Increasing information systems enrollments: Long-term - Short-term approaches

Information systems academic programs through much of the world face a daunting challenge - reversing recent sharp enrollment declines. Since the heady days of the dot-com boom, enrollments in many programs have dropped by 70% or more. The very existence of some programs is in question. A number of approaches for addressing this challenge have been proposed and implemented. In this paper we classify some of these approaches along two dimensions, time and whether the approaches are structural in nature or communication-based. We also briefly describe some of the potential causes for the enrollment decline. This helps frame the approaches discussed later in the paper.