Work/family attitudes of computing graduate students

Work/family conflict is often cited as a concern for attracting and retaining talent in professional careers. STEM careers have been noted as particularly discouraging to professionals, especially women, for work/family concerns among other reasons. However, little research has explored the work/family attitudes of prospective professionals in these careers. This paper explores the work/family attitudes of graduate students in computing. Based on data from the Computing Research Association's (CRA) Center for Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) 2011-12 nationwide survey of 1286 computing graduate students, our analysis explores at the aggregate and by sex, the connections between graduate computing education, work/family issues, and career expectations. The analysis of the data reveals work/family issues are important to those in advanced education planning careers in the field. Computing graduate students are strongly influenced by work/family issues in their decision-making regarding advanced computing education. Graduate computing students report high levels of knowledge of work/life strategies and express confidence about their abilities, and their likelihood, for balancing work and family. These findings should help graduate educators and prospective employers concerned with diversity understand the work/family concerns of computing students and future computing professionals.