Why IS: understanding the factors influencing undergraduate students' intention to choose IS major in business

  • Authors:
  • Wei Zhang

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Mass Boston, Boston, MA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on computer personnel research: Forty four years of computer personnel research: achievements, challenges & the future
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Over the last a few years, undergraduate students seem increasingly less enthusiasm about IS major, and the enrollments to IS major in business schools, especially in the U.S. business schools, have been suffering. The continuing losses in IS enrollments have generated a widespread concern among IS professors, school administrators, and practitioners. Despite many speculations on what led to the down turn, there has been surprisingly little research that systematically investigates this issue. In this paper, I propose to use the theory of reasoned action (TRA) to understand students' intention to choose IS major. Factors that could influence students' choices are identified from previous research and categorized according to the theoretical framework offered by TRA. Hopefully, the insights generated from the study can help design new recruiting strategies to turn around the situation.