What information technology asks of business higher education institutions: The case of Rhode Island

Journal of Information Systems Education, Jul 2003 by Desplaces, David E, Beauvais, Laura L, Peckham, Joan M

4. DISCUSSION

The research reported in this paper reinforces the importance of acquiring a degree [i.e., the level of education attained is significantly related to an individual's level of compensation (p = .002)]. This finding has been documented in the past literature. This research also indicates that the only certification to significantly influence pay across the IT field was Database Administration or Architecture Certifications (p = .034). This finding could signal both the current needs of the industry for genuine database-skilled professionals and organizations' day-to-day reliance on qualified database professionals compared to other major IT skills. These results also suggest that just having the database skills (p = .257), without certification, does not necessarily make one qualified. This is the reason that certified Database Administration or Architecture workers are paid more than non-certified ones. This finding could also signal that makeshift or improvised IT professionals could benefit from certified formal training in the area of database administration that is driven by industry standards.

An interesting finding points to executives or IT managers having acquired project management skills (with a frequency of 90.9 percent compared to the remaining population frequency of 32.6 percent), yet lack Internet or E-Commerce Development Skills (with a frequency of 9.1 percent compared to 49.7 percent in the overall IT professional population). This marks the need to expose executives to internet or e-commerce development concepts, since these concepts appear to be driving our digital economy (Barrenechea, 2001). This finding could signal a dangerous recipe for the organization, where by the blind is driving the herd. To where is the herd heading? We would argue that IT executives must at least have a strong knowledge (in the form of skills) of E-Commerce to be able to formulate a strategy in this area.

Further, the results seem to provide evidence that technical support professionals are not as skilled as other professionals in the field. Our analysis indicates that technical support job holders are unlikely to have Internet and E-Commerce Development skills (with an occurrence rate of 12.5% compared to 54.4% across all other IT professionals), and have a significantly lower proportion of Database Administration or Architecture (with an occurrence rate of 9.4%, compared to 43.8%), Software Application Development (with an occurrence rate of 6.3% compared to 26.8%), and Project Management skills (with an occurrence rate of 18.8% compared to 39.4%). These results might indicate that technical support workers have specialized functions that are not similar to other IT professionals and that were not measured in the present study.

Even though job-specific skills or certifications exist, they are not systematically and significantly related to specific job categories. That is, different certifications and skills appear scattered across different job functions, indicating that specific skills and certifications do not necessarily reflect the job function of an individual IT professional. Perhaps the development of the field is not mature enough to ascertain the specific types of skills and certifications necessary for particular IT jobs, or alternatively, perhaps different IT professionals can be successful with a diversity of educational and training experiences. However, these results underscore the importance of a good educational foundation for IT workers (shown to be significant in predicting salary with p