What are we doing to improve recruitment and retention in information technology majors?

Excluding a few years surrounding the so called "dot.com boom" (i.e., 1998-2000) when people were pursuing IT majors as a likely way of making money, enrollments in information technology majors of students have continually dropped every year since 2001 (Babbitt, 2001; Frauenheim, 2004), suggesting that there is a general lack of interest in pursuing IT related majors among U.S. students (Vegso, 2005). On the other hand, there is growing evidence that it is critical for all organizations and countries to have qualified people who will work efficiently with current and emerging information technologies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor provides employment projections with information about the labor market for the U.S. as a whole for 10 years in the future.

According to the latest projections presented by the BLS, computer related occupations is one of the three groups of occupations that is projected to grow the fastest and to add more workers than other groups and account for three-quarters of the job growth until 2012 (Hecker, 2004). Based on this factual information, numerous studies conducted in higher education and other education levels have studied the general lack of interest, and have developed different research and academic programs to understand what can be done to increase the interest in young students to pursue information technology related majors The present panel is composed by academics who have been working in related issues for many years and some of them working in research projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this panel, they will discuss recent research findings and academic initiatives as well as provide practical suggestions on how to improve recruitment and retention in IT related majors based on their work.