On the Differences Between MIS/CIS/CS Degrees?

Dark Ninja asks: "I find that after having a professional IT job (C++ programmer/DBA) for four+ years, not having a degree is a hindrance to finding a job. So with this in mind, I'm planning on attending college soon, but I want to know the difference between an Management Information System, Computer Information System, and Computer Science degrees? Better yet, which ones do you suggest (ie. to allow advancement, which allows for what jobs, etc)?"

Comments

The One True Degree

[Greyfox]

I did one year at Purdue in their CPT program (CS was full) and it was about as useless as tits on a bull. I wanted to be writing compilers in C and they were teaching us BASIC and COBOL. Admittedly, this was in the '80s.

Our office newbie has an IT degree from a local state school and they taught him Visual Basic and COBOL. This was recently enough that it should be criminal.

If you want a piece of paper and don't really care much for the field, a hiring manager won't know the difference between the (hard) CS degree and the easier CS/IT/MIS degree. They'll figure it's got "Computer" in it so you should be qualified to do anything. So it really is a wash from a job perspective. If you really want to learn about computers, though, CS is where you want to go.