Gerard J. Morris

Updating the IS curriculum: faculty perceptions of industry needs

Perhaps more than in any other discipline, information systems (IS) curriculum needs are driven by what goes on in the business world. This paper will report on a study of 120 Information Systems department chairs and area coordinators throughout the country. It will compare the faculty responses to those of 192 employers regarding 162 curriculum related items varying from the very general to the very specific.

Do Students Get Enough Information Systems Education in the Business Core

Information Systems/Technology is a key component in today’s business infrastructures with a myriad of ever-increasing and innovative applications fuelling the drive for competitive advantage. Therefore information systems education should be a critical element in business schools programs today to appropriately prepare students to be competitive. As our university was seeking AACSB accreditation we wanted to investigate what other programs were doing for the information systems area in the business core. Therefore data was acquired from 61 peer institutions, 89% of which are AACSB-accredited. Data about the components of the business core were collected from the university websites and analysed to determine the amount of the business core curriculum devoted to information systems. Analysis indicates that 85% of the peer institutions had one information systems course and only three percent had two information systems courses.

Employee characteristics for IT workers in a transition job market

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s resulted in a tightening of the belt in most sectors but especially in Information Technology. Two key issues faced by employees and would-be employees were: (1) how to get a job in this tight market? and (2) just as significant, how to keep a job in this market? This paper seeks to determine what set of characteristics is important in hiring new employees, what set of characteristics is important in retaining current employees and how the two sets of characteristics compare.

Updating the IS curriculum (extended abstract): student perceptions of industry needs

The need for ongoing change and updating has been a cornerstone of IS curriculum concern for the past decade. It was once fhe case that entry level positions were as “programmer” or “programmer/analyst” in medium to large companies where applications were developed internally; expertise in COBOL was the most critical requirement for a f~st job out of college. Today there is a multitude of new job titles in this arena that did not exist ten years ago (e.g., database analysts, telecommunications/networking specialists, EDP secnrify/auditing specialists, user support analysts, and office automation specialists). Entry level jobs now cover a variety of positions and require a variety of dcills (Trauth, et al, 1993; Lombardo & Larsen, 1992). Thou,gh some studies give cordlicting results (Archer, 1993; Knapp, 1993), COBOL proficiency is probably no longer the key to a f~st jolx its relevance at all in the IS curriculum is in question (Hehns & Morrell, 1994). What other topics and skills belong in today’s IS curriculum is an even larger question.