MIS / Information Technology / Business Help

raellis123
Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:02:32 +0000

Can’t help you with the on-line MIS degrees, but might be able to help with your other questions. I’m in the IT business in a managment role; my current focus is on project managers and business analysts, but I’ve hired other technical roles in the past as well.

In my experience, for the technical roles the question is really what do you know (technology/tool/language/etc.) and what experience do you have with it. Having certifications (as you mentioned) is a big help. So it is certainly feasible that the associates degree plus certifications will be a suitable complement to a business degree.

But this also begs the question, what are you wanting to do? Is there something you want to do with general business classes that makes them preferable to the MIS classes? I don’t have a bachelor in either business or MIS, but from what I understand about most 4-yr MIS degrees they include a lot of basic business courses anyway. If you are wanting to work in a technology field, having knowledge of a variety of technical skill sets will make you more attractive to an employer. They might be looking for someone with networking + another specific skill set. If you can get that skill set through the classes it just helps you get a little farther in the hiring process.

But if you are wanting to take a somewhat different career path then the business classes might be better. However, if you are looking at the general business classes as a path to management, I think you would be better off getting the more technical MIS degree, getting some experience, then going back and getting an MBA. Just my opinion and certainly there are a lot of managers out there without MBAs.