I have daughter who is a college freshman and she had IT/computer class at school. From what she told me the class lacked alignment to business. In industry today businesses are looking for business value, not IT, so for a business to adopt IT/computer solutions, you need to provide business value benefits before IT/computer solutions.

An IT textbook is an IT Textbook. It is not meant to be fun and entertaining. Seems to me there was a time when all you had to do was be able to red and comprehend....

This is just great. Yep! Let's just start dumbing down our textbooks to compensate for the mass dumbdown thats been going on since we first did away with 'sounding out the words" when learning to read in grade school. I know. How bout we change the requirements to "can stay inside the line when coloring....

Oh I know... Let's slow everyone down since Johnny can't read so it'll f-e-e-e-el good about itself.... We'll have a cadre of ignorant little minions running IT who cant read or understand , but by golly they'll feel good about their employability....

The less we expect of our students the less we get. Am I the only one that sees that? What's to discuss and debate?

Somebody ...anybody ... please please ... I beg you ... please hit the ENDLOOP!

The problem is not Textbooks, Technology, or Business. The problem is pure economics, if I am going to study Math and Engineering I will want to get paid when I get out of College so I can pay off my student loans. Beginning with the proliferation of Microsoft products in the industry, management thinks any third grader can run the operations of the hardware and software. There is no need to change the text books or the approach. When IT had some of the top salaries in any business, students flocked to the discipline. Now it has become as mundane and not lucrative in the wallet.

This is all nothing new. I was involved in an IT roundtable at a local college 15 years ago where the question was asked "What can we do better?" The answer from the managers was consistant. Give us people who can think and know business. We don't want someone who just knows about loops. Our middle school kids can do that. We want someone who knows how to use a loop to solve business problems.

All we got from the college staff were blank stares as if they didn't have a clue what we were talking about.

If it is a technology course, then of course the text should be technical, though I agree it would be helpful if examples related to recognizable problems rather than Let A be a Array. It is more fun and interesting if teaching is given a context and purpose, e.g., show how statistics are used to make real-world decisions. But in the end, excellence in math, science, engineering, programming all require a strong mastery of complicated material. It is hard work.

In the same way, if it is a business course, then the material will have its own specialized focus and also require hard work and practice.

Since I think both business and technology require years of study and experience, I'm dubious of claims to simultaneously teach technology and business with any real depth. My suggestion is, have an interest in both, master one, then master the other.

Would you hire as a programmer someone who had a business degree plus a few introductory courses in IT? Doubtful. Why would you expect a technical graduate to have business credibility if they've just taken a few business courses. (I don't even consider an MBA without significant work experience to have much business credibility, though they overflow with jargon and confidence.)

I believe in aiming high and challenging people, but it seems dishonest to let a student believe that a few business courses will let them understand business, the same way a few IT courses doesn't let you understand IT.

Re prior comments:

Greg - why does giving technical problems a business context 'dumb them down'?

Wayne - programming can be outsourced to the other side of the world to the lowest bidder, and MSFT Office can solve many business problems that used to require IT departments. But, the ability to understand and balance the priorities of Accounting, Production and Legal will always earn a premium. In fact, eventually that can get you promoted to CIO, COO level jobs. The challenge is explaining to biz managers that the website their nephew wrote in a week is not the same thing as a corporate portal which does take $$$ and time.

Enough Friday afternoon rambling...

John
BS, MBA, MSc in IT

Some of you seem to be missing the point. It's not about textbooks at all (UGH!). The highest salaries go to those graduates that COMBINE business and IT.

So, instead of doing the same tired old things every semester, why not try to "blend" two courses together (intro to business & intro to IT) and team teach it with faculty from both disciplines.

Introduce High Performance Teaming into the first couple of weeks and all work is team-based as well as project-based. The blended projects make the content really come alive.

Nothing has to be dumbed down. The techie geeks will help the business nerds and vice-versa. Virtually everyone wins. (pun intended)

Don't waste money on textbooks! Everything you would ever want to learn is free for the asking on the web. IT or Business. Textbooks are the lazy way out. Get with the 21st century.

I've been working with a Dutch IT firm since 2000 and we wouldn't even think of using a textbook. Far too many resources on the web. I've trained over 1000 of their new hires. All they do is send us more.

Bill
BS, MS, Doctorate

jfx, I wouldn't get too smug with the false security of higher education...The next wave of positions being offshored, even as we speak, are accountants, analysts, MBAs, attorneys, doctors (such as radiologists), and other formerly "safe" occupations. As someone in IT with advanced degrees, I can only imagine how ugly it's going to get if this goes unchecked. Thankfully it's a HUGE issue in the upcoming elections, so you can likely count on new laws coming to bear to address this in the years to come.

Higher Education tries (and often fails) to produce grads with both business and technical skill. When I was in college, there was the hard-core CS curriculum and the biz/technical MIS path. In theory, MIS would be the path of least resistance to management. In reality, the MIS grads were not technical enough for entry-level programming, and were simultaneously outflanked by finance, marketing, and other majors. Senior management SAYS they want broadly focused grads, but middle management HIRES entry-level stars, optimized for a narrowly-focused job. If you don't land that first job, there is no need to worry about moving up.

American business has become addicted to cheap labor. We want the benefits of subsidized hire education, except we don't want to pay the taxes to subsidize it. Somehow, we expect our students to take on massive amounts of debt and then compete with offshore people who pay lower taxes and get their education for free. You don't see offshore developers trying to amortize $50K of student debt, do you?

Then again, do they even have 4-year degrees? Does it matter anymore? We SAY we want communication skills, but then we hand the work to people who would fail a 3rd grade English test. What we say we want and are willing to pay for are two completely different things.

It will be interesting to see if there is a market for highly-skilled and trained professionals. Something needs to distinguish the distinguish the high standards vs the "just barely good enough" mindset that floods the market with cheap knockoffs (products AND people). There are some products that should not be purchased at Walmart. There are some jobs that should not be relegated the offshore bargain bin.

We must develop that market, knowing that the commodity work is going to be sent offshore. Not an easy task.