Week 5 Writing Assignment

Dear Professor Brooks,

Although the amount of jobs in the fields of CS and IT are on the rise, there has been a drop in Americans pursuing education in such careers. According to the article from Computerworld, "the percentage of college freshmen listing computer science as their probable major fell 70% between 2000 and 2004." The site claims that this has to do with a "nerdy" image that is associated with anything having to do with computers. Perhaps that was the case twenty years ago, but not today. Many, if not most, young Americans use computers on a daily basis, therefore it would be hard to argue that computers are just for nerds. The social stigmas that computers once had are long gone, so what could cause this decrease in CS related majors? The answer is outsourcing.

Outsourcing just might be the scariest word to any recent American graduate that majored in anything related to CS. Why would a big corporation hire an American when a foreign person could complete the exact same job for half the salary? It's simple economics. The bottom line is money, and corporations can make more of it by outsourcing. I don't really see a reason to argue for or against such a practice, as there are both pros and cons depending on which side of the debate you are on. However, there will come a time when all of the American jobs have gone to foreign workers, leaving US citizens unemployed and broke. The foreign employees will eventually demand the luxuries that their American counterparts once enjoyed. Because Americans won't have had jobs for so long, they would have no means to pursue an education in cutting edge fields such as IT. This would leave the big corporations in quite a pickle, and they would eventually have to pay their foreign workers the same as they did their American workers. Either that, or some sort of global minimum wage will be established.

As an English writing major, I feel pretty secure that my future career is safe from outsourcing. Say a big time American publishing company wants someone to write a short story about being in high school. More than likely, this job will go to an American writer, as he or she probably went through the same experiences that most of the potential readers did. Surely American movie studios, record labels, publishing companies, etc., are more apt to hire writers (or whatever) that can relate to a large portion of their demographic, which I assume would be Americans. In the same way, it is unlikely that I would ever be hired to write a screenplay for a Bollywood studio because I do not have a deep understanding of Indian culture. I still can't figure out why the characters break out in song every so often during those movies. The best I could ever hope to do is parody the genre, but I doubt that people in India would want to see a movie that pokes fun at their culture. The American entertainment market is pretty hard to break into, whether it be film, music, or literature. Most of the people who do succeed don't even make that much money, and there really is no job security. So forget outsourcing, I'm more worried about computers being programed to write creatively. When that happens, it's just a matter of time before they brainwash the human race into slavery.

Love,
James