2024-08-06
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In the past decade, universities have been recruiting large numbers of students for computer science majors, and this year's recruitment is even more exaggerated. Yesterday, the entry "2024 Taiyuan University of Technology (211) Software Engineering recruits 60 classes, nearly 2k people?" on Zhihu's hot search list directly pushed the current employment market situation of Chinese programmers to the center of public opinion.
According to the official website of Taiyuan University of Technology, the school plans to enroll 1,795 students in software engineering in 2024, and actually admitted 1,871. One netizen commented, "It is recommended to change the name to Taiyuan Software Training School."
It is understood that this year, more than one university across the country has doubled the number of software engineering students, and the tuition fees are not cheap.
The total number of software engineering students enrolled in four universities in Shanxi Province, including Taiyuan University of Technology, is nearly 6,000.
Seven universities in Henan Province are also expanding their software engineering majors, including Henan University, Henan Normal University, Henan University of Technology, Nanyang Normal University, Henan University of Finance and Economics, Zhengzhou University, and Zhengzhou University of Light Industry. In addition, a Henan netizen revealed that the enrollment plan for software engineering majors in Henan Province this year is close to 15,000.
Among them, two are normal universities, and one also recruits liberal arts students and sets up different software engineering research directions for them. According to the official website of Henan University of Finance and Economics, the school subdivides the software engineering major into 7 directions in its 2024 general undergraduate professional enrollment plan, including the first and second batches of undergraduates. Among them, AI engineers, Web development, embedded development, and mobile Internet also allow liberal arts candidates to apply.
In addition, the fact that the tuition fees for software engineering are much higher than those for most other majors has also been hotly debated. According to public information, the tuition fees for software engineering majors in various universities across the country are more than 10,000 yuan per academic year, with Taiyuan University of Technology charging 16,000 yuan and Henan University of Finance and Economics charging up to 17,500 yuan.
So, for students who choose to major in software engineering, can the high tuition fees, which are much higher than those of their peers in other industries, bring them a bright future?
After this news came out, in addition to the basic information covered by the expansion of software engineering majors such as the number of students and tuition fees, what people talked about and worried about the most was the future teaching quality and employment prospects of the major.
According to reports, the School of Software of Taiyuan University of Technology was established in 2010 and recruits undergraduate students majoring in software engineering in Shanxi Province. In 2021, it was approved as a first-class undergraduate professional construction site in Shanxi Province. It currently has the right to confer academic master's degrees in the first-level discipline of "software engineering" and the right to confer professional master's degrees in "software engineering". As of April 2024, the school has a total of 69 faculty and staff, 5,439 undergraduate students, 117 graduate students, and a teacher-student ratio of 1:78.
Combined with the difference between this year's and previous enrollment plans, if the number of teachers in the college remains unchanged, the teacher-student ratio of the East-West Software Engineering major at Taiyuan University of Technology this year will exceed 1:85. However, in July this year, the Human Resources Department of Taiyuan University of Technology issued a notice for the open recruitment of teachers at the School of Software. But it is worth mentioning that even school management personnel with a master's degree or above meet the recruitment requirements.
At the same time, many netizens have raised the issue of employment pressure. Will too many software engineering students make the industry environment more competitive? Will the qualification threshold for employment be set higher in the future? Some netizens believe that "in order to fix this bug four years later, all companies will definitely stick to 985." After all, the number of software engineering students in many universities combined is only 2,000.
Some people also believe that this is a blessing for some Chinese candidates. After all, the expansion of software engineering majors in universities in Shanxi and Henan, including Taiyuan University of Technology, has undoubtedly provided more candidates in their provinces with the opportunity to enter 211 universities with low scores. Taking Taiyuan University of Technology as an example, the score line for software engineering majors this year is 534 points, which is several tens of points lower than the first batch of similar majors in undergraduate A.
There are also netizens in other provinces who support this approach, and they express envy while approving it, saying that "no matter how difficult it is to find a job in computer science, it is much better than a number of arts and engineering majors, even if it is a civil service position."
Regarding the pros and cons of expanding the software engineering major, many netizens have different opinions. It should be noted that not all universities in China allow students to change their majors. Taiyuan University of Technology is one of them. If students want to change their majors later, they may need to retake the college entrance examination and repeat the exam. But can the current domestic employment environment accept so many software engineering graduates?
Since 2020, there has been a flood of computer science graduates entering the job market every year. There have been many discussions about the employment rate of programmers. The focus of the question is: Is the number of programmers in China saturated or excessive? Will programmers be unemployed in large numbers in the future? Some people say, "The golden age of this industry is over, and it will only go downhill in the future."
In fact, in the past decade, due to the high salary of the programmer profession, not only have more and more students applied for computer majors, but there have also been elite talents from all walks of life who have crossed over to the IT industry, including people from 985 science and engineering majors and students from various IT training institutions.
Many people believe that there is definitely an oversupply of programmers in China now, and the reason is that the Internet industry is on the decline. An Internet industry practitioner said, "At present, Internet companies have no new business forms, and the existing businesses are in a state of stock competition, so there is not much demand for programmers. Even if people are needed, they will first eliminate and optimize internally before recruiting."
In recent years, there has indeed been a wave of layoffs in major Internet companies. However, according to the "Digital Economy Employment Impact Research Report" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in 2021, my country's digital talent gap in 2020 was close to 11 million, and with the advancement of digitalization across the industry, the talent demand gap continues to expand; according to the "Industrial Digital Talent Research and Development Report (2023)" released by Renrui Talent in 2023, my country's current overall gap in digital comprehensive talents is about 25 million to 30 million. The talent shortage problem has become an important factor restricting the development of the digital economy.
Some netizens also expressed their dissenting opinions:
How can the programmer market in China be saturated? You can only say that the Internet industry has lost its wild growth model. New businesses and investors are very rational now, which means that there will not be a large number of new jobs. Therefore, it is very difficult for programmers to get a share of the Internet industry. Of course, it’s not so bad for those who have been in this industry for many years, after all, they still have some connections and resources, but it’s not very friendly to programmers who have just worked for one to two years. Of course, programmers in China are not limited to the Internet industry, so please don’t misunderstand and deny the value of a profession just because an industry is in a downturn.
Many people also believe that the living space of those who study computer science but have average skills is being severely squeezed. "No matter what industry, the surplus is basically low-end, and the high-end is never enough."
Therefore, from the current situation, although companies may cut costs during economic downturns and the demand for programmers may decline, the programmer group may still have a relatively broad space for development. With the continuous advancement of technology and the continuous changes in the market, programmers also need to constantly learn new skills and adapt to industry changes in order to maintain their competitiveness.
In the past year, the pace of technological change has accelerated rapidly. Cloud technology, machine learning, and artificial intelligence have profoundly affected all walks of life. At the end of last year, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels made a lot of suggestions to developers for the current technology industry and predicted the development of future IT education methods.
First of all, I believe that anyone with a good basic education is capable of mastering computer technology, even if the major is different.
Even if you studied art in school, you can still become a computer programmer. Because it doesn't matter what you studied, what matters is that your education has enabled you to master the ability to learn, know how to set more ambitious goals, how to summarize information, remember it in your mind, think critically, and so on. I recently visited a preparatory school in Berlin, Germany, which has taken in 2 million refugees, most of whom are from the Middle East. They need to find new jobs in Germany. In fact, most of them have received a good education, but they just need to learn German related to their major. There are still 80,000 vacant development positions in Germany, and I believe they are fully qualified.
So the mission of that preparatory school is to help refugees who have already mastered some English to learn technology. If even they can do it, then those of you who have received university education can definitely do it within a year. In addition, there is no need to be too superstitious about higher education. I have seen countless times that young people who have just graduated from school need at least a year to really adapt to the job. At that time, they were not programmers at all. It took a year of experience for them to understand the overall goal and participate in the project contribution.
Yes, a computer science degree from college is not enough to make a valuable team member. They don't know how to write code, how to contribute value to the team, and how to serve others. The ones who perform better are usually those who have done small projects in school. So I prefer to choose young people who have participated in open source projects because they already understand what collaboration is all about.
In actual work, I emphasize that "collaboration" is the core of daily work. Especially for young developers, it is very important to understand the scale of the project. A project is not just a bunch of files, but a complete system. AI systems can help us integrate this knowledge and solve the ever-changing complexity of the project.
In fact, most of our daily work can be summarized as "collaboration". Especially for young developers, the first thing is to have a clear understanding of the size of the project. Do you see how big the original project is? Can you feel its weight? What lies before us is not just a file, but a complete system. For example, if I hire a young person to manage Amazon Web Services' S3 service, the code he has accumulated over the past decade will be as high as hundreds of thousands of lines.
The engineers who first developed the project may have left, so how can we learn about the project? Now we can build AI systems and integrate this knowledge. What's even better is that some senior developers may lack patience and often ask questions to irritate them. For example, if you ask the same question five times in a row, the other party may curse. But AI will not be like this. You can ask the same question over and over again and use it as a tool to help you learn.
When it comes to hiring, I care more about whether the candidate has the learning ability developed in college rather than just a specific language or technology.
After all, the school will not teach you the specific language used by Amazon Web Services, but the abilities given to you will allow you to always keep an open mind and quickly master new languages.
Let's talk about CIOs and engineers who manage large technology projects. They need to keep up with the pace of technological development and maintain lifelong learning. Technology changes all the time, and you can never expect that what you learn in the first year after graduation will be enough for your whole life.
The education sector is rapidly adapting to technological innovation and undergoing a series of changes. Traditional higher education is no longer the only learning path, and industry-led skills training programs are emerging. This shift will make lifelong learning a norm, benefiting both individuals and businesses.
The rise of degree apprenticeships, which allow employers to provide specialized training while apprentices earn an income, is further evidence of this trend. More and more companies are also investing in skills education on a large scale, combining learning with real work.
This model draws on the traditional apprenticeship model for skilled workers, where individuals continuously upgrade their skill levels through real-world learning on the job. To be clear, this concept is not without precedent: when you think of skilled workers like electricians, welders, and carpenters, most of their skills were not acquired in a classroom. They progressed from trainee to apprentice to journeyman and perhaps even journeyman. On-the-job learning is continuous, and there are clear pathways to upgrading skills. This approach to lifelong education—learning and curiosity—bodes well for both individuals and businesses.
The core of education is no longer just the major studied, but more importantly whether the educational experience has cultivated the ability to learn, the ability to set ambitious goals, the ability to integrate information, and critical thinking. These abilities are essential for successfully adapting to the ever-changing work environment. Taking Germany as an example, preparatory schools have created opportunities for well-educated refugees to integrate into the workplace more easily by helping them learn technology. Technical learning does not depend on previous professional background, but on the individual's willingness and ability to learn.
In the future, we will see the rise of industry-led educational opportunities that will gradually surpass traditional university degrees. This is not a replacement for the existing education system, but a new alternative. In the field of science and technology, academic learning will still be crucial, but in other industries, the rapid development of technology will promote industry-oriented training and education.
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