Historically the 'IT' department has been largely regarded as a part of an organisation which is full of technical experts who have no connection with or understanding of the business functions, and who obtain large amounts of funding to spend on development projects which then either fail completely or don't deliver what the end users actually need. The view now however is increasingly that the IT department has the status of a proper business unit. It therefore needs to be operated as such which explains why in the last three years there has been a growing emphasis in companies on IT management and administration and thus a demand for people with the appropriate skills to handle this change. IT has now been recognised as a subject in its own right which overlaps with aspects of fields such as Computer Science and Business Studies. Many courses just use existing elements from business studies and computing programmes without attempting to link the business and computing issues.
Lecturers tend to specialise in particular areas.
Thus staff lecturing in business areas may not have the knowledge and experiences to integrate technical issues into their subject and vice versa. Consultation with industry helps to identify what kind of graduates they will want to recruit in the future and what sort of skills and experience are desired. Any course failing to seek this kind of input is likely to produce less marketable graduates. Undertaking a real-life project for an external client gives valuable experience of commercial working life. A course including such projects demonstrates an ongoing link between academia and industry thereby strengthening the relevance of the course to the needs of industry.