Education

A more obvious connection to computer ownership is education level: As one rises so does the other. According to the 1989 census data, two percent of adults with zero to eight years of education had access to a computer at home. Six and a half percent of those with one to three years of high school education had access, 13 percent of those with four years of high school had access, 23.4 percent of those with one to three years of college had access and 33.7 percent of those with four or more years of college education had access to a computer at home (1991, 14).

The SPA study confirms that not much has changed. Sixty percent of computer owners in 1994 had attended or graduated from college, up from 51 percent in 1993. By comparison, 21 percent of the overall population attended or graduated from college. Only two percent of those who had not completed high school owned a computer (SPA Completes 1994, 17). The World Wide Web Survey actually shows a tapering off of use as education increases, with 18 percent of Web users reporting "some" college education and 33 percent reporting a college degree. The number drops to 23 percent for users reporting a post-graduate degree (Pitkow and Recker 1994). Again, access to the Web appears to be closely tied to the university sector, with the amount of Web users mirroring the population of undergraduate and graduate students.

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