What should MIS schools be teaching?

This article is about 1 1/2 years old but mirrors our recent discussions. It's by Steve Andriole who teaches Villanova U and is also the CTO of TechVest, a venture capital firm. Here's what he has to say about the MIS major:

Since MIS majors tend to be technologically broad rather than deep, the strategic/operational distinction is actually a very useful one: Why not focus more on strategic technology than commoditized operational technology? And what about technology management? With more and more outsourcing, it seems to me that project, portfolio and vendor management might be good skills to develop.

What might an MIS curriculum look like? In addition to "the basics" like data communications, database management and enterprise applications, 21st-century MIS programs could focus on business analytics, supply-chain optimization, digital security and lots of technology management skills. Over and over again I hear companies express interest in hiring people who know how to write business cases for technology projects, how to mange projects (and portfolios), how to manage vendors and how to communicate all this effectively orally and in written documentation (including, of course, killer Powerpoint presentations). A third option would be to "verticalize" MIS curricula, re-defining courses around the requirements of specific industries, like pharmaceutical, financial services, manufacturing and insurance industries. All of this would result in three or four curriculum layers: one for the basics, one for strategic technology, one for technology management, and one optional layer that's vertical.

And how about the CS major?

Computer science programs need to focus less on programming languages and much, much more on architectures, integration and interoperability. Much less on algorithms and discrete structures and much more on software engineering best practices.

In effect, I'm suggesting that computer science jettison its strict mathematical foundations in favor of courses (and internships) that link operating systems, data architectures and algorithmic problem-solving techniques to specific classes of problems that graduates will face when they hit the trenches. While the next version of Microsoft Office has to be written by someone, I'd prefer it if our software architects and engineers treated problem-solving holistically, anticipating the new Web Services-based service-oriented architectures (and event-driven architectures) likely to re-define the way we all think about software applications and transaction processing.

Andriole's profile:

I've spent most of my career in industry, but I've also spent some years in academia. After some time at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), I started a software design and development company which I ran for eight years before spending some time at both George Mason and Drexel Universities -- before becoming SVP and CTO of CIGNA and then of Safeguard Scientifics, Inc.