Blog Post: Biz Beat: What Job Shortage? Firms Go Begging for High-Tech Talent

After the dot-com boom went bust early this decade, and businesses are outsourcing computer programming and information technology projects at an accelerating rate, you would think that the information systems field would be a dead-end.
You would be wrong if you thought that, say professors in the W.P. Carey School of Business’s information systems department. An article in the latest Knowledge @ W.P. Carey online magazine details the paradox facing chief information officers in corporate America and other IT executives: at a time when high-tech careers are adding a net gain of 150,000 jobs to the U.S. economy (according to 2006 figures), fewer and fewer students are graduating with degrees that enable them to work as managers of complex information systems projects.
The article quotes Randy Guthrie, academic relations manager at Microsoft. Nationwide, Guthrie maintains, enrollments in college-level computer science programs have dropped as much as 70 percent compared to enrollments of 10 years ago. "Information systems are down a similar degree." The difference, he explains, is that computer science is more about creating technology through hardware and code, while information systems is about creating and implementing business solutions.
Fear of not being able to find a job, or having one’s job outsourced, drive many away from information systems degrees, but ASU staff and faculty say that worry is a misperception, not reality.
"People think information systems means you'll end up programming," says Guy Groff, director of the business school’s Graduate Career Management Center. Although he admits that people who move through the school's combined MBA and Master of Science in Information Management program (MSIM) will exit with an understanding of technology, he also says that's not what employers need or why they eagerly hire graduates.
Employers, he maintains, need people who can handle "management of technology in business. It requires all the leadership skills, strategic vision and project management ability used in any management career."
Robert St. Louis, a professor in the information systems department of the business school, adds: "The programming part is what you can outsource. What employers want are people who can be business analysts."

For more information:
W.P. Carey School of Business
Information Systems Department
MBA-MSIM degree program