BUSINESS SCHOOL: THOUGHTS ON GROWING BUSINESS MIS UNDERGRAD NUMBERS

 Things students care about when selecting a major:

Money

Job Stability

Future growth (promotion opportunities w/major)

Difficulty of material

Interest in material

Enjoyment of work in job

Detailed Analysis

There seems to be two sets of people: (1) “I have a calling” people and (2) people who remotely care about money.

"I have a calling” people

The education major who states that from the dawn of time, she wanted to study English and who understands and is willing to accept the low monetary rate, similar to the pre-law, philosophy, and government student who wants to change the world. To a lesser extend but still note worthy; this phenomenon applies to the pre-med students who want to save the world from the common cold.

To complicate matters further, I suspect, some of these people see the drive to acquire money as a negative virtue and perceive their altruism (which somehow a BA provides) as a nobler goal. I believe that a complete reorientation would be required before a business degree is on the horizon.

Only once they realize that their chance of breaking into academia in the liberal arts is 5 billion to 1 (odds exaggerated), do we have a chance to bring them to MIS.

People who remotely care about money.

The geo-physical major who is seeking employment with an oil company, the engineering major who wants job stability, or the finance major that never considered MIS should be our prime target.

Why are these people not aiming for a MIS degree? There are multiple factors. Following are a couple I can think of:

1) Don’t know about it –

There is no way around it; the MIS program is under the radar, on campus and society at large. While accounting, finance, and management are just expected to be in a business school, a degree for IT management is perceived less. Based on our findings, I believe there are engineers and CS majors that have never considered the MIS program. This has to change.

Our key advantages, strong starting pay, setting students up for management, graduates in high demand, etc., can be persuasive tools if we can get the word out to the engineers and CS majors.

I have a feeling there is nothing that can be done about this, but I think that the structure of our program is such that it discourages technology-oriented high school students from joining MIS. A high school grad who loves java is most likely not considering MIS as the first technology-focused class is not until her junior year. The CS degree starts the freshman year with computer science classes. To be a contender with CS for high school tech talented, we need to give freshman a MIS class to take. Not ‘Intro to Word’, but something they can get a strong flavor for MIS. (http://www.cs.uh.edu/news/2009/03.24_Sundaram.pdf) Programs like this at my former high school are great tools.

2) It’s hard –

Usually the ‘it’s hard’ argument is employed by the accounting or finance major which has a perception that technology is difficult. There is a perceptual difference between using computers (email, facebook, myspace) and cracking a computer open and changing a hard drive and writing code. The latter is reserved for ‘tech people.’ Somehow, according to this way of thinking, there is a type of person that is just good at technology and spent all their time in high school doing science fair projects on semi-conductors.

I believe that this is a primary cause of business majors overlooking MIS. The MBA/pre-law student flat out said that MIS is the hardest degree at Bauer. There is a perception that writing code is nearly impossible and only geeks can do it. This has to be tackled if MIS wishes to grow.

A couple responses to this concern:

1. The MIS professors have years of experience breaking down perceived complex tech topics to be understood by anyone wishing to learn. You have the capacity learn how to write code. You are smarter than you think.

2. You are going to learn something difficult, be that complex financial equations or complex accounting procedures. The tech side is no more difficult, if not easier, than other majors.