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Marketing higher education in information technology

Published: 28 October 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Market forces such as downturns in the economy, and world economic and political upheavals can have a negative impact on corporate support for individuals seeking to do advanced study in information technology (IT). Despite these circumstances, a highly skilled workforce is vital for maintaining corporate competitiveness. IT technology changes continually; and people need to maintain and update their skills. Making advanced education more accessible may be one possible solution.
One of the options under consideration by the Information Technology Department at RIT to address this issue is offering an array of short-term, post-baccalaureate certificates. Advanced certificates could be attractive to individuals as a way to retool their skills for career growth or to prepare for new opportunities without having to commit to a lengthy graduate program. To investigate this idea, we surveyed the approximately thirty-five members of our department's industrial advisory board, which includes an array of corporations, including representatives from IBM, Cisco Systems, Excellus Health Plans, and Oracle Corporation. Board members were asked if there would be corporate interest in advanced certificates, what timeframes would be preferable, and which topics would be of interest.
This paper will discuss the feedback received from the advisory board about the attractiveness of short-term certificate programs. In addition, the impact of these findings for curriculum development will be discussed.

References

[1]
Cappelli, P., Why do Employers Pay for College?, Working Paper Series, No. 9225, National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/papers/.
[2]
D'Antoni, H., I.T. Professionals Cash In on Company Training, InformationWeek (6/30/2003) Issue 946, 67.
[3]
Gurchiek, K., Companies Paying Staffers' Tuition Becomes More Common, Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, Washington (01/26/2004), 1.
[4]
Humber, T., Tuition Assistance, Canadian HR Reporter, Toronto, (11/18/2002) Vol. 15 Issue 20, G1-G2.
[5]
Lee Hecht Harrison (Company), Dream Jobs Get Real, Time Magazine, (4/7/2003) Vol. 161 Issue 14, 88--90.
[6]
Riehle, T., Surprising Results from New Survey on Employment Benefits, Ipsos News Center (01/15/2004), http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=2017 (retrieved on 6/24/04).

Cited By

View all
  • (2015)Data and content managementJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2831373.283138431:1(70-79)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2015
  • (2012)Study program using cisco networking academy curriculum in Transport and Telecommunication Institute: Analysis of work accomplished and new challenges2012 IEEE 10th International Conference on Emerging eLearning Technologies and Applications (ICETA)10.1109/ICETA.2012.6418312(321-326)Online publication date: Nov-2012
  • (2005)Developing LaSalle's IT graduate certificate program partnered with industryProceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology education10.1145/1095714.1095722(19-23)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2005

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  1. Marketing higher education in information technology

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    Paola Forcheri

    This paper discusses the need to provide new types of advanced certificates in educational technology, aimed at helping employees to prepare for new jobs or career growth. The opportunity to introduce short-term, post-baccalaureate certificates in information technology (IT) is suggested. The interest of corporations in supporting employees in enrolling in these kinds of study programs is analyzed, by means of a questionnaire devoted to the 34 members of the industrial advisory board of the Information Technology Department at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The questionnaire seeks to verify the kinds of corporate support for employees' graduate education, to compare the companies' interest in short-term advanced certificates with regard to traditional Master of Science (MS) degrees, and to find out the topic areas of most interest for certificate studies. Existing certificate programs (found via a Google search) are then examined, on the basis of the indications of the questionnaire. Based on the results, the author points out the potential attractiveness of flexible, short-term programs intended to provide advanced IT skills in some current topics, and incorporating professional communication skills. The topic of the paper will be of considerable interest to providers of IT programs. The kinds of programs considered are still under discussion at RIT, thus details on their possible implementation are not given. However, the paper offers to IT educators, and to managers of IT programs, some valuable directions to be used in organizing, if it is possible from a curriculum standpoint, MS degrees grouping flexible, short programs that can be delivered independently of each other. Online Computing Reviews Service

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CITC5 '04: Proceedings of the 5th conference on Information technology education
    October 2004
    300 pages
    ISBN:1581139365
    DOI:10.1145/1029533
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 28 October 2004

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    Author Tags

    1. marketing IT education
    2. student recruiting
    3. tuition reimbursement

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 176 of 429 submissions, 41%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2015)Data and content managementJournal of Computing Sciences in Colleges10.5555/2831373.283138431:1(70-79)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2015
    • (2012)Study program using cisco networking academy curriculum in Transport and Telecommunication Institute: Analysis of work accomplished and new challenges2012 IEEE 10th International Conference on Emerging eLearning Technologies and Applications (ICETA)10.1109/ICETA.2012.6418312(321-326)Online publication date: Nov-2012
    • (2005)Developing LaSalle's IT graduate certificate program partnered with industryProceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology education10.1145/1095714.1095722(19-23)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2005

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