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Now they're focusing on traditional manufacturing and consumer products companies, but still in a technical capacity." —McRae C. Banks, Worcester Polytechnic Polytechnic Institute. "Out of that group, those who had technical qualifications as well as the business background we were seeking formed a much smaller set. Ultimately we ended up with seven or eight people who had the type of package we were seeking." The scarcity of good help has led to an unexpected bonus "That's key. You have to have those internships set up," he says. "We have an advisory council that is extremely supportive." for those who can meet the demand. "The good news is that MIS has been legitimized as a discipline," says WSU's Jessup. "Now to get a really good MIS faculty member, you pay about what you would pay to get a really good finance or accounting faculty member. It's elevated the status of MIS in terms of the pay and stature." Marcolin agrees that MIS management salaries have risen at Calgary, and not just for the new hires. She says, "Our dean has said, 'Look, we've got to keep the people we have.' He's looked at our internal salaries and worked very hard to keep them comparable to the market level. He recognizes that if we're going to be an internationally recognized school, we've got to be able to compete with other schools." Stakeholders on Board Starting an MIS MBA, however, is not only about staffing it, but also about selling it. First, of course, faculty members have to recognize what the degree is. "Most of those outside of the information systems area in Expansion and Improvement Even schools that have successfully implemented tech-related management programs are looking for ways to improve their offerings—both for current students and potential students. At Calgary, school officials want to expand the e-business program and make it more accessible to people in the com- munity. "We see a huge demand for students who are outside the program, who don't want to come back for two years under any format, so we're trying to decide how to make the content more flexible," says Marcolin. "We might make it a certificate program or a diploma program, something where people can get credit." Banks expects to see an influx of people with technical skills coming back to college for advanced degrees. He says that too many engineers and computer scientists are being put in positions where they must manage people, not equip- ment; many don't have the necessary skills. "We're going to see more and more people who have gone business schools think of technology as the network," says Marcolin. "They think, 'Well, let's just put a network in, and then we're fine.' They don't think about the systems part, which touches every little part of the organization. The tech- nology is only 20 percent of the cost." Academic politics are equally challenging, says Ramaprasad. "There are schools at the technical end, there are schools at the managerial end, and there are schools that think MIS is not a field," says Ramaprasad. But even if a school has decided to go ahead with an MIS management degree, it won't be suc- cessful unless all the faculty members buy into the program. "The big issue involves where you are anchored in terms of which department is going to take the initiative. Do you locate it in computer science or business?" Too often, he says, the resulting program looks like one "designed by a committee." It's not just the faculty members who have to be ready to through engineering programs and science programs come back to school and get graduate degrees in business," he pre- dicts. "We'll see them coming into the marketplace and into the business schools to provide a more technical perspective." "I think technology is going to be critically important in the future. In fact, it may become so important that it will be absorbed into the functional areas, and we really won't need separate MIS courses," says Ramaprasad. "But there is suffi- cient new technology going forward that I think there is still a market for people who are more technically oriented." He expects future emphasis to be on more interdisciplinary programs that change the way MIS is viewed. "We have mis- labeled it by calling it 'management of information systems,'" he says. "We should call it management of information. I would like to think we'll start focusing on information man- agement, that we'll go beyond information technology and information systems." Whether technology becomes so pervasive that it is accept a technology focus; the campus has to be prepared as well, Chalykoff points out. "You must have the infrastructure that can support it," he says. "At Boston, every part of our business school is wired. You can't sit anywhere, whether it's in the cafeteria or the hallways, where you can't plug in." A successful tech-related management degree also requires the involvement of the business community, Chalykoff notes. absorbed into core courses, or whether it becomes so special- ized that the best approach will be a dual degree, technology has become an integral part of the management education field. No corporation can survive today without a basic understanding of the Internet, electronic communication, and database management. No business school can survive without meeting the needs of those corporations—by pro- ducing students whose soft skills and hard knowledge make them savvy managers in today's business world. ■ z BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 29