The STEM-ification of Society: A Response to "Universities Have a Computer-Science Problem"

A recent article from The Atlantic caught my attention — something increasingly difficult with my fried dopamine receptors.

The author, Ian Bogost, is a video game designer and academic at Washington University in St. Louis. His experience in university administration, particularly in relation to computer science departments, is equally insightful and troubling. Bogost notes that enrollment in computer science courses at some of America’s most prestigious universities has ballooned. At Stanford and MIT, the number of students who graduate with computer science degrees every year has doubled in the previous decade.

This is something which I experienced at my undergraduate institution — Swarthmore College — as well. Competition for slots in introduction to computer science were doled out in a lottery every year.

Some schools, like Cornell University and MIT, have created colleges of computing which allows students to remain hyper-focused on the field of computer science without having to take courses outside of these colleges. Bogost asserts that universities should require students to take more classes outside of computation and mathematics — that this would make more well-rounded and thoughtful stewards of the field.

Leave a Comment