Tech students are falling short when learning about business

Don't expect the next generation of computer science graduates to be of much help in addressing the problems facing IT.

There will be fewer of them, and they're not learning the skills they need to grapple with the changing face of IT, says Ken Rau, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and an independent consultant.

Rau teaches a management of information systems class in the business school at UNCW and says his is the only course many of his students ever take that addresses management-level issues, as opposed to technical ones.

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Don't expect the next generation of computer science graduates to be of much help in addressing the problems facing IT.

There will be fewer of them, and they're not learning the skills they need to grapple with the changing face of IT, says Ken Rau, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and an independent consultant.

Rau teaches a management of information systems class in the business school at UNCW and says his is the only course many of his students ever take that addresses management-level issues, as opposed to technical ones.

"Maybe part of our problem is we're not educating people correctly," he says. Graduates are quickly thrown into managing contracts, outsourcers and dealing with Sarbanes-Oxley - jobs for which they haven't been adequately trained.

Some institutions are addressing that problem head-on.

In Pennsylvania, Lehigh University claims its Computer Science and Business (CSB) degree is the only undergraduate degree program in the country that offers accredited degrees in business and computer science. Jim Hall, a professor in the program, says 20 students transferred into it as sophomores in 2001 and graduated in 2005. "They all work for KPMG, IBM, [PricewaterhouseCoopers], companies like that," he says. Another 25 were due to graduate in May. "They all have offers; most have multiple offers."

Yet the CSB program is attracting only about 25 students per year, even though there's room for 40.