Attitudes about computing in postsecondary graduates

Computing educators may hope that postsecondary courses both convey content and also give students a new perspective on computing. In the study described in this paper, a sample of students about to graduate with their postsecondary degrees wrote about their relationship with computing and what influenced that relationship. Computing majors wrote expressively about the excitement and breadth of the discipline. Other majors were positive about computing, but the essays indicate that postsecondary education (including introductory computer science courses) did not have a large effect on their attitudes about computing.