Abstract

This talk is neither about the debate on the identity of the Information Systems (IS) discipline nor about the great debate on the “Education versus Training” goals of higher education. Instead, it highlights a more immediate and fixable issue: The disproportionately low focus on technical competencies in IS curricula, especially within business schools. Addressing this issue is important not only to meet the curricular goals of relevance, technological agility, innovation, life-long learning, and career orientation for business school accreditation (see AACSB 2020) but also to, truly, better prepare our students for disruptive changes. It is generally acknowledged that business school affiliated IS programs often do not provide a stronger emphasis on technical competencies (e.g., IS 2020). We highlight the importance of this issue and examine its detrimental impacts on IS students, and dissect fallacious beliefs such as, “but we are a business program…” or “it’s the job for computer science programs…” or “we have always done it this way…”. Next, we identify some underlying factors that maybe precluding IS programs from meeting student and industry needs in terms of applied technical competencies. These factors, among others, include: 1) A rigid requirement in many business schools that all IS students must complete a burgeoning and inflexible set of “business core” courses in addition to an already large set of “general education” courses, leaving little room and time to systematically develop technical skills. 2) Requirements that even standalone IS related degree programs must include the entire business core without regard to the needs of IS students and their career aspirations. 3) Pushback from other departments (e.g., Computer Science) as curriculum changes get cast as turf wars; 4) The red tape involved in making meaningful curriculum changes, not to mention the lack of resources and capacities to do so. 5) In some cases, self-restrictive beliefs among well-intentioned IS faculty about what the IS curricula should be, instead of a focus on what our students actually need. We argue that these factors can be addressed and propose both short- and long-term mitigation strategies that can help faculty deliver more relevant, applied learning experiences that instill technical competencies. Finally, we rally the IS community to assert the importance of and autonomy for routinely updating program learning outcomes and curricula to meet student and industry needs instead of being constrained by archaic and inflexible rules and processes. After all, we are a strong community of IS faculty who care about our students and IS programs are often among the largest revenue generators for business schools. IS departments and faculty (including this author) value their business school heritage and proudly present IS programs as a blend of business and technology. However, it’s time to critically examine whether we are truly delivering the much-needed technical competencies. The IS community may not always agree on the type/level of skills our students need, but we can at least advocate for better mechanisms that allow faculty to innovate at an effective pace. The IS community can do better, but will it? Students are counting on us.

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