An Information Systems Master Programme in Romania. Some Commonalities and Specificities

Abstract

This paper presents some preliminary results of a survey conducted in 2013 and 2015 for the graduates of Information Systems (IS) master programme at Al.I.Cuza University of Iasi. The survey main objectives were to gather information about graduates employability, to identify the required skills on the IT market, to find out the graduates opinion about the programme (including curricula, syllabi, internship, infrastructure, teaching staff), and program strengths and weaknesses and realign curricula to the industry demand. A brief description of main IS career tracks was provided according to ACM/AIS curricula guidelines. Enrollment for both undergraduate and master IS programmes were compared to international trends. Some other assumptions which were checked relate to: the type of employers and customers of the IT projects the graduates work for, the moment of getting the first job, the structure IT vs. non-IT and managerial vs. non-managerial ( also overall and by genre) positions/jobs of the graduates. The IT functional (sub)areas of graduates positions were discussed in relation to the current state of Romanian IT market which is massively dependent on off shoring.

Keywords

• Information Systems Curricula
• Graduates Survey
• IS Employability
• IS Programmes – Industry Alignment