That's when they began preparing extensive data around computer science enrollment projections, how many additional students they might be able to enroll over how many years in which programs, working out the operating costs of ramping up quickly.
Nor is Ms. Tessler particularly encouraged by the increase in computer science enrollment last year.
Mr. Zweben estimates that many colleges are encountering declines of 10 to 30percentt, although he says the drop-off is not uniform across campuses, as was the surge in computer science enrollment in the late 90's.
Yet despite recent surges in college-level computer science enrollment, just 16percentt of bachelor's degrees in computer science were awarded to women in 2015.
Over the last two years, the overheated job market has pushed up computer science enrollment, but to nowhere near the level that analysts say will be necessary to meet the industry's needs.
"Undergraduate computer science enrollment at Stanford had been on a rollercoaster, rising high with the dotcom boom in the late 90s and then plummeting," said Sahami, who is a former research scientist at Google and now the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow in Undergraduate Education.
Stanford University was also able to boost female computer science enrollment from 12.5percentt in 2008 to 21percentt in 2013, through efforts to make the program more widely inclusive.
Computer science enrollment continues to expand rapidly, and with this influx of students come new challenges as well as new opportunities.
Given the lack of growth in computer science enrollment at U.K. universities, "hopefully these findings will serve as a call to employers to remain open-minded to non-traditional educational backgrounds or to offer scholarships or apprenticeships to potential junior candidates," it says.
Computer science enrollment is declining just as bioinformatics has made the need for computer programming experience in biology undeniable.
