24 years later, computer science is still the most popular major?!

I looked up this year's popular majors and employment conditions online, and the results did not surprise me. For many provinces, computer science and technology is still the most popular major!

2024 Popular Majors Ranking

For example, the ranking of application popularity in Anhui Province is:

Please note that the data comes from the Internet. The popularity rankings of majors in different data sources and provinces are also different. For example, the following figure is the national application popularity statistics, and computer science is also in the top three:

In the field of engineering, computer science and technology and software engineering still dominate:

All these show that computer science will still be a top major in 2024, and more and more students will join the computer science camp.

Why am I not surprised by this ranking? Putting aside my subjective personal speculation, let me take you to the "2024 College Graduate Employment Data Report" released by Liepin.

2024 College Graduate Employment Report

1) First of all, the number of college graduates in recent years. It can be seen that the number of college graduates is increasing every year, and the potential employment competition pressure will be greater.

2) There are more and more dimensions for corporate talent evaluation

The survey results show that when selecting graduates, companies examine and evaluate graduates based on many factors, among which the graduates' relevant internship experience and social practice are the primary factors, followed by the direct relevance of the graduates' majors to the positions , and the third is the graduates' future potential and plasticity.

Through this, we can feel that practical experience such as internships is the core competitiveness in finding a job nowadays; and certain types of positions are in great demand, so if you choose the major that is most relevant to it, you will have more opportunities.

3) The proportion of graduates who are confused about their job search goals has increased slightly

The survey results show that 63.7% of the 2024 college graduates have clear job-seeking goals. Compared with the 2023 graduates, the proportion of graduates who do not have clear job-seeking goals or are confused has slightly increased, from 33.94% to 36.26%. In comparison, more students with clear job-seeking goals are among the graduates of double first-class universities, science and engineering graduates, and master and doctoral graduates.

This actually reveals a lot of information. Everyone is generally more confused and anxious in this environment, but the higher the academic qualifications of students, the broader their cognition and the clearer their goals, which all help them increase their chances of finding a job.

4) Most popular graduate majors

Judging from the distribution of majors of graduates that employers actively initiate discussions with, graduates majoring in business administration, computer science and technology, accounting, human resources, and marketing are more favored by employers in the first quarter of 2024. Students majoring in computer science are still very popular.

5) Graduates pay more attention to corporate prospects and personal development

The survey results show that salary and benefits, stability and security, and commuting distance are the three key factors that graduates consider when choosing a job. Compared with the graduates of 2023 and 2024, they are more concerned about corporate prospects and personal development, and the importance of factors such as the city where they work and proximity to their hometown are declining.

Sure enough, everyone still pursues high salaries. In comparison, "free time" is not a key factor in graduates' career choices.

6) The Internet industry’s demand for graduates is far ahead

The IT/Internet/gaming industry has a strong demand for graduates and has been at the top of the list of industries in recent years , releasing 20% ​​- 25% of the demand for graduate positions. As shown in the figure:

Although the proportion of IT/Internet/gaming industry positions has decreased in 2022 and 2023 (which is what everyone calls the cold winter), compared with other job industries, it can really be said to be far ahead. Computer science students have a very high match with these industries.

OK, that’s all for this report. The full report is more than 30 pages long.

Why are computers still popular?

Through the above report, I think it is not difficult to understand why computer majors are still popular.

First, the demand from enterprises is very high. Although there are many voices on the Internet saying that "the computer industry is declining", "you can't find a job if you study computer science", "don't apply for a computer major", but now it is not only computer-related majors that are "competitive", but the competition in all walks of life is increasing. Looking at the comments and discussions in other industries can confirm this.

Moreover, computer science majors are more likely to get high salaries, which is a key factor for graduates to choose a career. A few days ago, I saw a computer science junior girl sharing that her 985 psychology classmates went through a lot of trouble to get offers below 10k after graduation, but she taught herself computer science and got more than one offer of 15k+. Apart from individual cases, we can also find that computer-related majors basically dominate the top 10 graduates' salaries:

Another point that I personally think is very important is that the learning threshold for computer science is low. Unlike some majors that require the support of various equipment, laboratories, and learning conditions, learning computer science only requires a computer. In addition, there are a lot of free resources on the Internet. If you don’t understand by self-study, there are also various paid trainings. There are many choices. As long as you invest time, there will be no bottleneck in learning.

In addition to computer science, medicine, English, and law are also popular majors, but in comparison, I think computer science is a more suitable major for ordinary college students. The purpose of most people going to college is to find a good job, to be self-sufficient, and to buy something for their parents, isn't that wonderful? For ordinary college students with low academic qualifications, computer science and medicine are two popular choices, but the older you are, the more popular you are in medicine, while the younger you are, the more likely you are to study computer science, and you will have the opportunity to get a high salary right after graduation. Then again, do you prefer to work in a hospital or in an office environment?

As for some friends saying that programmers will be replaced by AI in the future? Think about it carefully. If this is really the case in the future, programmers will not be the only industry that can be replaced by AI.

Besides, who says that if you choose computer science, you can only be a programmer? The possibility of studying computer science is very high, which will be discussed below.

How to improve employment competitiveness?

As mentioned earlier, competition in almost all majors and positions is becoming increasingly fierce, so how to improve employment competitiveness is something that college students need to focus on.

In fact, the answer is very simple. You can think about it first, how to level up quickly when playing games? That is to complete the main tasks in order, right? If you have done a strategy, you know what props are needed for each task and what monsters to kill to get high experience and level up quickly, so you can prepare in advance.

From the employment report, I saw that more than 30% of the students were confused about employment, which I felt was a pity. Many students know how to make strategies when playing games, but why don’t they make strategies for employment, which is a personal matter?

Only with a clear goal can you know where to run, walk in a straight line, and reach your goal faster.

But think about it from another perspective, as long as you are lucky enough to read this article and have clearly defined your job-seeking goals, you have already surpassed more than 30% of your classmates.

After clarifying the goals, we just try our best to meet the needs of the companies, isn’t that right?

From the previous employment report, we can also see that companies are most concerned about graduates' internship experience and social practice. In other words, during college, we should try to accumulate internship experience related to the target position. For computer majors, it is easy to have practical experience. Even if you can't find an internship, you can do your own projects, launch them online and open source them to increase your project experience. To be honest, if you aim to be a programmer or R&D position, you basically can't find a job if you don't have a project on your resume.

Learn Computer Science! = Become a Programmer

Many people think that if they choose a computer-related major, they will become programmers and write code after graduation (some even think that studying computer science means repairing computers).

Don’t think like that! Computer science is a field with great potential for wide application and interdisciplinary cooperation. It can intersect with many other disciplines to form new research directions and application fields, and being a programmer and writing code is just one of the ways.

for example:

• Computer x New Energy: Energy Management, Energy Storage Optimization, Autonomous Driving
• Computer x Finance: Risk Management, Market Simulation, Algorithmic Trading
• Computer x Biology: Genetic analysis, biological data statistics
• Computer x Medicine: Intelligent Diagnosis, Health Data Analysis, Electronic Medical Records
• Computer x Humanities: Text Analysis, Literature Research and Management
• Computer x Geography: Spatial data analysis, geospatial modeling, environmental monitoring
• Computer x Art: Digital content creation, special effects production, audio and video algorithms

In addition, there are also many friends who study computer science and go into positions such as product managers and project managers. In short, computer knowledge is very practical in this era, and the possibilities of choosing a computer major are endless.

at last

Finally, I want to say that you should be cautious when choosing a major. No matter how popular a major is, you still have to like it to learn it well, otherwise it will be very painful.

Once you have made a choice, don't regret it, be determined to achieve your goal, and run towards it as soon as possible!