In the spring of 2012 the Council of Information Systems Professors (CISP) in conjunction with the Higher Education Academy (HEA) commissioned a study of the health of the Information Systems discipline. Funding for this project was provided by the Higher Education Academy and the research was carried between April and June 2012.
The purposes of the project is to broaden the understanding of:
- the Information Systems discipline;
- the IS student numbers over the past five years: i.e. undergraduate (UG) postgraduate (PG) and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) students;
- the health of the IS discipline with respect to student uptake of and satisfaction with the discipline;
- employer demand for IS graduates and the competences needed in future graduates;
- the profiles of IS students (age gender etc.);
- the various approaches taken by universities to Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) submissions in 2008 – and the effect of research exercises e.g. the current Research Excellence Framework’ requirements for future IS submissions.
As the research unfolded lessons were learnt along the way and resulted in the a slight deviation in the structure of the report from the original plan. Some areas yielded no significant information e.g. the National Student Survey (NSS) data - which was entirely average whilst others yielded important results such as the relevant UCAS1 entry tariffs.
