Student Opinions regarding the Mandatory Use and Ownership of Personal Computers

Abstract

Several institutions of higher education recently have adopted policies requiring students to take computer courses and/or own personal computers. Typically, these decisions have been made by faculty and administrators without input from students. The purpose of this study was to analyze student opinion regarding such policies. To this end, the Student Affairs Research and Evaluation Office at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst conducted a telephone survey of a random sample of 308 undergraduates. The results show that students generally favor mandatory computer instruction but not mandatory computer ownership. Subsequent regression analyses of these data indicate that whether or not computer proficiency is seen as a salient skill for future employment is a key explanatory variable that determines support for either computer policy.