Business IT in the top 10

BIT assistant professor Alan Abrahams teaches a senior capstone course, Business Analysis Seminar in IT.

A report published in October 2008 by TechRepublic, an online forum and resource for IT professionals, includes Pamplin’s business information technology program among the top 10 IT programs in the country.

The list may help CIOs and IT managers “find the colleges and universities that are producing some of the best IT talent on the planet,” said TechRepublic’s editor-in-chief Jason Hiner. “A degree from one of these 10 programs will provide a great foundation for a successful IT career.”

The report focuses on the CIO career track and examines programs offering the most value to students who want to work in the business end of IT, in such roles as support professional, network administrator, project manager, IT consultant, and IT manager. “For that crowd, a strong foundation in business administration is just as important as a good technical education,” Hiner noted.

The 10 programs are not ranked but are described in individual sections. The section on Pamplin discusses the BIT curriculum and the online business guidebook student project and includes comments by BIT department head B.W. Taylor.

Taylor said BIT enrollments at Pamplin and other schools have dropped steadily since the dot-com crash in 2002, he said. At Pamplin, enrollments fell from more than 800 in 2001 at the height of the dot-com boom to fewer than 300 currently. Meanwhile, demand among employers for graduates with BIT skills has rebounded.

The major continues to be among the top 10 majors sought by companies recruiting at Virginia Tech. New graduates, he said, average more than $52,000 in starting salary (the sixth highest average starting salary in the university and the highest non-engineering starting salary).

Taylor is unsure why enrollments in the major remain low, despite good job prospects and various publicity measures by his department. “One reason for the anomaly may be a persisting false impression among students that the field offers limited prospects, given the trend towards overseas outsourcing,” he said.

“It’s true that programming jobs have moved offshore, but there are numerous other IT jobs that require a higher level of IT skills and business knowledge and a higher level of interaction with the customer.”