Understanding Black Males' IT Career Choices

Abstract

The under-representation of Blacks in the information technology (IT) profession is a longstanding issue. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that influence Black male college students to pursue IT careers. This paper presents the results of interviews with 27 Black males majoring in IT at a historically black university. Four themes (community encouragement, exposure to computing, hustler’s ambition, “New Black”) emerged as particularly useful for understanding IT career choice. These findings have practical implications for designing effective interventions that broaden the participation of under-represented groups in the IT workforce, as well as scholarly implications for the conduct of research on academic achievement and IT career choice of successful Black males.

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