Computer Science Course Offerings in High School Spur More Students to Coding Degrees

In recent years high schools across the country have been adding computer science courses, and there is a movement to make them ubiquitous. A new study of an unusually rich dataset in Maryland found that such efforts can have a significant impact when it comes to getting more students to go on to careers in coding, and in bringing more diversity to the field.

The study, published as a working paper this month, found that taking a high-quality computer science course in high school increased the chance that the student goes on to major in computer science in college by 10 percentage points, and increased the chance that the student would finish a CS degree program by 5 percentage points.

“It’s not surprising in some ways,” says the lead researcher on the study, Jing Liu. “But we need the numbers so we can show it concretely.”

Liu, who is an assistant professor of education policy at the University of Maryland at College Park, surmises that taking a class in computer science helps some students overcome popular misconceptions about coding.

“It’s like math anxiety — they think they can’t do it,” the professor says of some students. And he knows that feeling firsthand. “I took my first CS course in grad school, and before that I totally thought I was not a CS person,” he says. “Just exposing people to the actual curriculum can overcome fears.”

The study found that taking a computer science course had the greatest impact for female students, Black students and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Liu sees that as evidence that increasing CS offerings in high school is helping to address well-known disparities in the tech world. “We need more women and we need more students of color in coding,” he says. “We are far from achieving equity in this space.”