Ready to get your degree in IS?

We need more IS grads to fill the growing holes in corporate departments

Summary
They've heard of CS, but how many high school graduates know about IS degree programs? The current IS labor shortage requires us to get the word out about good college programs that combine technology courses with business and customer service know-how. (883 words)

January 1998

ccording to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), one IS position remains unfilled for every 10 IS workers at large and midsize U.S. companies. Across the board, companies are feeling the pinch caused by the lack of qualified IS professionals. Although reliable IS instruction exists in colleges around the world, the idea of the IS degree has yet to permeate public consciousness. To counteract a continued labor shortage, we need to start thinking of IS as a separate path from CS and encourage more young people to study information management.
When companies were first setting up LANs and desktop PCs, they could often count on one or two computer-literate employees to administer their simple networks. The need for a separate, highly-trained IS department arose as more complex client/server technologies took off. Now we're looking at large companies that need a huge range of technology to support their core business -- you need IS workers that can build a corporate Web site, implement middleware bridging the mainframe and the Internet, manage the network and intranet, build and provide access to complex databases, set up security measures, and even build business-to-business networks -- not to mention the enterprise application development involved in supporting a corporation's technology base.
Companies are definitely feeling the crunch as technology explodes and enterprise applications multiply. How are they going to find the staff to support the numerous technologies required to stay competitive? While many fine IS programs exist, not enough college entrants are aware of IS as a lucrative career. We need to start from the bottom up and help make more young people aware of the opportunities an IS degree can bring.
A glorified Facilities department
Because the field is relatively new, companies haven't yet settled on the role of their IS departments. Although IS is obviously a complex field covering multiple jobs, we can at least define its general reason for existence: to support the business goals of a corporation using technology.
In this capacity, IS bears quite a resemblance to Facilities, the department that takes care of desks, work spaces, and often the phone and voicemail systems in an office: both departments are concerned with creating and maintaining company infrastructure. In the case of IS, the infrastructure is much more complex and has a closer relationship to the company's business processes -- but it is still a support structure.
Building a working support structure takes in-depth knowledge of what you're trying to support. IS managers need to have general knowledge of how business works in addition to the technical skills to implement enterprise technology.
A CS degree doth not an IS manager make
Where do these business skills come from? Not usually from a CS degree, the most common way for workers to enter the IS market. CS is usually a theoretical course of study that focuses on programming and high-level computing paradigms, not necessarily business paradigms and technology installations.
To save money, many smaller or midsize companies are beginning to hire IS workers straight out of college CS programs. Recent graduates tend to be bright, eager, motivated, and willing to work for far less than the going rate for seasoned IS developers. But these same companies are complaining that their recent graduates are clueless about business and how to integrate corporate goals into technology implementation.
What do they expect? CS graduates often go into CS because they love to program and create new technology, not because they want to manage a network or help end-users with Microsoft Word. They usually know little or nothing about how a business works and where technology fits into corporate goals. Although they can learn these things, you can't transform a whiz-kid programmer into an enterprise developer overnight.
IS college departments
Luckily, IS degree programs exist all over the world, offering a range of courses on information management, business processes, and technology integration. Just as in CS, however, college IS departments must constantly struggle with the whirlwind pace of technology, and you may find that by the time you complete your degree, every technical truism you've learned is outdated. But regardless of the constant catch-up game, the existence of informational science programs holds hope for the beleaguered businesses desperately searching for IS staffers -- if we can shepherd enough young people into the degree pipeline.
The biggest problem as I see it is lack of publicity -- how many high schoolers know what IS stands for? Programming is a well-known and somewhat glamorous profession, yet even CS departments have seen a decline in enrollment over the past six years. The IS explosion is relatively new, and most John Q. Publics have never heard of the IS career. It's going to take a concerted effort on the part of businesses to market the IS vocation and encourage people to get IS degrees.
Of course, once folks have heard of IS and understand what it's about, most will immediately realize the biggest advantage to getting such a degree: top money. IS salaries are among the highest on the professional pay scale and are only climbing. Once the IS vocation settles into the mainstream consciousness along with programmers, lawyers, financial consultants and other well-known professions, I think we'll see a natural surge in IS graduates. It's that first major leap into the public eye that's the hardest.

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Resources

This comprehensive site lists IS degree programs all over the world: ISWorld Net http://juliet.stfx.ca/~rmackinn/infosys/isgroups.html

About the author
Holly Blumenthal is editor-in-chief of Netscape Enterprise Developer. She welcomes comments, questions, or a good argument. Reach Holly at holly.blumenthal@ne-dev.com.

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Last modified: Saturday, November 20, 1999 HYIP Monitor

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