The Computing Research Association (CRA) is working on the release of its Annual Taulbee Survey of Phd Granting educational institutions. CRA has released the current data on undergraduate enrollment. They find that for the first time since 2000, the number of computer science majors has gone up slightly. While the numbers are still disturbingly low (7,915 in 2007 versus close to 16,000 in 2000), this slight increase is gaining attention in the press as a potential signal that the worst is over for CS enrollment. There is no word yet on what percentage of these undergraduates are women.
An open question is whether changes in the computer science curriculum at some institutions can be linked to the increase. At the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing, we are seeing an increasing percentage of students who come from multidisciplinary programs (10% of our participants in 2007), combining computer science with other fields such as bioinformatics, human computer interaction, computational biology, symbolic systems, and information systems management. Such new programs include Georgia Tech’s Multidisciplinary Robotics PhD program, the long standing MIT Media Lab, and Stanford University’s d.School .