The future of computer science?

On of the common laments about offshore outsourcing is that it is causing a decline of interest in computer science and related engineering tasks. Via Slashdot, I see that Steve Lohr had an interesting piece in the New York Times earlier this week that provides some support for this lament — but the market is doing interesting things to the study of computers:

Jamika Burge is heading back to Virginia Tech this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science, but her research is spiced with anthropology, sociology, psychology, psycholinguistics – as well as observing cranky couples trade barbs in computer instant messages. “It’s so not programming,” Ms. Burge said. “If I had to sit down and code all day, I never would have continued. This is not traditional computer science.” For students like Ms. Burge, expanding their expertise beyond computer programming is crucial to future job security as advances in the Internet and low-cost computers make it easier to shift some technology jobs to nations with well-educated engineers and lower wages, like India and China. “If you have only technical knowledge, you are vulnerable,” said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of “The Future of Work” (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). “But if you can combine business or scientific knowledge with technical savvy, there are a lot of opportunities. And it’s a lot harder to move that kind of work offshore.”

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, in India, the returns to offshoring are declining because of rising wages, according to CNN’s Parija Bhatnagar:

A new report from market research firm Gartner, Inc. warns that a labor crunch and rising wages could erode as much as 45 percent of India’s market share by 2007. Indian industry watchers acknowledge that the country’s outsourcing industry — its golden goose of the moment — is indeed facing a “serious” problem. In an interview with CNN/Money from New Delhi, Kiran Karnick, president of the National Association of Software and Service companies (NASSCOM), said he’s concerned that these challenges could stymie India’s strong double-digit growth in outsourcing services…. India can’t afford to rest on its laurels, said Sujay Chohan, one of the authors of the Gartner report and vice president and research director of offshore business process outsourcing with Gartner in New Delhi. Unless India devises a long-term roadmap to improve infrastructure and consistently grow its skilled labor force, he said India will see some of its offshore BPO clients shift business elsewhere. “Although India’s infrastructure is improving, it is not keeping pace with the rapid growth of the industry,” the report said.

See Ed Frauenheim’s reaction on CNET’s Workplace Blog