce
Persons with
recent
science &
engineering
Bachelors
degrees /
10,000
workers
Recent
science &
engineering
Ph.D.
degrees /
10,000
workers
Percent of
Percent of
employment
payroll in
in highhightechnology
technology
NAICS codes NAICS codes
Bachelors
degrees
granted (all
institutions,
public and
private) /
population of
18-24 year
olds
Percent of
Bachelors
degrees
granted in
science &
engineering
Science &
engineering
graduate
students /
population of
18-24 year
olds
0
Washington's ranking among the states (1998)
5
5
10
15
20
25
30
36
35
40
43
45
49
44
48
50
2-year public
institutions overall
4-year public
4-year public lowerinstitutions overall
division
US Department of Commerce
4-year public
upper-division
4-year public
graduate and
professional
Participation rate (% of 18-24 year olds)
4-year private
institutions
0
Washington's ranking among the states (1998)
5
5
10
15
20
25
30
36
35
40
43
45
49
44
48
50
2-year public
institutions overall
4-year public
4-year public lowerinstitutions overall
division
US Department of Commerce
4-year public
upper-division
4-year public
graduate and
professional
Participation rate (% of 18-24 year olds)
4-year private
institutions
Washington State is all geared up to fight
the last war!
Message #2
The vanguard of our economy is the production of
goods whose content is almost entirely intellectual
It takes a Bachelors+ education to produce these
goods
If you steer a capable student towards a 2-year
program as his or her end-goal, you are doing that
student a disservice
Not every student needs college prep. But every
student needs life prep. Increasingly, math and
science are life prep.
“Honors, AP, and IB English, math, and science”
Why Computer Science?
It’s creative, it’s challenging, it’s exciting
It’s increasingly fundamental to many other
fields
And thus it’s great preparation for these fields
There are tons of jobs
Although this is not a reason to choose a major!
http://www.cs.washington.edu/WhyCSE/
Power to Change the World
People enter computer science for
all sorts of aspirational reasons
Pathways in Computer Science
A computer science education is
the gateway to all sorts of
careers in addition to the
software industry
A day in the life
The software industry is pretty
cool
The Impact
“From smartphones to eBook readers to game consoles to personal
computers; from corporate datacenters to cloud services to scientific
supercomputers; from digital photography and photo editing, to MP3 music
players, to streaming media, to GPS navigation; from robot vacuum cleaners
in the home, to adaptive cruise control in cars and the real-time control
systems in hybrid vehicles, to robot vehicles on and above the battlefield;
from the Internet and the World Wide Web to email, search engines,
eCommerce, and social networks; from medical imaging, to computerassisted surgery, to the large-scale data analysis that is enabling evidencebased healthcare and the new biology; from spreadsheets and word
processing to revolutions in inventory control, supply chain, and logistics;
from the automatic bar-coding of hand-addressed first class mail, to
remarkably effective natural language translation, to rapidly improving
speech recognition – our world today relies to an astonishing degree
on systems, tools, and services that belong to a vast and still growing
domain known as Networking and Information Technology (NIT).”
“As a field of inquiry, NIT has a rich intellectual agenda – as rich as that of any
other field of science or engineering.”
“In addition, NIT is arguably unique among all fields of science and
engineering in the breadth of its impact.”
“The development and application of NIT-related systems, services, tools and
methodologies have boosted U.S. labor productivity more than any other set
of forces in recent decades. Advances in NIT, deployed pervasively
throughout the U.S. economy, have helped U.S. workers become the world’s
most productive and have enabled the U.S. to remain one of the world’s
most competitive economies.”
The Future Role
“Recent technological and societal trends place the further advancement and
application of NIT squarely at the center of our Nation’s ability to achieve
essentially all of our priorities and to address essentially all of our challenges:
• Advances in NIT are a key driver of economic competitiveness. They create
new markets and increase productivity.
• Advances in NIT are crucial to achieving our major national and global
priorities in energy and transportation, education and life-long learning,
healthcare, and national and homeland security. NIT will be an indispensable
element in buildings that manage their own energy usage; attention-gripping,
personalized methods that reinforce classroom lessons; continuous
unobtrusive assistance for people with physical and mental disabilities; and
strong resilience to cyber warfare.
• Advances in NIT accelerate the pace of discovery in nearly all other fields.
The latest NIT tools are helping scientists and engineers to illuminate the
progression of Alzheimer’s disease, elucidate the nature of combustion, and
predict the size of the ozone hole, to cite just a few examples.
• Advances in NIT are essential to achieving the goals of open government.
Those advances will allow better access to government records, better and
more accessible government services, and the ability both to learn from and
communicate with the American public more effectively.”
Workforce and Education
“All indicators – all historical data, and all projections – argue that NIT is the
dominant factor in America’s science and technology employment.”
Science and Technology Job Growth, 2008-2018
(Bureau of Labor Statistics)
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
New Jobs
600,000
New Jobs + Replacements
400,000
200,000
Engineers
Life
scientists
Physical
scientists
Social
scientists
and related
occupations
0
Computer
specialists
Available Positions, 10 years
1,400,000
15-1000
17-2000
19-1000
19-2000
19-3000
“The gap between the demand for NIT talent and the supply of that talent is
and will remain large.”
Annualized Job Openings vs. Annual Degrees Granted
300,000
250,000
200,000
Annualized job openings, 20082018 (BLS data)
150,000
Degrees granted, 2006 (NSF
data)
100,000
50,000
Social
sciences
Physical
sciences
Life sciences
Engineering
Computer
science
0
Washington has innovators in most major
information technology industry sectors
Broad e-tailing,
Cloud
Online media
Online travel
Software
Search, etc.
Games
Online real estate
Bioinformatics
Networking infrastructure
RFID
High-performance computing
Clustered storage
Focused e-tailing
HEC Board Regional Needs Analysis
Report (2011)
June 2011 job openings
Message #3
Computer science is an incredible field
And there are tons of jobs
However, a Bachelors-level education is not about
vocational training – it’s about preparation for lifelong learning, and preparation for citizenship
Why a research-intensive university?
What can we uniquely do?
Get students into the lab
Make them our partners in discovery
Prepare them for life-long learning at the
forefront of knowledge and society
.
.
.
.
.
.
Christophe Bisciglia
Gig Harbor HS
Tessa MacDuff
Issaquah HS
Christophe Bisciglia
Gig Harbor HS
(Google corporate trip to Burning Man)
UW CSE Bachelors Student Destinations
(most recent 2 years, ~90% response rate)
Message #4
There’s no field in which it’s more important ot
prepare students for lifelong learning
Bright, well-prepared, well-motivated students
from all across this state get a mind-blowingly
great education at UW
What your students will experience in
UW Computer Science & Engineering
“Capstone Design Courses”
Robot soccer => robot blimps => robot cars
“Software system design”
Computer animation
Ubiquitous computing
“Google-scale computing”
Many, many more
http://www.cs.washington.edu/info/videos/
Message #5
We are in “the opportunity business”