Name: Is a Computer Science Degree Worth It? | Your Morning
Uploaded: 2025-10-20T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 5 min 20 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Landing a high paying tech job used to be the norm

Gerund

for computer science graduates looking to become software engineers and programmers.

Present continuous

Automation, shifting hiring practices and an oversupply of candidates have created the perfect storm,

leaving many new grads struggling to find their place in the tech world.

For more on this shifting market, we are joined this morning by James O'Brien.

He's a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

So we're hearing stories of computer science students once promised six figure jobs upon graduation.

They are struggling to get offers and when they do, they're about half that amount of money.

So what is going on in the tech job market right now?

So we're seeing something very similar tech market to what we have seen in other fields,

where the entry level jobs that previously were, you know,

they needed people to do work that maybe wasn't the most complicated work or the most difficult.

Those jobs are increasingly being automated and because those jobs are going away,

what we're seeing is we're seeing especially affecting recent graduates,

but we're seeing a decline in the number of entry level positions that are available.

And as AI sort of increases its capabilities,

we're seeing this kind of move up through the job market a little bit as well.

Yeah, let's drill down into some of those numbers.

Since the 2020-2022 tech boom, demand as you mentioned for those entry level developers has slowed.

According to Indeed Canada, tech job vacancies have fallen 21% in five years.

How much further could hiring shrink for recent comps I grads?

Well, I think it depends a little bit on what you think is going to happen with the evolution of the technology we have today.

If you think that it's going to plateau where it is, then things might stay the way they are for a long time.

I personally think that the technology is going to continue to advance.

And we're going to see in computer science something that we see happening in other fields as well,

where the increasingly jobs that were increasingly difficult that required higher levels of skill.

Those jobs are also going to start to get automated by AI.

we're going to see growing unemployment not just in computer science, but probably really across the board.

So as you mentioned, this tough market is not just limited to Silicon Valley or the big tech hubs.

Are computer science graduates starting to feel the squeeze everywhere?

And if so, what's the fix for them? If they can't get in, at entry level, how do they enter at mid level?

Well, you know, that's a very good question.

I do think that it's a problem that's, that's happening sort of not just in the US,

Even in India, for example, you can read articles about the market for fresh graduates that has,  has declined in recent.

And that's one of the reasons why I don't think that this is a problem about jobs migrating to other areas where the cost of labor is less.

It's a, it's really, I think, a question of AI systems automating the jobs away.

The question is how do you, you know, how do you, if you can't get an entry level job,

how do you build up that skill set to get a more senior level position?

That's a very good question and I'm not sure that there's really a clear answer to it right now.

It is the case that if you're graduating and you're, you know, still one of the,

you know, still have a good skill set, there are jobs out there, there's still plenty of CS jobs available.

It's just that before almost everyone was not guaranteed,

but there were lots of positions available and that's what's changing.

The entry level positions, the amount of them is shrinking.

And that then has the implications you mentioned for the pipeline.

We're hearing about this in a couple other fields that it's not so much your field of study anymore,

So Microsoft laid off nearly 15,000 employees between May and July this year.

AI writes at least 20% now of their code.

So what skills then should students be focusing on in the wake of this new tech landscape?

Well, if you're studying computer science, I would encourage students to focus on the higher level concepts.

So you know, when you, when you get a CS degree, you're not just learning how to write code,

you're learning how to think about computer algorithms,

you're learning how to think about the math and the algorithms that define what the computer is going to do.

And that kind of stuff is still in the domain of where humans are better than the AI systems.

And so I would encourage students don't just focus on learning low level skills like how to write code in a particular language,

but instead focus on learning the higher level concepts that are going to be useful one, regardless of what computer language you're using.

But also, if you find yourself in a position where you're using AI to write code or to develop some system.

That higher level knowledge is not what's being replaced today by AI. It's the lower level mechanic.

You know the details of how to write the code, not deciding what the code should be doing in the first place.

Fascinating conversation, a little bit scary, but good information to have.

James O'Brien, professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Is a Computer Science Degree Worth It? | Your Morning

stuff

sort

struggle

figure