The computational linguistics program at SDSU is well-suited for those with a background in either linguistics or computer science. It designed to be completed in 2 years, though that time line is best suited to someone with some background in either linguistics or computer science.

With the growth of the internet and the increasing importance of speech applications in remote delivery of services, natural language processing (NLP), technology that helps computers process and understand language, has become increasingly important in commercial and government applications, and computational linguists are in high demand in both the private and government sectors, as well as in education.

Application areas in which NLP has made an impact include internet and telephone services, document, image, and information retrieval, intelligence analysis, machine translation, and database interfaces.

Being well-grounded in two disciplines, linguistics and computer science, computational linguists are also in demand in colleges and universities to teach courses in both linguistics and computer science.