The great Digital Divide, it turns out, is not just a chasm between the haves and have-nots. UCLA's latest annual survey of the nation's entering freshmen shows there's an overwhelming emotional gap - a marked difference in levels of confidence regarding computer proficiency - that separates young men and women just as they are embarking on their undergraduate careers.

And that distressing lack of confidence in their ability to use computers may contribute to the fact that men are five times more likely to pursue careers in computer programming - 9.3% of men vs. 1.8% of women, survey organizers say.

"In a workforce increasingly dependent on technological proficiency, women's relative lack of computing confidence is likely to place them at a disadvantage when it comes to the jobs they are willing to seek out," said Linda Sax, education professor and director of the survey conducted last fall by the Higher Education Research Institute in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

While the survey shows that more freshmen are regularly using computers in the year prior to entering college and that women have pulled nearly even with men in computer use, the gender gap in computer confidence is growing; it is now the largest in the history of the survey. Women students are also less likely than men to visit Internet chat rooms, go online for activities or devote as much time to playing computer games, the survey showed.
The survey, the nation's longest-standing and most comprehensive assessment of student attitudes and plans, also revealed these important trends:

• About 73.4% of freshmen rated affluence as their top goal. Fewer students chose raising a family (73.1%), helping others in difficulty (61.7%) and becoming an authority in their field (59.7%) as their top objectives.
• First-year students are spending less time studying and doing homework than in previous years. But their high school grades continue to climb, with 42.9% of freshmen earning "A" averages in high school.
• Rates of drinking beer and smoking cigarettes continue to decline among entering freshmen.

The UCLA Survey, now in its 35th year, is conducted in association with the Ameri-can Council on Education.