Critical Success Factors to Improve Perception of Information Technology Careers: A Specific Case in a Mexican Higher Education Institution

Abstract

It is a fact that fashion plays an important role to select a career, new options of careers from engineering are preferred by students instead of traditional options; for example, Mechatronics, Aeronautics, Automotive specializations, Bionics, Biomedical and others are so popular. Every day, new necessities are required in the world and it is necessary to find the way to solve them, for that reason these new majors are good options to students, however traditional areas are important too. Information Technology is not the exception because every enterprise, school, association and organization needs computers with systems that help to solve specific situations or to manage resources. In Mexico, Information Technology careers are been affected for low enrollment of students, of course private universities have suffered more this situation than public schools [1]. In this research work are shown the most important factors that have a real incidence to choose an Information Technology career. The methodology consisted in the design of a survey using seven points Likert´s scale where potential students could express more about their expectative, preferences and required abilities to study these majors. The mentioned survey had three versions and each one was validated through Cronbach’s Alpha. Data collected were analyzed using statistical software SPSS to obtain the critical success factors.

Keywords

• Education
• higher education
• It Careers