As the biggest tech companies have shown slower growth in the third quarter of 2022 and giants like Meta, Amazon and Twitter dismissed thousands of workers, the air and the internet filled with anxiety about a potentially shrinking tech job market.
But the media played it down US Bureau of Labor Statistics Forecasts that total employment in IT and information technology occupations is projected to grow by 15% from 2021 to 2031, says Elizabeth Mynattdean of Northeastern's Khoury College of Computer Scienceswhich is much faster than the average growth rate across all industries.
The number of jobs for occupations such as computer and information scientists, information security analysts, and web developers and digital designers is expected to increase by more than 20%.
Established at Northeastern in 1982 as one of the first dedicated computer science colleges in the US, Khoury College has remained a national leader in computer science education and research because of its innovative approach, which includes experiential education through partnerships and combined interdisciplinary specialties.
Approximately 4,000 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students currently attend the college at multiple campuses on the East and West coasts of the US, in Vancouver, Canada, and online.
Undergraduate degree programs at the college range from computer science to cybersecurity and data science, but a strong majority—58% of students—choose one of more than 40 combined majors. Last year, combined majors nearly surpassed co-ops as the top reason incoming students chose Khoury College, he says Benjamin Hescottsenior associate dean for academic programs and student experience.
News@Northeastern sat down with Mynatt and Hescott to discuss the state of the hiring market for computer science majors and how the college is keeping up with the industry and preparing its students for career success.
Are you worried that the computer science job market will shrink due to the current state of the economy and recent layoffs, hiring freezes, and planned hiring slowdowns at the biggest tech companies?
Mynatt: When we started seeing the news as well, the first thing I did was call Ben to ask, “What are we seeing in our cooperatives? What do we see in our placements?”
But the reassuring news was “we're doing well”. The opportunities are there.
There have been many high-profile layoffs and hiring freezes at the classic big tech – Amazon, Facebook, Google – but the market itself will continue to grow.
This growth continues to be seen in sectors such as healthcare, fintech, design, media, communications and agriculture. Almost every major sector in the US economy is hiring more and more people who can harness computing power for what they want to accomplish.
Compared to virtually all of our competitors, Northeastern is in a much stronger position because we have over 40 combined interdisciplinary disciplines and more are in the pipeline. These combined majors integrate computer science, data science, or cybersecurity with other disciplines, from business to design to biology or finance and more. As a result, our students are incredibly well prepared for where the growth will be.
How does Khoury College monitor what is happening in the job market and industry to keep its programs relevant?
Mynatt: We always listen to ours [existing] co-operative employers or new co-operative employers.
We have industry partners who can say, “Oh, do the students know X?” or 'Wouldn't it be great if they knew Y?' We are in constant discussions and the students are also in these discussions. There are no surprises after graduation about what they really need to be successful. There is constant business intelligence coming our way.
Hescott: About 50% of our students actually find jobs outside of the NUworks career portal and other databases. Khoury also uses the Handshake platform quite extensively, and when our students start a relationship with an industry partner, we develop the relationship from there. Thus, students feed the pipeline with their interests.
Who are some of the partners that the co-op program has at Khoury College?
Hescott: We have everything from small startups to large corporations. We have an ongoing relationship with places like HubSpot and Wayfair. We are still placing students on Facebook and Amazon. Amazon is almost always one of our number one employers.
Mynatt: We see students going into fintech, healthcare (with Kaiser being one of the top health systems hiring), game design at the big studios.
Students are really smart. They will use their two partners to look at both sides of their combination. They can go and work in a pharmaceutical liquid lab in their first co-op and then follow that up with a software development position for pharmaceutical development. They're really taking this dual collaboration opportunity as a way to understand the breadth of what jobs in this field could look like.
Do you help graduating students find their first job?
Hescott: About 85% of our students receive return offers, meaning they go to a co-op and later receive a full-time job offer from that employer. Our industry partners hire North East students, want North East students.
Mynatt: We also work with employers who want to hire more of our students, especially because of the diversity of our students. I had meetings with Goldman Sachs and Amazon Web Services. They want even more of our students to be successful through this recruitment process. And they have created on-campus experiences and support, as well as mentoring for students, so that they have more students in the pipeline to be considered for permanent employment.
Mr. Mynatt, as head of the college, what is your philosophy on computer science education?
Mynatt: The mission [statement] for our college it is “Computer Science for All”. The combined large pieces are one of the really important pieces to make this project. We describe it as accessible and actionable education. It's accessible in terms of making it engaging, making it relevant, fostering a sense of belonging, but also being actionable—giving students the tools to be successful in their careers.
I also work to ensure that our research aligns with this mission. How can we go the extra mile in our research efforts so that everyone benefits socially from innovation in computer science?
Computer science has a reputation of being only about the Googles and Facebooks and Amazons of the world, or only about billionaires and the top 1% or the top 5%. And there's so much more that we do in our research that creates equitable outcomes for, say, neurodiverse people. minority groups that are discriminated against on online platforms; or different patient populations in the healthcare system.
Less than a year ago, we started the idea of a professional oath for our graduates. It emphasizes the importance of social responsibility as part of becoming a computer scientist. And there was such a huge positive response to that idea.
How does Northeastern's global presence benefit your students?
Mynatt: When we introduce local context and local partners, students can better understand how computer science impacts the local community and the world.
For example, in Vancouver, we have a huge focus on First Nation and Indigenous people. We're able to come up with innovations that computer scientists wouldn't otherwise think of that can be very important to this community. Only when you go beyond the surface will you discover new questions about sustainable agriculture and questions about education and language processing, for example.
At the Oakland campus, the focus will be much more on racial and social equity. I'm really excited that some of our partners will actually be community groups.
In London, we place a particular emphasis on network science. This is because London is a European thought leader, requiring cutting-edge tools to better understand everything from global pandemics to economic fluctuations.
These are three very different examples. But they provide real, tangible, meaningful challenges for our students to work on as part of their thesis and in their co-ops. And it makes all the difference in terms of the knowledge they gather and the impact they will have on the world.
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