I am now a sophomore here at Iowa State, and in my time here, I have noticed the increased need for a computer-literate generation. I don’t mean knowing how to create excel spreadsheets and knowing how to fix a computer with a virus, I mean the tough stuff like knowledge of using multiple operating systems, how to code in a few languages, and how to really fix a computer, rather than patching it up to last a little longer.

I also think it’s a necessity in today’s computer age to know what all the numbers and stats about your computer really mean; when I say my computer has 2 gigabytes of RAM, I want the person I’m talking with to recognize what that means, down to the fact that RAM stands for Random Access Memory. I am just now taking the first batch of computer classes in college and this stuff is insanely easy. I could have, and I should have, learned this in high school so that when I got to college, I could learn more of the hard coding.

At my small high school in northern Iowa, almost all the electives were taught by two teachers. They were industrial classes, which are extremely important in northern Iowa, where a lot of the kids end up owning and working on farms or in other industrial careers.

But, for many others, we could have been in the computer lab learning what each component is in a computer, how to disassemble a computer, and how to reassemble the computer. We could have also been learning the basics of coding languages. I am now in the 9th week of college courses and I haven’t learned anything that I couldn’t have understood as a sophomore in high school. I am learning how to code in HTML, which is what most web pages are coded in, and I’m also learning how to code C++, which is one of the most basic and intuitive languages to learn.

I could have been learning this in high school, rather than in college, where I’m paying upwards of $3,000 per semester in tuition, and that’s on the low end. I think that we need to start teaching our high school students the basics of computer science to get ahead in today’s technological economy. Computer-related jobs are rising in demand much faster than many other careers and if we were introducing these classes to our high school students, we would be introducing them to a career that is very well-paid and will always be in demand.

I think that by offering computer science classes in high school, we can really set our kids up for success. Fifty percent of recent college graduates are under-employed, and I think that if we get more students in computer-related fields, that number would be sure to drop. I urge you to go to code.org and read more into this issue. I think it’s a way we can fix some problems we, as a nation, face globally.