Professors at Oakland University in Michigan researched the practices of their AIS program and concluded that the program would better prepare graduates if the accounting aspect was better integrating information systems into it. While reading the research, I noted many parallels between their program and ours. Our AIS program requires students to take accounting classes and MIS classes and similarly to theirs, few accounting classes have information systems rooted at the core. In addition, our MIS program does have a managerial focus which leads us to be less technical than the researchers were hoping for. However, we differ from their programs in that our AIS students are required to take this class, OMIS 150, which satisfies exactly what the professors believe would produce better professionally equipped graduates. After reflection about the different styles of programs, I am in agreement that the integrated approach is much more beneficial to graduates and that more programs should attempt to offer courses of this nature. For example, one of the recommendations was to introduce “how accounting data sits within the overall enterprise database” in principle of accounting courses.
http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=acct_fac