Computer science students and graduates profile: research on professional interests and work context

Higher education institutions need to identify and analyze the profile of their students and graduates, to make teaching more efficient and prevent dropout. Thus, the aim of this study was to characterize the profile of students and graduates from the Computer Science course, investigating patterns of professional interests among students and the work context of graduates and students that work in the computing field. We combined two strategies to characterize computer science students and graduates: survey and automated tracking of graduates through the system developed by Alvares et al. (2020). A total of 74 individuals participated in the survey, including undergraduates (n = 56) and graduates (n = 18). Through automated data collection, we obtained information from 61 students who completed their computer science degree. We found that the sample profile is characterized by young brown male students with an average age of 23, pursuing their first undergraduate degree. There was a correlation between the computing subfield that students are most interested in and the subfield that most graduates are working professionally: software engineering and development. Furthermore, we observed that most graduates are employed, working in their field of study, and satisfied with their work. We hope that future studies can improve research strategies and expand the available data on the profiles of students and graduates from computer science programs.