Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2010

Publication Source

Communications of the Association for Information Systems

Abstract

Given declining management information systems (MIS) enrollments at our university, we seek to understand our students‘ selection of a major. Prior studies have found that students choose a major based on a number of factors, with subject matter interest consistently being most important. We contribute to the literature by developing a deeper understanding of what is meant by subject matter interest, which we refer to as smiFactors, for MIS as a major and career. Based on a qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions completed by undergraduate business students, we confirm a number of smiFactors for MIS gleaned from recent studies and identify three new ones. We also relate our findings to broad categories of vocational interests. Of the newly identified smiFactors, one—linking business and technology—is unique to MIS, whereas the other two—practical application of course work and daily variety—apply to MIS as well as other majors and careers. Our findings provide a more complete foundation for helping students make an informed choice of MIS as a major. We use our findings and an extension of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to identify four types of intervention for increasing MIS enrollments.

Inclusive pages

265-284

ISBN/ISSN

1529-3181

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

The document available for download is provided in compliance with the publisher's policy on self-archiving. Permission documentation is on file.

Publisher

Association for Information Systems

Volume

27

Issue

16

Peer Reviewed

yes


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