Abstract

With the pace of technological change today, it is nearly impossible to keep the IS curricula current. Skills and knowledge change so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up. The half-life of the technical knowledge of consultants today, for example, is approximately six months (Ernst & Young, 1994). This presents a unique challenge for IS educators, who must develop and maintain a curriculum that balances theory with enough current technical knowledge that students can land that all-important first job, and yet be well-grounded in information systems concepts that they can continue to develop as IS professionals as technology changes. Todd et al. (1995) recently published the results of a study that showed that IS job skills have shifted greatly since 1970. Their study involved a content analysis of a sample of IS job advertisements from four major newspapers at five-year intervals. While their study is an important contribution to understanding how IS job skills have shifted over the years for programmers, systems analysts, and IS managers, the usefulness of their results is somewhat limited for curricula design for the future because of its historical nature (the most recent data it is from 1990). What is needed is a methodology for identifying trends in the marketplace soon enough to allow faculty members time to respond in their courses. This paper presents such a methodology. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the recent shifts in job skills sought in IS job advertisements. From this data set, individual skills and groups of skills can be tracked over time, and recommendations can be made that will help with curriculum design. It is important to view skills both over time and across regions. Todd et al. (1995) showed the value of the time dimension; King (1993) found significant differences from city to city within a single region for the one year he studied.

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