Information Systems Majors Outpacing Other Business Grads In Job Placement, Salary

ATLANTA, Jan. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Students who earn a degree in Information Systems (IS) are in high demand in the U.S. job market and garner larger starting salaries than those of their business-school peers, a new survey shows.

According to the 2019 Information Systems Jobs Index, a Bachelor's degree in IS boasts a 70 percent placement rate upon graduation, which is higher than both the reported average for business-school placement rate (59 percent) and the national cumulative rate (58 percent). Additionally, the average salary offer for IS undergraduates ($65,314) is the highest among all business-school majors.

The fourth installment of the IS Jobs Index, which is produced biannually by researchers from Temple University for the Association for Information Systems (AIS), surveyed 1,420 IS graduates from 43 universities across the country. The aim of the joint project, which also enjoys support from NBC Universal, is to produce reliable national-level data about the state of the IS industry.

Other notable findings from the study include:

• IS Master's salaries: The average salary offer for IS Master's students is $84,113, which is 15 percent higher than the average offer for all business-school Master's graduates.
• Diversity: IS Bachelor's graduates include more than double the percentage of African-Americans of other STEM fields such as Computer Science, and significantly higher ratios of women. Fifty percent of IS Master's graduates are women, up from 36 percent in 2016.
• Internships: 71 percent of Bachelor's students and 61 percent of Master's students hold one or more internships prior to graduation—and internships almost double the likelihood of receiving a job offer.
• Mobility: 21 percent of Bachelor's and 37 percent of Master's IS students move out of the region in which they earn their degree.
• Job satisfaction: 83 percent of Bachelor's graduates and 70 percent of Master's grads report feeling "satisfied and enthused" about their job offers.

"The report shows that IS jobs pay well, that the students are well-trained, and that they are excited about starting their career," says index co-author Munir Mandviwalla, Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Institute for Business and Information Technology.

The index also offers invaluable data for employers, says Michael Bradshaw, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of NBC Universal. "There are insights backed by data into why students accept or reject offers," he says, "as well as regional mobility and the preparedness of future employees."

The AIS-Temple Job Index is the only systematic and comprehensive assessment of the IS job market. It examines and produces data about job placement, salaries, preparedness, graduate demographics, job satisfaction and search strategies in IS across the nation.

More: To read the Information Systems Job Index, visit isjobindex.com.

SOURCE Association for Information Systems