I spent the entire day yesterday doing a case study interview with the Director level managers of the IS Team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Some may have heard of this quaint institution in Boston. There are five process (organizational) groups in there IS dept., and each process group has a director. Approx. 260 employees in MIT IS. When I asked them what weight they place on degrees for prospective MIT IS employees (e.g., BSCS, BSIT, MSIT, etc) they said almost none. This was for any staff type from applications developers to network engineers to user support staff. For an academic institution the likes of MIT, I was somewhat surprised. With as much conversation as occurs on this board regarding CS/IT related degrees, I though this would be of anecdotal interest.
In one respect I'm not surprised. Computer folks come from a variety of walks - some learn about computer technology through formal education, others through professional training and yet others through hands on experience. A number of firms I know hire folks in programmer training programs from a variety of majors. They feel they can train folks in the "XYZ way". The value of CS/IS programs remain. If you don't have much knowledge of computers, how are you going to learn? Formal education is one very useful and fairly structured path. At the same time, one can't discount that there are other ways to learn. Regards - Andy ------------------ Andy Borchers, DBA NSU (1996)
Not surprising to me. My brother is the Director of Information Systems for a large well-known university (>20,000 students) and he has only an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in history.
Not to nitpick, but MIT is actually in the city of Cambridge, which is totally seperate from Boston. Perhaps you've heard of the other quaint Cambridge institution, Harvard University. For this Beantown faux paus, you're hereby sentenced to re-paint the Smoot markers on the Harvard Bridge (ask the MIT people for the story behind that, it's amusing). Bruce
