For many international students choosing the United States, computer science and data science are the holy grail: great jobs, high salaries, and a pathway to immigration.
As a result, those who already code in their undergraduate studies go on to graduate school, while non-CS majors are joining a "coding switch" frenzy.
Whether studying business, law, media, civil engineering, or even anthropology, everyone wants to "switch to coding with one click" and achieve "coding freedom." It's not hard to imagine how fierce the competition in CS & DS becomes each application cycle.
American universities have clearly noticed this trend: some have added new programs, while others have established entirely new schools—clearly showing they are taking it very seriously!
UCB Establishes Its First New College in Over 50 Years
After three years of planning, on May 18 of this year, the University of California Board of Regents voted to approve the proposal to establish the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) at UC Berkeley—the university's first new college in over five decades.
CDSS aims to cultivate diverse talent in data science, computing, and statistics, and will develop, implement, and share high-quality, ethically-oriented, and accessible curricula.
At the same time, CDSS will leverage UC Berkeley's excellence across campus to create new fields, applications, and solutions to societal problems through groundbreaking multidisciplinary research.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol T. Christ and CDSS Associate Provost Jennifer Chayes jointly presented the proposal at the UC Board of Regents committee meeting.
Jennifer Chayes stated that CDSS provides UC Berkeley with opportunities to innovate and incubate new research areas at the intersection of computing, data science, and other data-intensive fields, and will lead to exciting breakthroughs.
Data science and computer science have consistently been among the five most popular majors at UC Berkeley, and many students from other majors take courses in these fields as well.
As a new college, CDSS has already forged partnerships on and off campus, including sharing the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences with the College of Engineering, the Social Sciences Data Lab (D-Lab) with the Division of Social Sciences, and the Computational Precision Health program with UCSF, to meet the growing demand from students for computing and data science education and from employers for talent with these skills.
