Critical Skills of IS Professionals: A Model for Curriculum Development

Introduction Revolutionary changes are occurring across the United States and throughout the world in information systems technology. "The number of workers in the computer and software industries has almost tripled in the past decade." (Freeman and Aspray, 1999. p. 35.) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics projections for the period 2000-2010, of the 10 fastest growing occupations, computer-related occupations occupy eight of the top ten positions: software applications engineers, support specialists, systems software engineers, network and systems administrators, network systems and data communications analysts, desktop publishers, database administrators, and systems analysts. (BLS, Table 3b). Computer and data processing services is projected as the industry with the fastest wage and salary employment growth (BLS, Table 3a). Every sector of the American economy employs information systems workers in every geographic region of the country. This projected growth in information systems related occupations is reflected in the need for well-educated IS professionals. Currently, the demand for trained professionals far exceeds qualified applicants. The State of Illinois Citizens Agenda (1999) specifically calls for an increase in the number of graduates with skills and knowledge needed to meet new or emerging occupational demand. The State of Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) Workforce Issues Paper (1999) calls for the number of baccalaureate computer and information science graduates from public universities to be doubled by 2006. Information Technology Association of America (2000) reports that "... employers will create a demand in this country for roughly 1.6 million IT workers this year. With demand for appropriately skilled people far exceeding supply, half of these positions--843,328--will likely go unfilled. In a total U.S. IT workforce of 10 million, that shortfall means one job in every dozen will be vacant." (Information Technology Association of America, [paragraph]1, 2000). These circumstances create an atmosphere whereby Information Systems programs need to be reevaluated and changed to meet the demand. Educators have the overwhelming responsibility of designing a curriculum that prepares future IS professionals for this dynamic field. Researchers have struggled with the issue of implementing curriculum models in various ways. Kim, Shim, and Yoon (1999) asked IS practitioners and educators to rate the importance of key IS issues. They found that practitioners perceive managerial and organizational issues as more important than educators do. They also indicate that educators consider emerging issues such as e-commerce, more important than practitioners do. They recommended that educators and practitioners should have a shared vision of key IS issues and collaborate on curriculum development. Lightfoot (1999) describes the dilemma of IS curriculum design as a problem of balance between the fundamentals of IS and the current "fad" applications. He suggests that students and businesses (employers) have short-term perspectives, while educators have a long-term perspective; legislators (public) are somewhere in between. He recommends modifying curriculum to satisfy the goals of the stakeholders. Srinivasan, Guan, and Wright (1999) describe a process of developing a new curriculum working with corporate partners. They also suggest using the corporate partners as "clinical": faculty to help teach the courses. Maier, Clark, and Remington (1998) reviewed the content of job advertisements over a 15-year period to explore the changes in the MIS job market and found a growing diversity in the MIS job market. Hingorani and Sankar (1995) surveyed perceptions of graduates' skills and compared the results with skills required in industry. They found that students were aware of the needs of industry. They also made specific recommendations for their specific program. The foundation of the curricula revision process is to review the literature related to expected workplace skills and knowledge for IS professionals. …