While most first-year college students in a new study had positive feelings about computing and computer-related majors and jobs, gender and socioeconomic status seemed to play a role in whether parents shaped those perceptions.

Universities may want to reach out to parents, particularly parents of female students and ones from lower-income households, to boost support of computer majors, the new research suggests.

“There’s still a gender difference, which is a bit of a disappointment,” says Jeffrey Stone, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State Lehigh Valley and an affiliate of the Institute for CyberScience.

“Males were significantly more likely to agree that their parents stressed that computing skills were important. Females were less likely to agree that parents were stressing the importance of computer skills.”

Stone suggests that universities should take a broader approach when it comes to whom they target for outreach and recruitment programs for computer majors. He adds that universities already offer programs to recruit and encourage high school students to consider computer majors, but they may want to design outreach programs about computers specifically for parents.

High school counselors seem to be doing a good job at encouraging computer majors, Stone says. About 47 percent of the students agreed that high school teachers and guidance counselors stressed the importance of computing skills, he adds.

Failing to promote computer majors among high school students, not only hurts the students’ chances of landing high-paying jobs, but it could negatively affect the computer industry itself. According to Stone, computer industry experts expect that there will be more jobs than qualified computer and technology applicants in the future, which could stall the rapid growth of one of the United States’ leading industries.

Read the full article about girls with computer skills by Matt Swayne at Futurity.