Increasing Traffic of Computer Science Majors
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This usnews article speaks about the increasing popularity of Computer Science in colleges across the US. The employment of Computer Science majors is expected to grow by 19% by year 2020, given its recent rise in popularity. CS has become a popular major amongst many students because there is greater job security and more employment opportunities in the field.
I believe this correlates with the Networks concepts of traffic and best responses. The reason for many students choosing CS it is that it seems to open doors to better job opportunities and job security than other majors. So, choosing CS is their best response compared to other fields. This scenario can be represented as a graph of nodes where nodes represent the different levels of success (or employment opportunities) a person can achieve and the edges represented the path they must follow to reach the next node of greater success. According to the article, it is more likely for a person to move from one node to the next node (which has greater success) using the Computer Science path in college than through other fields. So instead of using a path with greater speed (less time) as in a traffic graph, each person wishes to use the path with the most employment opportunities and job security. The similarity between the traffic graph and this graph is that in both cases people choose their best responses. Below is an example of the graph I just defined.
The usnews article implies that here A-B-C-D-F would represent a computer science major’s path and A-E-F would represent any other major’s path. Since the first path gives more success and is the best response of a person, more people are likely to choose the first path of becoming a Computer Science major. Hence, the number of CS majors is increasing a lot on college campuses.