Master’s of Science Programs in Information Systems: Match Between the Model Curriculum and Existing Programs

In a rapidly changing Information Systems (IS) field, the marketability of students from IS programs is partly related to the responsiveness of the programs to changing market conditions. Thus, curriculum development and periodic finetuning plays a very important role. This paper is an attempt to evaluate the current status of Master’s of Science programs in IS and to study their fit with the recently proposed MSIS 2000 model curriculum. We studied 86 Master’s of Science programs in IS and mapped them onto the proposed curriculum structure. Matches and mismatches with the proposed model curriculum are reported in our results. The results indicate the fit to be somewhat mixed. We have also presented some implications for university administrators and faculty for using the findings of this study and also for further curriculum research