Twenty-five years ago, students in some educational environments were still learning to wire boards for accounting machines. So too was the change in emphasis from programs to data and from files to databases. The dominance of IBM, the high costs of computers, and the U.S.military establishment's influence over programming languages provided three stabilizing factors. Today, many undergraduate programs continue to follow this same evolutionary trail for their information technology majors. Those that elect to change direction are faced with a myriad of alternatives, each with vocal proponents.
CASE tools are among the potential choices.
There is also confusion about the balance between technology and management skills required for undergraduate majors. Today's typical telecommunications course continues to describe how bits and messages are moved rather than how advances in these technologies permit organization, industries, and institutions to be redesigned. Students often graduate with a set of technological skills for which there will be a declining market and stiff competition from experienced practitioners. Moreover, these graduates often envision their careers as experts developing systems based on the requirements of relatively passive users. In reality, they will increasingly find themselves serving as facilitators and integrators, or intermediaries between users and the external marketplace for information services.