Hey all, I am currently a freshman studying business and am trying to decide what majors/minors to get. I am thinking about a double major in operations and MIS with a minor in IT. Any thoughts about this? Is it a good/marketable combo? Thanks for any input!
Sorry, what’s an Operations major?
Below is the description given on my school’s website. It is an operations management degree.
This major offers a strong managerial and technical education that focuses on advanced knowledge about best practices, current technologies, tools and their applications, and leadership. The graduate can anticipate entering fields such as manufacturing planning and control, supply chain management, service management, project management, process management and quality management.
Hope this helps
There is definitely a good overlap in skillset between MIS/Ops. What career fields interest you?
I would do Finance or Accounting with IT/MIS as second major or minor. Ops does not sound like a good major. No one goes into the business world as a manager. Sounds really fluffy.
Ops is actually pretty technical, process oriented, and can be quantitative so it would be the opposite of fluffy. It’s about proving optimization of processes.
Ops and MIS. The IT minor would be redundant.
MIS is good if you want to manage projects. It is a marketable degree along with OM (operations management). Now IT would just be excessive and not wroth it. Most MIS and OM classes overlap so you will not be overwhelmed whatsoever. I would stick with MIS and OM and forget IT. You will be focusing on the business aspect of IT. Just an advice to consider.
What is your distinction between MIS and IT? Do you mean MIS and computer science? A computer science minor with MIS/Ops degrees isn’t bad and not necessarily a lot of overlap depending upon the MIS class options you have.
But I agree MIS and Ops is a good degree combination and you wouldn’t necessarily need a minor.
MIS is a combination of management and IT. If you like computers and technology along with managing then that’s the major for you. It’s like working at a software company for the IT department but a person with an MIS gets the management position compared to someone with an IT degree. You focus more on managing projects AND how to get the project done in MIS. In IT you learn how to get the project done.
I would focus just on one major and gain experience and learn how do to the job right. People nowadays look for experience and how to do the job right on top of the degree. If you put all your effort and time in double majoring and not giving yourself time to intern then it won’t help when trying to get a job. You need real world experience opposed to a double major or major and minor @raellis123
@savagestudent18, I’ve been in IT/MIS for 25+ years, so I know what it is in the real world. In the college context I’ve always heard MIS and IT mean pretty much the same thing, so that’s why I was curious about the OP’s definition of those.
I think the “management” side of MIS is typically overblown. It is really just CS without the math. Most of my MIS classes were very technical, granted they were grad classes. I took classes like databases/DBMS, networks & telecomminications, data structures, systems programming, etc. Just was light in the mathematics theory behind the subjects. None of them talked about “managing” IT other than the one MBA class that looked at IT from an economic perspective. And before the CS folks get upset, I agree that degree is more difficult and technical, my comment is more about the MIS side.
For the OP, any of those paths you take is fine. Just start taking some and figure out what you like.