Severe fall in computer science students is not just a concern but an embarrassment - the State can no longer point to tech graduate numbers in its recruitment drives, writes Karlin Lillington

All the expected voices are expressing concern about the extraordinary 50 per cent drop off in the number of students opting to study computer science.

The fall in leaving certificate students expressing a first choice intention to follow studies in computer science is both unexpectedly abrupt and gob-smackingly large - plummeting from 10,000 last year to only 5,000 this year. That's a hefty number - about the equivalent of the population of a town the size of Bandon.

Those wringing their hands include miscellaneous ministers and politicians, the IDA, and various other Government and industry bodies.

And of course, there's great concern among technology companies, which rely on a steady flow of future employees.

This is especially true of the multinationals such as Intel and IBM, which employ thousands here and need those graduates.

But many smaller companies were enticed to locate here in part because the Republic has, per capita, a high number of graduates in engineering, science and business.

This fact has been a major plank of the IDA's recruitment pitch when seeking inward investment from multinationals - come to us and we will fill your employee needs with a gushing fountain of bright young graduates.

Thus the severe fall in computer science first preferences is not just a concern but also an embarrassment.

The State can hardly go forth proclaiming its tech graduate numbers when incoming students have opted so dramatically to cold-shoulder this particular area of study.

Most commentators attribute the fall-off to the very visible crash of technology companies in the economic downturn.

No industry sector fell as quickly or as sharply. The bloodbath in the internet and pure e-commerce areas in particular must have been a jolt to students toying with the idea of a computing career.

They would be of prime Net-using age, a generation marinated in computer games, PlayStations, computerised special effects, e-mail and Net-surfing. A career of getting paid to work on the Web, and maybe retiring by age 35, must have seemed ideal.

Yeah, right. That's just the problem - in recent years many of those opting for computing as a first choice saw it not as a career but a lifestyle. You don't lose 5,000 hearts and minds if the hearts and minds were engaged with their area of study rather than their wallets and bank accounts.

Just look at teaching first preferences, in contrast. Those rose this year despite the constant turmoil within the ranks of teachers over pay, benchmarking, and performance. And teachers have a bit of an image problem at the moment. Yet teaching as a career choice clearly captivates many students. And good for them.

Similarly, enrolment in arts degrees hasn't halved, even though an Irish history or English literature degree doesn't exactly present its holder with a banquet of obvious career choices.

No one spends years getting an arts degree because it flings open career doors. Oh, no. Yet university lecture halls are packed with students that want to read Patrick Kavanagh's poetry and study the consequences of the Act of Union. And that's just as it should be.

So why do we attribute the drop in computer science students to the downturn in the economy when there's no similar correlation in other areas of study?

Anyone truly interested in computing - or with a strong sense of how central the technology industry is to the world economy now and into the future - would hardly have flinched at the economic slump that's causing job losses at the moment.

The source of the drop-off lies much, much deeper than the fluctuations of Wall Street. It is embedded in an educational system where successive governments have shown little willingness to make science and engineering and computing an integral, cherished part of the curriculum.

Where, especially at the very youngest levels, children get little exposure to computers unless their parents can afford to have one at home.

Where most schools are "online" in only the minimalist sense - perhaps a solitary computer in the school library, or at the back of a classroom. Where teachers are given little or no training in how to bring computers into daily classroom life.

The Government sells the State to the multinationals as a place that reveres education, where students get superb teaching at the primary and secondary levels before being whisked off to university.

Yet the truth is that the State's science programme (and I mean science in the broadest sense, including computer science, engineering and mathematics) has been shown repeatedly to be woefully inadequate.

The recent report by the Task Force on the Physical Sciences highlighted the fall-off in student interest in the sciences. As its chairman, Dr Daniel O'Hare, noted, "unless there is a major national effort to reverse the fall-off, any other money we spend on attracting overseas investment will go largely to waste".

And of course, this report is not the first. This worrying trend for Irish students to opt for anything but a science degree has popped up for discussion every year that the previous government was in office, and weak schools programmes in sciences were repeatedly pinpointed as being at the very heart of the problem.

It is not enough to simply emphasise the likelihood of a good job coming out of a particular area of study - and both the Government and the technology industry itself are at fault for making this shallow pitch to Leaving Cert students.

Not many students follow a course entirely on this basis, and those that sidled into computing and engineering for this reason alone were easy to spot during the boom - they were the insufferable, arrogant graduates who believed technology companies should engage in a bidding war for their "talents".

The one upside of the downturn, says every company executive I've spoken to, is that this crowd has been cleared out of the job market. And to no great loss - having no passion whatsoever for their chosen career, these posers would never be technology's thinkers, dreamers or entrepreneurs - much less find any satisfaction in their work.

So while the fall-off in first preference computing applications is a great worry, it is no big surprise. Right now the State is simply reaping what it has sown for many, many years.

You can't simply hothouse good computing, engineering and science graduates into being. They need to be exposed to and engaged with these areas of study from an early age.

Karlin's Technoculture column: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/