Track

IS Curriculum, Education and Teaching Cases

Abstract

This project did not begin as a focused research study; so we beg your indulgence for a humble laxity in academic rigor.However, we believe our explorations of online, real-time, job openings data for thirty specialized information technologyand decision science job categories over the last five years will keep your interest. When we started this project, we merelywished to see if the market for our majors was improving, identify the high potential job areas, and look at growth areas forfuture curriculum development. By 2006 the number of majors in our department had shrunk to 120 from a high of nearly500 majors in 2001 [Becker, et. al., 2006]. We began to collect job openings data the old fashioned way—by hand--from thepopular CareerBuilder.com website in mid-January 2006. Using the following key word searches: Analyst, Six Sigma, Lean,and SAS—we recorded our first four job openings within the State of Texas; using job openings that had been posted in thelast 30 days. Since then, our database has grown to nearly 1,800 observations. Using relatively simplistic data miningtechniques we are now able to produce a number of monthly IT job opening forecasts that keep our students, faculty, CareerCenter, and advisory board looking for that next update.

Download

Share

COinS