DARPA States Geek Shortage is National Security Risk - Funding Opportunity

There is an interesting article in Wired.com's Danger Room regarding a shortage of geeks in the US.  The key point is that:

"fewer American kids are growing up to be bona fide computer geeks. And that poses a serious security risk for the country, according to the Defense Department."

There is a pointer in the article for a funding opportunity that universities and colleges should check out:

DARPA-RA-10-03 Computer Science - Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (CS-STEM) Education Research Announcement (RA) for Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

 

Below is from the above document:

 

The United States has entered into a significant national decline in the number of college graduates with STEM degrees. This downward trend is an issue of national importance as it affects our capacity to maintain a technological lead in critical skills and disciplines related to CS-STEM. Our ability to compete in the increasingly internationalized stage will be hindered without college graduates with the ability to understand and innovate cutting edge technologies in the decades to come.

The downward trend in college graduates with STEM majors is particularly pronounced in Computer Science (CS). While computers and internet connectivity become daily fixtures in the lives of Americans, we are steadily losing the engineering talent to project these systems. According to the Computer Research Association, there were 43% fewer graduates and 45% fewer CS degree enrollments in 2006/2007 than in 2003/20041.

In addition, our systems are becoming more complex, requiring more people with the software engineering talent to manage and maintain them. Finding the right people with increasingly specialized talent is becoming more difficult and will continue to add risk to a wide range of DoD systems that include software development.

Recent studies conducted by DARPA revealed that public perception is a critical issue. Study participants believed that the “dot-com bust” and “international outsourcing” have led to fewer computer science jobs. In fact, the opposite is true: the U.S. Department of Labor lists “Computer Software Engineers, Applications” as the fourth fastest growing occupation in the country in November 20072. Verbal reports from industry partners, as well as the presence of constant job openings, indicate industry is having difficulty finding software engineering talent to develop and maintain their software systems.