Guri Sohi, chairman of the Computer Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has talked candidly about the declining numbers of his department since the height of the dotcom era in 2000. At that point, the UW Computer Science Department granted about 170 bachelor’s degrees annually, and now is down below 80 per year. It also once granted 100 master’s degrees annually, but that has declined to about 50 per year.
Meanwhile, PhDs have remained stable at roughly 20 per year, but there are some ominous national trends. Roughly 75 percent of all doctorate degrees granted nationally in electrical engineering are going to non-U.S. citizens.
UW-Madison’s experience mirrors the national trends, and several efforts are underway to reverse it. One Wisconsin effort is Powered Up, a consortium of businesses and schools in Dane County working to increase awareness in information technology careers. The group was formed in 1999, and is now engaged in talks with the Information Technology Association of Wisconsin to expand statewide.