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Some implications of the Year-2000 era, dot-com era, and offshoring for information systems pedagogy (1).

Article Excerpt
In the tumultuous days of the Year-2000 crisis and the dot-com boom, at least in some countries the demand for information systems/information technology (IS/IT) professionals seemed insatiable. Many pundits believed the economies of these countries had undergone fundamental structural changes. A new era had emerged--one where remarkable gains in effectiveness and efficiency had been achieved through uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs). As a result, the future for IS/IT professionals seemed rosy. In a world that relied increasingly on ICTs, many observers believed that demand for IS/IT skills would remain buoyant. IS/IT professionals became the workforce elite. The high compensation levels they could command reflected their newfound status.

By the end of 2002, some harsh realities had become apparent. It was clear the previous few years had been an aberration. The boom was over. Companies that provided ICTs languished. Their customers were no longer willing to make heavy investments in ICTs. Instead, they were content to try to leverage their existing IS/IT assets--those they had made in the lead up to 2000 and the heyday of the dot-com boom. In some countries, the demand for the provision of services by IS/IT professionals also plummeted. In the absence of ICT investments, organizations curbed their development work. Accordingly, they downsized their IS/IT workforce. Overall, there was a sense that discipline had to be exercised once again in the ICT marketplace. The excesses of the previous few years had to be purged.

Around the same time, a new phenomenon that affected the demand for IS/IT professionals began to gain prominence. Specifically, many organizations commenced to relocate their IS/IT operations to countries other than those where they were domiciled. They sought ways to reduce their IS/IT expenditures substantially, perhaps as a reaction to the heavy costs they had incurred in the Year-2000 and dot-com eras. India and China, in particular, were beneficiaries of this phenomenon. These two countries had many highly skilled, highly experienced IS/IT professionals. Relative to most other countries, however, the cost of employing these professionals was low.

In many ways, this offshoring phenomenon was simply a natural extension of the outsourcing phenomenon that had occurred throughout the 1990s. Through outsourcing, some organizations had sought to achieve greater returns on their IS/IT investments by having them placed with other organizations that had a comparative advantage in providing the services they required. Often, however, the outsourcing vendor was located in the same country as the customer. Thus, the customer reaped few gains, if any, from differential labor costs. Offshoring changed this situation. Customers not only benefited from having access to professionals who were more highly skilled than their own IS/IT workforce, they also substantially reduced their labor costs.

Throughout this period, the demand for student places in IS/IT within tertiary institutions mirrored the demand for IS/IT professionals in the marketplace, albeit with some time lag. As a result, many tertiary institutions also experienced the boom and bust of the Year-2000 and dot-com eras and their aftermath. During the period in which the boom gathered momentum, tertiary institutions scrambled to provide basic resources like computers, library facilities, laboratory space, and classroom space. Many also found their administrative processes were inadequate to handle student needs. Also, as academics working in the field, we found we could command a premium for our services. The demand for Ph.D. graduates substantially outstripped the supply. Graduating Ph.D. students found they had multiple job offers.

When the bust set in, the inevitable consequences occurred. Students saw that IS/IT jobs had dried up. They shifted to other disciplines where the job market for graduates was brighter. Many tertiary institutions found they had various courses and subjects that could no longer be sustained because of low student demand. Furthermore, they found they had a number of ineffective and inefficient administrative processes that had been implemented hurriedly to try to meet burgeoning demands during the boom. Also, Ph.D. students in the pipeline realized they had invested in education to gain employment in an academic marketplace that had soured. On one of the few occasions in the history of our discipline, the supply of graduating Ph.D. students exceeded the demand.

On the one hand, we can frame the Year-2000 and dot-com eras as an extended, disastrous period for both the IS/IT profession and ourselves as educators. We can berate ourselves for our foolishness in believing that (1) the world had changed...

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