Abstract
The number of student enrolments in computer-related courses remains a serious concern worldwide with far reaching consequences. This paper reports on an extensive survey about career choice and associated motivational factors amongst new students, only some of whom intend to major in computer-related courses, at two South African universities. The data were analyzed using some components of Social Cognitive Career Theory, namely external influences, self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations. The research suggests the need for new strategies for marketing computer-related courses and the avenues through which they are marketed. This can to some extent be achieved by studying strategies used by other (non-computer) university courses, and their professional bodies. However, there are also distinct differences, related to self-efficacy and career outcomes, between the computer majors and the ‘other’ group and these need to be explored further in order to find strategies that work well for this group. It is not entirely clear what the underlying reasons are for these differences but it is noteworthy that the perceived importance of “Interest in the career field” when choosing a career remains very high for both groups of students.
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Notes
This covers the full spectrum of Information and Communication Technology courses including Computer Science, Information Science and Information Systems.
Four hundred and eleven (411) students indicated that they intended taking a computer-related subject up to final year (a computer major) but some of these were taking a degree that would be considered to be non-computer related. Further analyses are in terms of the larger group, that is, computer majors, rather than by degree.
The positivity score = ∑ini where i represents the score (values from 1 to 6) and ni is the count of responses selecting option i across all questions in the survey. Choice of option zero was not taken into account as these are ignored in the analyses.
NCM (High) > CM(High) means that the % of High scores for NCM is greater than the % of High scores for CM. Similarly NCM (Low) > CM(Low) means that the % of Low scores for NCM is greater than the % of Low scores for CM.
The ranks assigned to the CM and NCM groups do not cover exactly the same range of percentages. For example, rank 1 for NCM has high values between 86.3% and 85% whereas rank 1 for CM includes high values from 75 to 76.3%. Hence rankings for the two groups may be similar while their high values vary considerably.
In this case options were grouped as small differences were considered immaterial (see Table 7).
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Alexander, P.M., Holmner, M., Lotriet, H.H. et al. Factors Affecting Career Choice: Comparison Between Students from Computer and Other Disciplines. J Sci Educ Technol 20, 300–315 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-010-9254-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-010-9254-3