Hunter College, like most colleges and universities is facing unprecedented demand for CS. It's the hot major. Being a public college, we have an obligation to provide the best education possible to as many students as we can in our locality. This means we can't just put a GPA requirement or other cap on the major and we can't do things I've heard "elite" schools do like essentially making applicants apply to the major direct from HS.

This had led to the usual problems - more large lectures, fewer electives offered, challenges for space etc.. This is nothing unique to Hunter.

Another problem, though is that Hunter offers a traditional CS major - similar to the majority of institutions across the USA and the traditional CS major is not really servicing many of our students.

Unlike many other majors, the students in CS by and large want to work in Tech. Unfortunately, most CS programs aren't set up for this. Rather they are set up with the assumption that all CS majors want to go on to PhD programs which is most certainly not the case. Sure, CS students learn programming and some other career useful things but they also learn a lot that most ever use. Theory is important but not as much as many have to study. Far too much proof, How about calc 2 and sometimes 3? Sure these topics can be useful and even important to some but I've talked to countless tech people in the business world ranging from entry level programmers to top executives and everyone in between and by and large the CS major is poorly set up for the CS career. What's more, the only career that many CS majors only somewhat prepares students for is programming and even then just to a certain extent and there are many non-programming heavy tech opportunities out there waiting for our students.

I think many in academia acknowledge this as well. I've spoken to some high up people at some of our most prestigious institutions and, at least, privately, they've agreed with me on this.

As it stands, not all Hunter CS students can get through the major and for those that do, they're just as well set up for career as graduates of the "elite" programs but truth be told, it's not the institutions that are setting them up well.

Hunter's trying to do something about this. At recent department meetings there's been discussion of creating a new major - something that maybe dumps the unnecessary stuff and replaces it with material that is both more relevant to the students career while also providing additional support in areas that the students need. The challenge is to also keep the academic rigor at the same time and not just become a jobs program for the flavor of the month.

There was a lot of talk asking "what do other colleges do and what are they planning?" but I didn't like that talk. Who cares what other colleges are doing? Who says they're doing it right. Every institution has a unique situation. Hunter - a liberal arts college in the heart of NYC which is part of the CUNY system should be figuring out what's best for itself, not what may or may not work for others.

I suggested talking to the tech community, particularly in NYC - what jobs are out there now and what will be out there in the next decade and how can we structure a program to inform students as to the possibilities and to prepare them on their paths?

Fortunately, I've got tons of former students in all areas of tech and we've been talking for the past few weeks and trying to figure this out.

Originally, some of the Hunter faculty were considering things like network admin / sys admin type roles and thought to explore there but that's not what I've been getting from my network.

A big obvious one was software engineering. This could be great for those meant to follow the programming path but not for tech minded people who don't want to spend their days in code. Project management kept coming up but there were more than a few concerns that to be a great PM you really have to have some real world experience so a PM major wouldn't be serving students.

Another thing that came up was the idea that developers in many cases do have more control over their infrastructure which would lead to requiring knowledge in administering their own systems, some network wherewithal as well as some knowledge of container technologies and the like.

There was also a lot of talk about which current major classes were useful and which really weren't and there was discussion of a lot of other things like software architecture (something never taught but much needed), technology integration, and things like soft skills (presentations/writing) ethics and so on.

I'm also glad "the family" got the idea that we wanted to teach academic classes and not just how to use tools. I was heartened this morning when one of my former students recalled:

Back in the 90s when I was in your systems class I remember you saying that you weren't teaching us Intel Assembly. We were learning how computers worked and that we were using Intel Assembly as a tool to explore to accomplish that learning

Made me feel good.

All in all, I'm really grateful for my StuyCS Family (or as some say, the StuyCS Mafia) - got all the info I needed from which I think I'll be able to craft a very strong and useful new proposed major. I don't think it'll focus on just one possible career but I think it should get a student ready for a variety of entry level tech jobs including programming related ones. What's more, it will educate them as to the possibilities - something else current majors don't usually do.

Will the CS department like it? Who knows but I'm convinced that it will be a great option for Hunter students if they do.