E-MailTHEORY VS. PRACTICE: WHO OWNS IT EDUCATION AND TRAINING?
by Steve Andriole, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium
The interplay between "theory" and "practice" in IT education is well documented. Scholars and practitioners have been writing about it for decades. Many of these discussions have been about the roles that each community should play: educators should educate; practitioners should apply; educators should communicate principles; practitioners should train. But the relationship is far more complicated than the simple definition of roles: there are issues that surround the pace and trajectory of change in theory and practice; there are issues surrounding the evolving roles of educators and practitioners; and there are even issues surrounding the responsibilities that theory and practice have to their constituents.
THE PRACTICE OF IT
During the period from 2001 to 2004, a quarterly online survey sponsored by Cutter Consortium collected data from CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CTOs, technology managers, technology consultants, and vendors about the content of the IT field, the skill sets necessary to succeed, and the technologies most likely to be applied, neglected, or decommissioned. More than 1,000 professionals responded to these surveys. In 2005, the data was presented to -- and validated by -- the Villanova University CIO Advisory Council in 2005, which consists of 25 CIOs and CTOs from the Philadelphia region.
Overall, the data suggests that the practice of IT is organizing itself around five layers and two flanks. Figure 1 presents the business technology layers and flanks that can be used to identify and describe the skills necessary to succeed in the early 21st century.
Figure 1 -- The layers and flanks of the practice of IT.
THE JOINT TASK FORCE FOR COMPUTING CURRICULA
During that same period of time, the Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula -- consisting of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) -- identified five areas of computing degree concentrations for the early 21st century [1]:
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Computer engineering
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Computer science
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Information systems
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Information technology
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Software engineering
These areas represent the academic programs that the Joint Task Force believes represent the state of the IT field and the educational outcomes we should pursue. They identify a suite of "computing" and "non-computing" areas they believe comprehensively represent the knowledge and skills areas that students in each of the five degree programs should possess.
THEORY VS. PRACTICE
The list of knowledge and skills areas identified by the Joint Task Force that define the components of the five degree programs were derived from academic programs and curricula that have evolved over a long period of time. The Cutter survey data, however, identified knowledge and skills areas from a practitioner's perspective. Table 1 presents the two sets of knowledge/skills areas side by side. The contrast is dramatic. The Joint Task Force's list only barely correlates with the list developed from the Cutter practitioner surveys.
Table 1 -- Joint Task Force Knowledge and Skills Areas vs. Practitioner Areas
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Joint Task Force Areas |
Practitioner Areas |
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Computing knowledge and skills:
Non-computing knowledge and skills:
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Business strategy knowledge and skills:
Business applications knowledge and skills:
Enterprise business technology architecture knowledge and skills:
Technology Infrastructure knowledge and skills:
Technology support knowledge and skills:
Technology acquisition knowledge and skills:
Organization and management knowledge and skills:
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The lack of correlation between the two lists suggests that we revisit the distinction between theory and practice as well as the role that we'd like relevance to play in the design and delivery of early 21st-century technology curricula. The Joint Task Force list speaks directly to enabling technology and very indirectly -- almost not at all -- to the industry problem-solving context in which technology lives -- or dies. Twenty years ago, this distinction made much more sense. But today, it's difficult to generate any distinctions between business and technology, given that nearly all business transactions are enabled by technology.
Therefore, academic programs should acknowledge the widening gap between theory and practice, especially since it has enormous implications on their graduates' ability to find work -- which leads to the second point about the lack of correlation between the Joint Task Force and Cutter practitioner skills lists. A not-so-close inspection of the Joint Task Force list indicates a failure to comprehend the recent trends in nearshore and offshore outsourcing. Increasingly, operational and tactical tasks such as systems development, application maintenance, and help desk support are being outsourced to near- and offshore partners. Too many skills areas on the Joint Task Force list ignore these outsourcing trends. In fact, if we correlated the Joint Task Force list with outsourcing trends, we would find another widening gap.
So what happens when we add outsourcing trends to the mix of business technology layers? We see industry turning to offshore providers to satisfy their operational requirements rather than to US-educated professionals who are not receiving enough of the knowledge or skills that industry values (or is willing to pay for, compared to offshore provider rates). Today, those requirements are relatively low-level operational requirements, but over time, offshore providers will rise up the food chain to more strategic technology capabilities (from the lower to higher layers in Figure 1). It's these latter areas that should catch the attention of US educators since the sourcing battle for layers 4 and 5 is nearly over.
Other important areas to consider are architecture and optimization. One of the most important corporate knowledge areas today -- in fact, the essence of business technology convergence and optimization -- is enterprise architecture. Enterprise business technology architecture is the linchpin among business strategy, strategic applications, technology infrastructure, and technology support. As business is enabled by technology and technology defines new business models and processes, the importance of enterprise business technology architecture is growing by leaps and bounds. (Note: this emerging core competency for the practice of the technology profession is completely unrepresented in the Joint Task Force's list of knowledge and skills areas -- though it is an entire layer in our practitioner survey.) Similarly, business technology optimization is an opportunity area for educators. More and more companies are struggling to optimize the performance of their software applications, networks, database management platforms, and infrastructure.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Perhaps technology curriculum should not be so fine-tuned. It's not clear why we need five different overlapping flavors of academic technology degrees. While distinctions between computer engineering (CE) and the other disciplines are relatively easy to appreciate -- especially because of the role that hardware plays in computer engineering programs -- the difference between information systems (IS), information technology (IT), software engineering (SE), and computer science (CS) are much harder to understand.
Perhaps there should be only three flavors: computer engineering, computer science, and information systems, which can then address the relevance problem from several perspectives. (The focus here will be on the relationship between computer science and information systems; computer engineering will likely remain primarily hardware-focused and in engineering colleges within US universities.) CS programs may need to focus less on alternative programming languages and much, much more on architectures, integration, and interoperability; less on algorithms and discrete structures and much more on software engineering best practices. Another way of saying this is that CS programs should focus less on layers 4 and 5 and a little more on layers 1, 2, and (especially) 3.
In addition to the basics like data communications, database management, and enterprise applications, 21st-century IS programs should focus on business analytics, supply chain optimization, digital security, and lots of technology management skills -- in short, the list of practitioner knowledge and skills areas.
Over and over again, we hear companies express interest in hiring people who know how to write business cases for technology projects, how to manage technology projects (and portfolios), how to manage vendors, and how to communicate all this effectively orally and in written documentation -- all with constant reference to enterprise business technology architecture.
CS programs can enable IS programs, while at the same time maintaining their own identity. The knowledge and skills areas proposed by the Joint Task Force should all be extended to link to the knowledge and skills on the IS side. Clearly, the programs need to be coordinated. Figure 2 suggests how this might work: The Joint Task Force areas appear on the left, and the practitioner areas appear on the right. In the middle are some "bridge areas" that might shrink the gap between the two. These bridges might become required for both CS and IS curricula, allowing CS programs to be more relevant and IS programs to be more grounded in the enabling technology that supports business processes and transactions.
Figure 2 -- The bridge between knowledge and skills areas.
CONCLUSION
The gap between what we teach in colleges and universities and what we do is widening. But there are steps we can take to narrow this gap and respond to where business technology is going and what the world expects from our technology graduates, without compromising the essence of CS and IS education. We need to better understand the breadth of the relevance problem. Next, we need to better understand the bridges between theory and practice. The underlying core issue is philosophical: what are the roles and responsibilities of early 21st-century technology educators?
REFERENCE
1. Joint Task Force for Computing Curricula. "Overview Report including a Guide to Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computing." The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS), 22 November 2004.