Computer Science Degree?

Some of what you'd like to know would probably be cleared up by going to Kent State's site and looking at the courses in the Comp. Sci. department. I think the courses offered in Comp. Sci. depend on what school you're attending. I have seen some schools with Comp. Sci. departments that touch on everything (a course in basic hardware, a course in networking, and so on) but mainly focus on programming. I work with people who also say they had to take math courses, i.e. Calculus. Going to Kent State's Comp. Sci. page would probably also tell you an overview and also the course descriptions would probably give you a better idea of the subject. I would not major in Comp. Sci. thinking about getting a job. Degrees don't really funnel people into particular jobs anymore. Most people I know who studied Comp. Sci. are probably, to most looking on, underemployed, when, in theory, someone with a degree in that ought to be working in programming, software development or software engineering or at some startup company either creating programs/software, debugging new programs or creating/managing sites, etc. I work in network support (help my company's business clients with internet, email and web hosting problems) and did not study Comp. Sci. or anything IT-related in school, but most of the people I work with DID study those things. You don't need a Comp. Sci. degree to do what I do, and these guys know way more than the job calls for but probably would not be able to get a better job, except for the people who have been there several years or the guys who work on the servers, are field technicians or engineers. My last job had some people with Comp. Sci. degrees there, but all we were doing was repairing MacBooks. Again, they were overqualified/underemployed. It's not really about Comp. Sci. so much as it is that work experience matters far more than what you have a degree in. It's just hard to come out of college and get a job in IT or in pretty much any field right now.

In most schools Computer Science is weighted towards programing and lots of it. The thing I always tell people interested in Computer Science is that they need to discover not if computer science is a good major for them but if they are the right person for computer science. Programmers are born and not made. All the computer programming courses in the world will not make you any good at it if it is not your gifting and calling. Many eager CS majors take their first few programming courses and realize that this is not what they expected while others just take to it like a duck to water. If you find yourself struggling you can always switch majors into Info Sys or another IT area that does not require programming. Remember that at most 4 year schools you can change majors out to the end of your second year with very few credits or time lost. Being able to do well at CS has nothing to do with intelligence. Many of the people I know that were not successful in Programming are very successful in other fields. To give you the background - There are several main Computer career categories and associated majors and you need to know these just to get the lay of the land. If this is redundant info that you already know, apologies: Computer Science - A technical degree which usually has a Programming emphasis - people with this major usually are developing application software, web development, embedded code and robotics. Sometimes depending on the college the degree may cover some more general topics as listed under CIS below. Computer Information Systems (CIS) This is a general technical degree. Holders of these degree work in a variety of technical jobs like these: Computer Technician, Service Center Coordinator, Help Desk Staff, Storage Administrator, Network Administrator, Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer, Enterprise Administrator, Active Directory Administrator, Exchange and Messaging Administrator, Backup Administrator, Disaster Recovery Specialist, Database Administrator, Computing Security Specialist, Corporate IT Acquisition Specialist and Data Center Administrator, just to name a few. Computer Engineering - This is a technical engineering and design degree. These degree holders get jobs related to designing and manufacturing computer related hardware. Management Information Systems (MIS) - This is a business degree that prepares non-technically trained people to manage projects, budgets and people. Traditionally, senior IT technical pros would eventually be promoted into management positions after years of technical work. The good news is they understood technical challenges their people were working with but the bad news was that some were great tech people but poor people managers. The idea with the MIS degree is to provide business training that is slanted towards managing IT work. Business Colleges like to offer this degree because management principles change must less frequently that technical info where there is always a new operating system or new programming language. This means they can have the same classes, same books and same course titles year after year. In a technical major the technology changes very fast. I have had both types of managers and the new trend is definitely towards these non-technical managers. A lot of them are showing up in the large company I work for. Best Wishes!