According to a recent AP report, the current number of students receiving a degree in computer science is 50% less than what it was five years ago, leading many to fear that there is a talent shortage in the making.

As the baby boomer population continues to age and begin retirement, there is a concern about who is going to fill all the empty chairs and take over with the skills and knowledge necessary to keep pumping out the high-quality games we’ve come to expect from our biggest and best developers and publishers. However, that may simply not be the case as it appears that there are going to be far too few new bodies coming down the labor pipeline.

Further exacerbating things is the fact that many companies don’t feel that those who are majoring in computer science are actually developing the proper skills. Several major publishers have voiced concerns recently that graduates don’t know how to program for consoles, and the company has to waste a lot of time and money training on the job. For their part, the companies are trying to offer internships to get students into the environment, but they still feel a lot of work needs to be done in the curriculum department.

As someone who graduated with two worthless degrees and now writes about video games instead of making them, I begin to wish I had majored in computer science so I could take one of these multitudes of open positions. So let this be a lesson to you kids: if you haven’t picked a major yet, pick game design since there don’t seem to be enough people doing it.

- Via Joystiq