Improving IS Enrollment Choices: The Role of Social Support

1. INTRODUCTION Over the last decade, enrollment in information systems (IS) and related programs has plummeted worldwide and still remains low despite positive job market predictions. In the United States, student enrollment has fallen by as much as 75 percent since 2000 (Street et al., 2008). Many universities in Europe have also reported similar sharp drops in enrollments both at the undergraduate and graduate levels (Panko, 2008; Leeuwen and Tanca, 2008). At the same time, employment projections indicate that career opportunities in the field are strong and the demand for information technology (IT) professionals continues to increase (Lomerson and Pollacia, 2006; Panko, 2008; Leeuwen and Tanca, 2008). For example, in the United States, IS field is expected to add about 1.25 million new jobs for the period 2010-2018. This implies that the employment growth in IS will be about 50% greater than the average job growth rate in other fields (Laudon, 2011). Even though anecdotal evidence suggests that enrollments have started to increase in the last couple years, estimations are that in the near future, there will not be enough IS graduates to fulfill the increasing demand (Lynch, 2007). Given the significant negative consequences of low enrollments on both academia and industry (such as program/department closures, faculty layoffs, tenure failures, inability to fulfill the demands of companies that are desperately seeking qualified IS graduates), the IS community has focused its efforts on implementing different mechanisms to increase enrollments (Dick et al., 2007; Firth, Lawrence, and Looney, 2008; Galletta, 2007; Kuchler, McLeod, and Simkin, 2009; Looney and Akbulut, 2007; Street et al., 2008). Some of these initiatives focus on marketing and promotional efforts to build awareness about IS degrees and careers and to change the image of the profession by busting the prevailing myths. Other initiatives emphasize revamping university curriculum to make IS programs and courses more attractive and valuable to today's students. Even though these initiatives appear to be potentially profitable approaches aimed at curtailing declining enrollments, there is very limited empirical evidence to prove whether implementing these mechanisms would actually result in an increase in the number of students pursuing IS degrees and careers. Therefore, the different approaches that are recommended in the literature must be confirmed and validated through qualitative and quantitative studies. Moreover, existing recommendations are largely based on how educators perceive the enrollment issue from a macro perspective. In order to facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the situation, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which students are compelled to seek IS degrees from their perspective. This study will address this important research gap by developing and testing a research framework that could be used to explain how and why a key environmental support factor that has been repeatedly mentioned in the literature, social support, influences major selection in the IS discipline from students' perspective. Environmental supports refer to the environmental factors (e.g., financial support, availability of facilities, social support, existence of role models, etc.) that people perceive as having the potential to facilitate their efforts to implement a particular educational or occupational goal (Lent, Brown, and Brenner, 2002). In terms of social support, students who perceive high levels of support from the people who are important to them, such as family, friends, advisors, etc. might become more confident in their abilities to pursue an IS major, expect to receive valued rewards from majoring in IS, develop greater interest in the IS discipline, and acquire aspirations to choose IS as their primary field of study (Akbulut and Looney, 2007). A review of the relevant literature shows that no study to date has empirically linked perceived social support to student academic and career choices in the IS field. …