Certification - September 2008 - (Page 21)

CERTIFICATION With so many options in IT today, students might want to flesh out purely technical majors with courses in business and management to make sure they can take advantage of future possibilities. In today’s competitive job market, IT candidates are beefing up their resumes, brushing up on their soft skills and constantly in search of ways to set themselves apart. What these students might not realize, however, is that the No. 1 consideration for employers when recruiting college graduates is academic majors, according to a survey conducted by job site CareerGrad.com earlier this year. Selecting an undergraduate major therefore is an important decision for any aspiring IT professional. Yet, students should not feel limited or locked into traditional choices. While information systems and computer science programs remain the most popular, employers recruiting IT professionals have indicated the need for well-rounded individuals — students who go beyond the traditional technical training and opt for programs that also hone their business skills. To get a better understanding of the state of IT degree programs today, let’s take a look at their evolution through the years. When Wagner was in college, he considered a number of degree programs all related to computing. “I wanted to go into software engineering, [but] within the first year, all of the part-time degree courses were merged into one, and everyone that was left ended up on the general computing degree course,” he said. These traditional computer science programs focused on math, hardware engineering, hardware orientation, software engineering and application orientation, said Kevin Gallagher, assistant professor at the Department of Business Informatics at Northern Kentucky University (NKU). Today, however, since information technology has become one of the fastest-growing industries, educational institutions can no longer afford to offer computer science as the only option for students who want to enter the IT profession. Colleges and universities now offer a wide variety of IT-related degree programs that cater to different interests within the field. For instance, take the master’s degree in health informatics at NKU. “Hospitals are now trying to adopt electronic medical records and prescription order systems, and they need people who understand both the information related to delivering health care and the information systems that can enhance that process,” Gallagher said. There also has been a dramatic shift over the years in the way IT degree programs are structured, said John Estes, vice president of Robert Half Technology. IT Education Through Time Back in the early 1970s, computer science was the only option for students interested in IT as an academic major, said Kate Kaiser, an IT professor at Marquette University. Kenneth Wagner, an IT network manager and parttime lecturer in the U.K., can confirm this firsthand. September 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 21 http://www.certmag.com/read2.php?in=2354 http://careergrad.com/ http://informatics.nku.edu/bis/ http://www.nku.edu/ http://www.nku.edu/ http://www.marquette.edu/ http://www.marquette.edu/

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Certification - September 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Virtual Village Tech Careers Dear Techie Troubleshooting Academic Connection What We Like Look Ahead So You Want to Be an IT Major The Title Is Information Officer… Chief Information Officer Interface Network Administration: Working From the Ground Up Inside Certification Ad Index Endtag

Certification - September 2008

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