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One quarter of the students in this class are majoring in software engineering, and all the classmates are from the same hometown.

Everyone knows that computer science is a popular major, but I didn’t expect it to be this popular.

Just now, the news that "Taiyuan University of Technology (211) Software Engineering will recruit 60 classes in 2024, nearly 2k people" was listed on Zhihu's hot list, with a high level of discussion.

"60 classes, nearly 2,000 people". Seeing this enrollment number, netizens were also very surprised. It is too exaggerated to enroll so many students in one major. Not to mention anything else, are there so many teachers? Do all students have to take classes with 120 people?

Do you have to wait in line to find a teacher to help you write your graduation thesis? After all, one teacher has to tutor more than 100 undergraduates on average. Even if you hold an online discussion, you have to consider whether the Tencent conference room will be jammed with so many people and the PPT will be stuck.

Some netizens even used the phrase "completely off the mark" to describe it.

Taiyuan University of Technology is located in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province. It is a national "world-class discipline construction university" and a key construction university of the national "211 Project".

It is reported that the school's undergraduate enrollment plan for 2024 is 8,880, covering 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan), of which 56% are in Shanxi Province.

The School of Software of Taiyuan University of Technology was established in 2010. In 2004, the Ministry of Education approved the establishment of an undergraduate major in software engineering. The school currently has a complete undergraduate and master's training system, with an undergraduate major in software engineering, and has the right to confer master's degrees in the first-level discipline of software engineering. In 2021, the software engineering major was approved as a first-class undergraduate major in Shanxi Province. Up to now, the school has a total of 69 faculty and staff, 5,439 undergraduate students, and 117 graduate students. The teacher-student ratio is 1:78, which can be said to be very exaggerated.

According to the latest version of the application guide, the main courses of Taiyuan University of Technology's software engineering major include: object-oriented programming, data structures and algorithms, computer system fundamentals, operating systems, database overview, introduction to software engineering, software design and architecture, software testing technology, software requirements engineering, software project management, etc.

According to accurate information obtained from the official website, the number of students admitted to software engineering at Taiyuan University of Technology this year is actually 1,871 (Shanxi examination area, the original plan was 1,795), the highest score is 578, the lowest is 534, and the average is 546.

When we entered other test areas, it showed that Taiyuan University of Technology did not recruit students from other places.

In comparison, the number of admissions last year was 1,541, and this year's number is more than 300 more than last year.

In addition to the number of students enrolled, the high tuition fee is another focus of discussion. It is understood that the annual tuition fee for this major is 16,000 yuan, which is three times that of other majors.

As the news continued to spread, discussions became extremely heated. To sum up, there are mainly the following viewpoints.

Viewpoint 1: The computer industry is saturated, and people are not allowed to leave it alone. Are graduates unemployed?

When applying for admission, the decisive factors that parents and candidates consider, in addition to the future "prospects" of the major, are the "financial prospects" upon graduation.

However, facing the surge in the number of graduates brought about by the expansion of university enrollment, the rate of graduates receiving offers is also declining. The number of college graduates in my country this year is expected to reach 11.79 million, an increase of 210,000 year-on-year. It has set a new record. College students are facing one employment season after another, which is "not the hardest, but only harder."

In the cold winter of employment, in Zhang Xuefeng's live broadcast room, IT majors closely related to computer science are undoubtedly the "hot item" at the top of the recommendation list. According to the "2024 China Undergraduate Employment Report" released by the MyCOS Research Institute in June this year, electronic information majors lead the income rankings, and the top five are information security (7756 yuan), microelectronics science and engineering (7151 yuan), software engineering (7061 yuan), data science and big data technology (7014 yuan), and electronic science and technology (7011 yuan).

Source: http://www.mycos.com.cn/index.php/Index/response/nav/3.html

In contrast, these professional Internet companies have been reporting layoffs. The wind of the "Guangjin Plan" has come from Silicon Valley. No matter whether it is a large, medium or small factory, "35 years old, I got N+1", "After x years of work, I finally graduated", behind these endless posts, everyone has received the same message: the staff of various business lines of the Internet are indeed close to saturation.

Without considering the relatively easy-to-employ majors at present, the difficulty of finding a job in four years will rise rapidly like "inflation". Assuming that the more than 1,800 people admitted to the software engineering major of Taiyuan University of Technology this year enter the job market at the same time, they will also face a narrow path.

Therefore, some netizens even commented:

What is more worrying is that ChatGPT has indeed lowered the threshold for "coders". Every time a large model is released, coding skills are an important part of the demo, and major companies are also actively launching AI agents with excellent coding skills like Devin. At this year's Dubai World Government Summit, Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun even personally stamped the "Programming is useless theory". He said: "In the past 10 or 15 years, almost everyone will tell you that it is vital for children to learn computers and everyone should learn programming. But today, the situation is almost the opposite. Because Nvidia's goal is to create computing technology so that no one needs programming."

Viewpoint 2: The teacher-student ratio is as high as 1:80. Can the teaching quality be guaranteed?

In addition to the problem of not being able to find a job, what worries netizens the most is the teaching quality problem caused by the student-teacher ratio. What's more, the tuition fees of more than 1,800 students are also a considerable amount in a year. Whether the income matches the teaching quality.

For the school, this seemingly "ignoring the consequences and only caring about reaping immediate benefits" approach is not entirely beneficial. Parents' concerns are not without reason: the admission scores for other majors at Taiyuan University of Technology are all above 600 points, while the minimum score for software engineering is only 505 points, which has slipped to the level of B-level undergraduates, which means that the quality of admitted students is greatly reduced.

This worry also extends to the time when these students enter the job market. If the school fails to produce high-quality graduates, once they enter the enterprise, it will increase the business risk for the enterprise. Another possibility is that those graduates with insufficient professional skills will become the first "cannon fodder" eliminated in the cruel job market, which not only aggravates the employment difficulties of students, but also further widens the gap between university education and market demand, falling into a vicious circle.

Viewpoint 3: There are still many schools that have expanded enrollment

Before this post caused so many questions, the picture about applying for the software engineering major at Taiyuan University of Technology was like this:

As the only 211 university in Shanxi Province and one of the only two double first-class universities, Taiyuan University of Technology carries the hopes of countless Shanxi parents and the future of Shanxi candidates. In order to protect local candidates, many universities will reserve more places for local students in popular majors.

In addition to Taiyuan University of Technology, Henan University and Nanyang Normal University also have similar expansion plans.

In this regard, many netizens with Shanxi IP addresses have come out to support Taiyuan University of Technology.

There are also current students who have come forward to tell us that relatively high tuition fees are a common phenomenon across the country, and the teaching quality is endorsed by the state. Most importantly, for "natives", spending relatively high tuition fees to obtain a "211 title" and a good major (these two are undoubtedly the most important elements on a resume) can only be said to be a great bargain. How can it be considered an unprofitable deal?

What do you think about this? Feel free to leave a message in the comment section.

Reference link: https://www.zhihu.com/question/663179975