Band 7+: fewer students are studying science at school and university, favouring more computer based subjects instead. Is this a positive or negative development? What are the reasons for this?

More students are now choosing to study computer-based subjects, instead of studying science at school and university. In my point of view, the situation which computer-based subjects becoming more popular among students contains both positive and negative aspects.

There are two main factors contributing to a positive development for this situation. The first factor is that computers are compulsory in our daily lives. Many public places like offices or IT rooms in most schools contain a lot of computers, which are often used daily by employees and students. We do some of our leisure activities, and most of our work on computers. The second factor is that computers are more accessible that it was 20 years ago. There were very few computers in the 1990s and could only be seen in either a government’s office or in a special room in an office. Thus, many people did not know what a computer was and only knew about it later in their life as opposed to children living in the 2010s, when computers were in most houses and public working places.

On the contrary, more students choosing computer-based subjects than studying science at school and university could lead to an imbalanced amount of students between these fields. As a result, some students who graduated in computer-based subjects could be unemployed with hardly anybody doing jobs that relate to science. Eventually, when we need to find a cure for diseases that are either new or came back after 100 years of absence, those small amount of scientists could be very delayed in finding the solutions for them. We need a balanced amount of people who study different education subjects so that there will always be new generations of scientists being produced.

In conclusion, given that computers are slowly becoming a need for everyone, it is not surprising that computer-based subjects are being favored over science. However, it is essential that we should try to keep a balanced amount of students between science and computer-based subjects and to ensure that we produce new generations of scientists.