The University of California at Berkeley is starting a new college of computer and data science, in what it expects might become a nationwide model for coping with the field’s surging and often unmet demand. UC Berkeley, like many US campuses, has been overpowered by the rapid rise in interest in computing in recent years, with huge increases in graduate numbers without sufficient staff and infrastructure to cope with demand.

California’s flagship public institution sees creation of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society — UC Berkeley’s first new college in more than 50 years — as a way of helping the campus cope by consolidating the deluge of demand and then better allocating it.

A key step will be tackling the data-science element via partnerships with faculty in other fields, says John DeNero, associate dean of undergraduate studies at the new computing college. These scholars might not teach computer programming, but have enough expertise in the computer-related aspects of their own specialities to teach courses about data usage, he explains. “Data science fundamentally is more scalable on the Berkeley campus because it involves faculty from all over, instead of mostly faculty from one department,” adds DeNero.

Overall, the challenge facing UC Berkeley and US universities looks imposing. The average number of students in computer science fields nationwide has increased by more than six times its 2006 level, according to the latest annual compilation by the Computing Research Association (CRA).

UC Berkeley has nearly 2,000 graduates a year in computer science and data science, up from just 200 a decade ago, and now representing almost a quarter of the university’s total undergraduate degrees. Data science accounts for close to half of those 2,000 graduates, after holding almost no share just five years ago.

CRA says that since this nationwide enrolment surge began 20 years ago, the number of US teaching faculty in computer science fields had grown at only about half the rate of the growth in the number of students, and the number of tenure-track faculty has grown by only one-tenth the rate of enrolment growth. “The undergraduate population continues to grow, but there’s a smaller growth in teaching resources,” says Elizabeth Bizot, a senior research associate at CRA.

UC Berkeley sets norms often followed at other institutions, and consolidation of its computer-science fields into a new college is not the only step it is taking. After much internal debate, says DeNero, UC Berkeley is also changing the two main ways that students get admitted as computer-science majors.

Those accepted into computer science as part of their admission to the university will now be guaranteed a space, starting this academic year, ending a system by which they had to meet a grade-point-average threshold during a set of initial courses. And for students who try to switch into the computer-science major after their acceptance to the university, the opportunity will be allowed only in the sophomore year, and the decision will be based on a “holistic” assessment rather than a pure GPA-driven metric, says Dr. DeNero.

Even with the changes at UC Berkeley, some people will be disappointed. “There will still be students who would like to major in computer science but can’t,” Dr. DeNero says, “because there is a capacity challenge.”

GRE’s declining popularity

The GRE (Graduate Record Examination), the mostly commonly used standardised graduate-school admissions test, is being dramatically scaled back in size and content as US universities overwhelmingly move away from its use. The Covid pandemic accelerated an already active movement by higher education away from standardised tests because of concerns about cost, their racial and demographic biases and their general failure to accurately predict student success, with use of the once ubiquitous GRE falling by at least half since 2018.

Many other countries have also abandoned the GRE, but at a slower rate and with the notable exception of India, where growth is being driven by a heavy embrace from business schools.

The test, which dates back to 1936, will be shortened to last only about two hours, with the drastic reduction or removal of several sections, according to its maker, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the world’s largest private non-profit educational assessment company.

The price of the test — $220 (Rs.18,021) in the US and most parts of the world — will not be changed, says ETS. “The changes we’re making to the GRE test have been prioritised based on test-taker feedback,” says Alberto Acereda, the company’s associate vice-president for higher education, in a written response to questions about the decision. “We know that conversations are taking place at institutions across the country about the value of the GRE test and its role in graduate admissions,” Dr. Acereda acknowledges.

ETS’ decision regarding the GRE follows years of difficulties for SAT and ACT, the two main standardised tests for undergraduate admissions. More than 1,800 US colleges and universities have either stopped accepting SAT or ACT scores, or made their submissions optional.

However the SAT, unlike GRE is described by its maker as a unique and invaluable tool for national and global comparisons of students in such areas as verbal and quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing. “GRE scores provide the only standard, objective measure by which academic decision-makers can evaluate applicants with different backgrounds and experiences to determine their preparedness for graduate-level study,” says Dr. Acereda, a former professor of Latin American literature at Arizona State University.

And while ETS’ own figures show a 50 percent drop in GRE test use, a study published last year by the Science journal, reviewing application requirements for doctoral programmes in the sciences at 50 top-ranked US universities, found only 3 percent of the schools required GRE general test scores in 2022, down from 84 percent in 2018.