| William H. Magill on Sun, 18 May 2003 05:06:18 -0400 |
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On Friday, May 16, 2003, at 04:30 PM, Molnar, Bradley wrote: I do not like MIS (my brother is doing it and he finds it jokingly easy --
Totally depending upon the curriculum of the particular educational entity, those two terms are interchanged, mean the same thing, apply to Graduate and Undergraduate studies, etc. VERY generally speaking "Computer Science" means someone who is going to design algorithms to solve problems, not someone who writes programs for a living. CS is "normally" a very theoretical environment. A CS degree is normally a "Bachelor of Science" degree. Which is to say, it is "normally" a "technical" degree. The various MIS type of named curriculum tend to "normally" lead to a "Bachelor of Arts" degree. Which is to say it is more of a "philosophical" degree than a technical one. The programs that I am familiar with are all attached to "schools of management." A CS degree tends to prepare one to "build and run a computer" while a MIS degree tends to prepare one to buy and use computers in the accomplishment of some "business function." At the University of Pennsylvania, if I remember correctly, the Computer Science Engineering degree is the BS degree in the School of Engineering. The Computer Science degree is also in the School of Engineering and is normally a Masters or PHD Degree. The equivalent MIS degree, I think is called Operations Management, and is based in the Wharton School of Business. It all comes down to what are the courses involved in the program at a particular school. The name of the degree is not particularly significant. At one school, a CS Degree program won't teach you how to write programs. They teach you how to program -- frequently expecting you to write programs in exotic languages like LISP or SNOBOL or PASCAL. Today, a first year student is likely expected to know how to program in C and will take a course on JAVA. (JAVA the programming language, not Java Beans or Java Script.) You'll encounter courses which explore problem solving techniques, frequently with seriously higher mathematics. You are building the background for a PHD... not a job. At another school, a CS Degree will teach you to write programs in Visual Basic, C++ and other Microsoft oriented languages. You will learn what you need to know to get a MSE certification after you graduate along the way. The world of academic degrees is anything but consistent. It all depends on what you want to do "next." A MS or PHD degree normally has pretty specific "pre-requisites." An MBA on the other hand is an "add-on" degree which can be gotten with any undergraduate degree, and which does NOT (normally) lead to a PHD. A job working as a "Researcher" at IBM or Bell Labs is different than working as an "Engineer" at those companies. A job working as a programmer is different than a job as a manager of programmers. The skill sets for all of them overlap, but each has a lobe of specialized knowledge which is different. The curriculum options in "Computer Science" available today are dramatically wider today than they were just 5 years ago. -- even as the core-courses have become standardized. Unless you have some very specific career objective, you can't go wrong with a degree from any "name" College or University. As someone pointed out 2-year degrees don't necessarily transfer to 4 year programs. However, Community College of Philadelphia and Drexel do have an "add-on" program. I don't know the details of it.
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