Is a Specialized Education in VLIS Valuable?

neg ebx asks: "Carnegie Mellon University recently started a masters program that revolves around managing very large information systems (VLIS): 'Very Large Information Systems(VLIS) are large repositories of data that can be found in industry, government, military, academic, and scientific settings. They take the form of internet content providers, business transactions, text, video, financial transactions, genomic data, health care management, scientific data sets, etc. Currently, digital librarians manage the information, while responsibilities for operating a VLIS falls to various system administrators, system architects, and database administrators. This diffusion of responsibility results in inconsistent interfaces, a heterogeneous collection of systems that may not interoperate effectively, and a general disjointedness and inefficiency.' If you where going to hire someone to manage your information systems would you see a benefit in them having a specialized education as opposed to 3 or 4 years of experience?"

Comments

A degree in VLIS is too specialized

[seminumerical]

A degree in VLIS is too specialized. We can expect to see information storage standardized in the lifetime of any presently young college student. There will be niche work in antiquated technologies. Big deal. Anyway this degree is called a masters in library science in Canada.

Who says it has to be either/or

[psykocrime]

If you where going to hire someone to manage your information systems would you see a benefit in them having a specialized education as opposed to 3 or 4 years of experience?"

Do you see those two things as mutually exclusive? What about once the guy with the specialized degree has 3-4 years of experience? Then the choice might be "a guy with a specialized degree and 3-4 years of experience, vs. a guy with 3-4 years of experience and no degree" or "a guy with a specialized degree and 3-4 years of experience, vs. a guy with 5-6 years of experience and a general degree," etc, etc, ad infinitum.

It seems like every time the issue of education and / or certification comes up on Slashdot, somebody inevitably frames the question this way "experience *versus* education." That's a gross over simplification and completely ignores so many aspects of the real world dynamic. Hiring decisions are made based on many factors, in my experience, and I don't think you can safely generalize many of these things the way slashdotters tend too.

Of course, I'm not really answering your question, am I? I suppose not, but I guess my point is to look at the big picture and try and estimate how all the pieces will fit together both now and in the future.

FWIW, if I were reviewing resumes to hire for such a position, somebody with that degree, from Carnegie-Mellon, would be a strong candidate to go in the "interview this guy" pile. And that's really all education, resumes, etc. are for... to get you in the door for an interview. Once you're there, then the onus is on you to sell yourself. The exact nature of your degree, experience, etc. are just details... what a hiring manager wants to know (as well as possible) is "can this guy do the job, and will this guy fit in here?"