To the Editor:
An article in last week's Herald ("Compute this: CS majors flatline nationwide," Mar. 13) accurately reports computer science enrollments, but is misleading in that it does not include the numbers for joint CS concentrations. Students concentrating in Math/CS, Applied-Math/CS, CS/Economics and Computational Biology have to complete requirements that essentially include those of an AB in CS. Thus we consider these students to be CS concentrators. If these numbers are included, the data that are plotted in the article should be replaced with the following numbers:
Year Concentrations completed1998 611999 592000 792001 772002 942003 932004 672005 522006 472007 41
There definitely has been a drop in CS enrollments, but it has not been as steep as the numbers presented in the article indicate.
Furthermore, it's not mentioned in the article is that we expect a 15 percent increase in concentrations completed this year.
Thomas DoeppnerAssociate Professor of Computer Science (Research), Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Computer ScienceMarch 14
