ad info

 
CNN.com  technology > computing
    Editions | myCNN | Video | Audio | Headline News Brief | Feedback  

 

  Search
 
 

 
TECHNOLOGY
TOP STORIES

Consumer group: Online privacy protections fall short

Guide to a wired Super Bowl

Debate opens on making e-commerce law consistent

(MORE)

TOP STORIES

More than 11,000 killed in India quake

Mideast negotiators want to continue talks after Israeli elections

(MORE)

MARKETS
4:30pm ET, 4/16
144.70
8257.60
3.71
1394.72
10.90
879.91
 


WORLD

U.S.

POLITICS

LAW

ENTERTAINMENT

HEALTH

TRAVEL

FOOD

ARTS & STYLE



(MORE HEADLINES)
*
 
CNN Websites
Networks image


New trend: Tech is hot college major

Computerworld

July 11, 2000
Web posted at: 10:28 a.m. EDT (1428 GMT)

(IDG) -- Students are sitting on the floors of overcrowded classrooms in the management science and information technology degree program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute's Pamplin College of Business. So many students want to get into the program that the department had to raise the required grade point average for transfers.

Enrollment swelled to 850 students this past year, up 132.9 percent from the 1995-96 enrollment of 365, and up 216 percent from 1990-91's 269 students.

Similar enrollment increases in the MIS degree program at the Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin have so overwhelmed administrators that they've drafted legislation to limit the number of new students entering the program. It accommodated 610 students this year -- 238.9 percent more than the 180 who were enrolled in 1996-97, and 342 percent more than 1990-91's 138 undergraduates.

MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE
IDG.net   IDG.net home page
  Computerworld's home page
  The best places to work in IT
  Paying the new online pros
  Recruitment packages keep rocketing upward
  Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net
  E-BusinessWorld
  TechInformer
  Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you
  Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletter for IT leaders
  Search IDG.net in 12 languages
  News Radio
  * Fusion audio primers
  * Computerworld Minute

Universities may not be churning out enough information technology graduates to meet the demand -- yet -- but it's not for a lack of applicants. The surges in enrollment in the business schools at Blacksburg, Va.-based Virginia Tech and UT illustrate an overlooked story in the debate over whether universities are producing sufficient numbers of graduates to sustain the IT employment market.

The peaks and valleys in computer science programs receive the lion's share of attention in countless analyses of the IT supply-and-demand gap. But the enrollment growth in business school MIS and computer information systems (CIS) degree programs over the past five years has been nothing short of stellar.

Students are being enticed by reports of high starting salaries, a near guarantee of immediate employment after graduation and a new level of prestige surrounding the IT profession. And students who may not be willing to slog through the mathematical course work of computer science programs are signing up for business school IT programs in droves.

"There's a certain glamour in IT now; it's the glamour of the dot-com," says Eleanor Jordan, MIS area faculty chairwoman in the management sciences and information systems department at the Red McCombs School of Business. "A lot of kids are attracted to the major because they hear about the great job offers and the high salaries."

At the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, which established a formal MIS degree only four years ago, enrollment has already reached maximum capacity, says David Naumann, an associate professor in the information and decision sciences department. "It's really clear that young people understand that the economy is driven by technology, and if they want a career, they better know something about it," he says.

Before the university established the bachelor of business administration in MIS degree in the fall of 1996, Carlson's students could obtain a general business degree with a concentration in MIS course work.

In the first half of the '90s, fewer than 30 students per year pursued the self-designed degree. This May, the program graduated 87 students -- an upsurge of more than 190% since the major was established.

The numbers of degree recipients are similarly up in Virginia Tech's and UT's programs -- up by 184.3 percent, from 102 in 1990-91 to 190 in 1998-99, at Virginia Tech; and by 195 percent, from 80 in 1990-91 to 236 in 1998-99, at UT.

The upsurges at the three business schools mirror a national trend revealed in an analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in Washington. In the 1996-97 academic year (the last for which data is available), universities awarded 7,048 IT-related bachelor's in business degrees, 102.8 percent more than the 3,474 MIS and CIS degrees conferred in the 1990-91 academic year.

So, why all the fuss about a lack of interest in IT programs? It derives partly from the three-year lag in reporting by the NCES, the leading statistics gatherer on university enrollments and graduates, and partly from the fact that more data is available on computer science programs than on business school IT programs. That's because computer science programs are still the far larger of the two.

For example, a respected study on IT degree production, the Taulbee Survey, conducted by the Computing Research Association (CRA) in Washington, focuses on computer science and engineering programs in Ph.D.-granting institutions. And a much-touted report released last summer by the U.S. Department of Commerce, "The Digital Work Force: Building Infotech Skills at the Speed of Innovation," also concentrated on enrollment trends in computer science and engineering programs.

So even though NCES data indicates that degree production by business school IT programs rose steadily throughout the last decade, that increase was overshadowed by the fact that computer science programs dipped in the late '80s and early '90s.

A reversal in computer science enrollment trends only starts to reveal itself in the 1996-97 NCES data, which was released in October.

"There was a decline [in computer science], a cycle where enrollments went up and down," says Dennis Kafura, head of the computer science department at Virginia Tech's College of Arts and Sciences. "But ever since '95, we've been on the upswing. We've grown 200 percent in the last five years. We had hit bottom and started coming back up." Computer science is now the largest major at the university, he adds.

Nationally, bachelor's degrees in computer science dropped just 3.9 percent between 1990-91 and 1995-96 -- the decade's low point -- from 25,083 to 24,098, according to the NCES. And 1996-97's 24,768 computer science degrees marked an upturn of 2.8 percent over 1995-96. More recent data from the CRA and the Commerce Department confirms the reversal, as does anecdotal reporting by schools.

So overall, the news for the IT market is good: Computer science programs are exhibiting solid, double-digit-percentage enrollment growth, and business school programs are growing even faster, according to the NCES degree data and enrollment numbers reported by Virginia Tech, UT, the University of Minnesota and Arizona State University in Tempe.

The biggest effect the growth appears to be having on the IT labor market is that it's giving employers hope of more to come. Businesses have done a good job of working closely with schools to ensure that students are graduating with the skills the market needs. But the number of graduates hardly comes close to meeting demand.

"The market we see our students go to most is the area from Richmond [Va.] to Washington, D.C. And they say there are 20,000 vacant IT jobs in Washington alone," says Bernard Taylor, head of the management science and information technology department at the Pamplin College of Business. "So even if all of our graduates went there, that would be a drop in the bucket."




RELATED STORIES:
Arizona to give tax credit for IT training
April 19, 2000
8 ways government leaders can keep up with the Information Age
March 9, 2000
Army secrets to keeping up with IT
March 1, 2000
No rest for the weary
January 11, 2000
10 turning points in the IT industry's history
December 20, 1999

RELATED IDG.net STORIES:
The best places to work in IT
(Computerworld)
Beware recruiters in sheep's clothing
(Computerworld)
Filling slots with inside referrals
(Computerworld)
Paying the new online pros
(Computerworld)
Army lining up online education
(FCW)
Recruitment packages keep rocketing upward
(IT World)
Taming telecommuting
(Network World Fusion)
Do your clients hate you?
(IT World)

RELATED SITES:
Arizona State University College of Business
University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management
University of Texas McCombs School of Business
Virginia Tech Pamplin School of Business

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

 Search   

Back to the top   © 2001 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved.
Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.