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September 19, 2006
Marketing the IS Program
In an earlier post I mentioned that UT Austin has taken a marketing-oriented approach to increasing their IS majors. With the guidance of one of their Steering Committee executives, they sought to increase enrollments using a classic marketing approach. Namely:
- Clarify targeting, positioning, and message
- Develop campaign theme
- Develop communications strategy
- Execute that strategy
As part of number 1, they learned that potential IS majors suffer from two misconceptions. a) The majority of IT/IS jobs are going overseas and b) the number of IS/IT jobs is on the decline. In fact, between 2004 and 2006, the number of IT jobs increased 100 percent. They learned that they needed, in part, to correct these misconceptions.
Part of their strategy was to develop two IS minors: an analytical one that included data mining and a technical one that included programming and database management. Slides here.
They also developed a communication plan as described here. (Note, to reduce download time, the graphics were removed from this ppt. If you want the full 4+megabyte, zipped version, click here.)
The result is that their entry level class enrollments are up 50%!
As shown on the last slide in the communication plan, they believe the most important actions were to change their old Office Skills class into an Introduction to MIS class. (That class, by the way, has a significant technical aspect to it ... serious discussions of data communications and database technology / application.) The second most important action was to get out and sell the program. Professors visited other introductory classes and spoke about the IS major and dispelled the misconceptions above.
This approach seems to me to be right on target.
The key element was to get the message to freshmen.
Thanks to Elota Patton for sharing these files and her experiences!
Posted by DavidK at September 19, 2006 11:31 AM | Permalink