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Education | DOI: 10.1145/2933418 Lawrence M. Fisher
Booming Enrollments
The Computing Research Association works to quantify the extent,
and causes, of a jump in undergraduate computer science enrollments.

mation on the enrollment, production, and employment of Ph.D.’s in computer science and computer engineering (CE), also providing salary and demographic data for CS and CE faculty in North America), and sources from the annual ACM NDC Study of Non-Doctoral Granting Departments in Computing. In addition to surveying institutions, data was collected from students via a Fall 2015 student survey by the CRA Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP).

The slide deck for the preliminary results of these surveys may be seen at

AT THE COMPUTING Re- search Association (CRA) Snowbird conference in 2014, Jim Kurose (then at University of Massachu-setts-Amherst) and Ed Lazowska ( University of Washington) presented a session on burgeoning enrollments in U.S. computing courses. In response, CRA’s Board formed a committee to further study enrollment-related issues, chaired by CRA board member Tracy Camp.

A panel on the upsurge in undergraduate computer science (CS) enrollments in the U.S. took place at the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Technical Symposium last year (SIGCSE 2015); shortly thereafter, the full committee went to work with the goal of measuring, assessing, and better understanding enrollment trends and their impact, with a special focus on diversity.

Explained Susan B. Davidson, CRA
Board Chair and a member of the
CRA enrollments committee, “Over
the past few years, computing depart-
ments across the country have faced
huge increases in course enrollments.
To understand the extent and nature
of these ‘booming enrollments,’ CRA
has undertaken a study that surveys
both CRA-member doctoral depart-
ments as well as ACM non-doctoral de-
partments.”
In addition to attempting to identify
the extent of the “boom” in CS enroll-
ments, Davison said, “We are trying to
understand which students are mak-
ing up this boom: CS majors? Students
from other fields seeking to minor in
CS? Students in other fields taking a
course or two in CS? And why are they
doing so; what is driving them?”
The study also aims to determine
how academic departments are coping
with such a boom, Davidson said. “Are
they restricting enrollments and, if so,
what is the impact on the diversity of
students enrolled? Are they increasing
class sizes and, if so, what is the im-
pact on quality of instruction? Are they
increasing faculty sizes? What other
strategies are being used?”
The hope, Davidson said, “is that
answers to these questions will give
university administrators and comput-
ing departments insights into the ex-
tent of the boom, and enable them to
develop better strategies to managing
booming enrollments.”
The study includes data acquired
from several sources, including sourc-
es involved in the annual CRA Taulbee
survey (the principal source of infor-
From Booming Enrollments Survey Data preliminary results presentation, Computing
Research Association.
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