Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)
I don&#x27;t think CS is a high social status field <i>at all</i>. You&#x27;re deluding yourselves. Outside of our peers also in the industry nobody cares that you&#x27;re a staff engineer at Google. Absolutely nobody. They&#x27;ll assume you&#x27;re doing IT work like the characters in the IT Crowd if they even bother to think about it at all and haven&#x27;t already walked away.<p>Here&#x27;s a concrete example to make it really obvious.<p>How many computer scientists are there in the Lords in the UK? I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s any. There are nearly 800 lawyers, doctors, religious ministers, biologists, physicist, mathematicians, philosophers, business people, politicians, authors, composers. A computer scientist who defines the field for half a century is lucky to get knight bachelor.<p>Look at similar establishment institutions elsewhere. Are there any computer scientists in the Senate in the US? Are computer scientists often invited to lead major public bodies? How many computer scientists become deans of universities compared to other fields?<p>The social status of computer scientists is <i>zero</i>.