Guidelines for undergraduate degree programs on Model curriculum and guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in information systems

• Authors: Gordon B. Davis;John T. Gorgone;J. Daniel Couger;David L. Feinstein;Herbert E. Longenecker, Jr.
• Venue: IS '97 Guidelines for undergraduate degree programs on Model curriculum and guidelines for undergraduate degree programs in information systems
• Year: 1997

The IS'97 report is the latest output from model curriculum workfor information systems that began in the early 1970s and hasmatured over a twenty year period. This report represents thecombined effort of numerous individuals and reflects the interestsof thousands of faculty. It is grounded in the expectedrequirements of industry and represents the views of organizationsemploying the graduates.This model curriculum is the first collaborative curriculumeffort of the ACM, AIS and AITP (formerly DPMA) societies and issupported by other interested organizations. The draft was reviewedat eleven national and international meetings involving over 1,000individuals from industry and academia.All aspects of the computing field have had rapid, continuouschange. As a result, university-level Information Systems (IS)curricula need frequent updating to remain effective. Since mostacademic units have mechanisms to maintain currency of curricula,why have professional society curriculum committees? If an ISacademic unit were providing graduates solely to local business andgovernment, the input on program contents could be derived fromrepresentatives of local organizations that hire the graduates.However, local employment is not the sole objective forundergraduate majors in Information Systems. Students from ISprograms accept jobs in widely dispersed geographic areas.Therefore, availability of curriculum models enables local academicunits to maintain academic programs that are consistent both withemployment needs across the country and with the common body ofknowledge of the IS field. The first IS curriculum models wereintroduced in the early 1970s. This early work was followed bymodel curricula developed by ACM and DPMA. Details of this historyare reviewed in Appendix 2.Professional society curriculum reports serve several otherobjectives. One important use is to provide a local academic unitwith rationale to obtain proper resources to support its program.Often, administration at the local institution is not aware of theresources, course offerings, computing hardware, software, andlaboratory resources needed for a viable program. Administrationmay be unaware of the specialized classroom technology, libraryresources, or laboratory assistants essential for proper educationof IS undergraduates. Finally, administration might not recognizethe rapid turnover of knowledge in the field and the need forresources to support constant retooling of faculty. Curriculumreports provide recommendations in these resource areas as well ascontent for the necessary body of knowledge. They provide importantinformation for local IS academic units to use in securing fromtheir institution the necessary levels of support.The importance of the curriculum effort is based on continuingstrong demand for graduates. A strong demand for IS professionalsis forecast by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to continuethrough the year 2005 (Occupational Outlook Quarterly 1993). Forexample, the forecast increase in demand for system analysts is 110percent for the period 1992-2005, averaging over 8 percentannually. Of all occupations analyzed, the systems analyst positionis projected to have one of the highest demands.The IS field also remains attractive in regard to compensation.In 1993, raises in IS were second highest of all professions, onlyslightly below engineering (Sullivan-Trainor 1994). These growthand pay level factors indicate undergraduate degrees in IS willcontinue to be in strong demand over the next decade.In a time of restricted academic budgets, some IS academicdepartments have been under downsizing pressure from other academicdisciplines in their own institutions, citing a decline inemployment in central IS organizations. However, there is nolessening in demand for IS knowledge and ability in organizations;to the contrary, the demand is expanding as the functional areas ofthe organization gain more capability in IS. Many areas of theorganization are now hiring IS majors for departmental computingactivities. There is also strong demand for the IS minor bystudents in other disciplines who need IS expertise in order to beeffective in their work and to assist in developing applications intheir functional area. A third reason that the demand for IScourses will continue to increase is that students in relateddisciplines want to acquire basic and intermediate IS skills. Everydiscipline is experiencing growth in computer use, and students whoenrich their IS knowledge are at a career advantage.