High school computer science education paves the way for higher education: the Israeli case

Abstract

The gap between enrollments in higher education computing programs and the high-tech industry’s demands is widely reported, and is especially prominent for women. Increasing the availability of computer science education in high school is one of the strategies suggested in order to address this gap. We look at the connection between exposure to computer science in high school and pursuing computing in higher education. We also examine the gender gap, in the context of high school computer science education. We show that in Israel, students who took the high-level computer science matriculation exam were more likely to pursue computing in higher education. Regarding the issue of gender, we will show that, in general, in Israel the difference between males and females who take computer science in high school is relatively small, and a larger, though still not very large difference exists only for the highest exam level. In addition, exposing females to high-level computer science in high school has more relative impact on pursuing higher education in computing.

Keywords:

• high school
• pipeline
• gender

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Maria Klawe for asking the right question, which motivated this research.

Funding

This work was supported by The Research Authority of the Open University of Israel [grant number 501452].

Notes

1. We use the term “computing” for all computer-related subjects in higher education, such as computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, information systems, etc. Computer science is used in the context of our high school program or when specifically referring to the discipline of computer science.

2. Each of the scientific subjects taken in high school comes in at least two versions, a 3- and a 5-unit version. Some also have a 1-unit version. Mathematics has a 4-unit version as well.