Saturday, January 16, 2010

Geek shortage threatens national security



 The Pentagon's DARPA is worried that we are not producing enough computer geeks to meet national security needs, so they are looking for new ways to attract teens into careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).

An article on Wired.com quotes DARPA as saying, “ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come…. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD [Department of Defense] systems that include software development.”

Wired reports that " computer science enrollment dropped 43 percent between 2003 and 2006."

At AZGS, we've had trouble finding people to work in geoinformatics.   Computer scientists are looking for cutting-edge research projects rather than implementation and standards development.  Geoscientists typically don't get the CS background needed unless they happen to have a personal interest in it and often that seems to be discouraged by academic programs that push more core courses.

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