Stanford University

Computer Science Skills Across China, India, Russia, and the United States

  • Prashant Loyalka,
  • Ou Lydina Liu,
  • Guirong Li,
  • Igor Chirikov,
  • Elena Kardanova,
  • Lin Gu,
  • Guangming Ling,
  • Ningning Yu,
  • Fei Guo,
  • Liping Ma,
  • Shangfeng Hu,
  • Angela Sun Johnson,
  • Ashutosh Bhuradia,
  • Saurabh Khanna,
  • Isak Froumin,
  • Jinghuan Shi,
  • Pradeep Kumar Choudhury,
  • Tara Beteille,
  • Francisco Marmolejo,
  • Namrata Tognatta

We assess and compare computer science skills among final-year computer science undergraduates (seniors) in four major economic and political powers that produce approximately half of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduates in the world. We find that seniors in the United States substantially outperform seniors in China, India, and Russia by 0.76–0.88 SDs and score comparably with seniors in elite institutions in these countries. Seniors in elite institutions in the United States further outperform seniors in elite institutions in China, India, and Russia by ∼0.85 SDs. The skills advantage of the United States is not because it has a large proportion of high-scoring international students. Finally, males score consistently but only moderately higher (0.16–0.41 SDs) than females within all four countries.

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