About 20 business leaders and higher education officials met Monday at Green Valley Ranch for a roundtable discussion about the future direction of higher education in Nevada. Chancellor Jim Rogers, left, and Richard Carpenter, president of the Community College of Southern Nevada, heard business leaders talk about the need for more tech savvy graduates. Photo by Gary Thompson.

If enrollment in computer science classes is any indicator, the young American aspiration to become a chic computer geek -- an iconic image from the Internet boom -- may soon go the way of greasers, Deadheads and grunge rockers.

The number of students interested in computer science or information technology is quickly diminishing across the country. And UNLV is no exception. There, the number of students enrolled in computer science programs has dropped from a high of 351 full-time students in 2001 to 281 students in fall 2004, the most recent numbers available.

Although the number of UNLV computer science degrees awarded annually has remained stable over that period, the institution is not producing enough graduates to satiate business needs in Nevada.

At a roundtable breakfast meeting with Chancellor Jim Rogers at Green Valley Ranch on Monday, local business leaders complained one of their biggest needs from Nevada higher education is technology savvy grads.

"We're losing opportunities to recruit technology companies," said Bob Cooper, economic development manager for Henderson.

Cooper said there isn't enough emphasis on technology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and that companies trying to expand are recruiting out of state.

Trained employees in telecommunications, programming, quality control and networking are all needed, said Glenn Christenson, Station Casinos chief financial officer. In particular, the gaming industry needs help designing ways to test new technology, he said.

"We can't get the technology out on the floor fast enough," he said. "It's a real issue."

The reason for the diminishing interest: Students don't think they can get jobs in the wake of the dot-com bust of the late 1990s, and a perception that IT jobs are outsourced these days to foreigners who will work for less, said John Minor, director of the School of Computer Science at UNLV. He did not attend the meeting.

"People aren't going into it because they're being scared off," he said.

Rogers questioned whether private industry needs to partner with higher education and fund more technology programs, but Minor noted his school has quality equipment, enough faculty and, when the new science and technology building opens, enough space. The school needs more students, he said.

He noted that aside from computer science, there are other majors at UNLV, such as management information systems, that also train students to work in information technology.

UNLV awarded 70 bachelor's degrees in management information systems last year, compared to 80 degrees the year before.

Chris Stephenson, executive director of the Computer Science Teachers Association, based in New York City, agreed with Minor's explanation regarding the reluctance to enter the field, and said parents are encouraging their children not to do so.

According to the Computing Research Association, the percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating that they would major in computer science declined by more than 60 percent between the fall 2000 and fall 2004. About 1 percent of incoming freshmen declared an interest in the major in 2005, compared to a peak of about 4 percent in 1999 and 2000.

Stephenson stressed students need to get interested in computers early on and funding needs to be provided for computer science programs in high school.

Last year, UNLV handed out 44 undergraduate degrees in computer science, and 18 master's degrees in computer science. Those numbers have wavered little during the last five years, but they've still grown significantly from a decade ago, when there were 27 bachelor's and 13 master's degrees awarded.

The doctoral program is about 10 years old. "We have had three graduates in those 10 years," Minor said. "There's just not a lot of interest in this day in age for Ph.ds."