With the ongoing digitalisation, the Swedish IT industry is rapidly expanding. It has been estimated by the Labour office that around 40 000 new system developers need to be recruited only in the coming four years. Salaries are high and companies ask for female system developers, but in higher education the majority of students on computer science programmes are male. University programmes on Informatics and System science are less technical and have a tradition of a higher female percentage. In earlier discussions, colleagues from universities in the north of the country brought up that the application figures has gone down, while persons working at other universities claim that the number of female students applying actually has increased. Who are right, who are wrong?
The aim of the study is to analyse and discuss the official application statistics that are published by the Swedish Council for Higher Education. Application statistics from 2012 to 2017 have been analysed and compared for ten programmes at eight universities. The selection of universities has a nation-wide spread but was mainly based on their outline of programmes on Informatics and System science.
Findings show that both opinions seem to be right, but the main tendency is an increase in female applications for the made selection. On the other hand, a slight decrease can be found for the northern universities where the programmes are given in a dual mode. The on-campus groups have a surprisingly higher percentage of males than the distance versions, when programmes with identical syllabuses were compared. More technical computer science programmes have fewer female students while the highest percentages of female students can be found in programmes on Web development, Web design and Interaction design.