Thursday, February 05, 2009

Enrollments, 2009

CS-124, Algorithms and Data Structures

2008 : 36 students
2009: 83 students

That 83 will probably deviate by a few after the last add/drops shake out, but it's a somewhat surprising doubling+ of the class size. That's what we get for introducing a new, dynamic instructor for the intro CS course last year, who seems to have boosted CS enrollments across the board (taking effect this year). I was expecting 60-65.

By the way, 2008 was the lowest enrollment I've had, by far, although the previous few years had been in the 40's. My biggest year, back in the boom, was 90.

I'm double-teaching this semester, and my graduate "Algorithms at the End of the Wire" class has 23, which is pretty standard. (I think the biggest year it had more than 40... and given this enrollment boom, that's what I'll expect NEXT time I offer it.) It might lose one or two but that should hold steady. I admit I'm pleased to look around the room and see a lot of the top undergraduates I know taking the course (which was one of the reasons I arranged to double-teach this semester; I wanted them in the class before they all go and graduate...)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or maybe since Wall street screwed the pooch, people are starting to have second thoughts about careers in econ/finance...

Luke said...

I don't think that has much to do with it... I was a Harvard undergrad myself, and very few people with strong math/physics/CS backgrounds intended to go into finance. In fact I might say the opposite: finance has become highly quantitative, and some of the most attractive jobs require math/physics/CS degrees!