Get ready for the Microsoft Masters
Sheffield Hallam is linking up with the computer giant to train experts in its software
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Your support makes all the difference.hy do we send people to university? To train the mind and elevate thinking to a higher plane, regardless of economic impact? Or to train people to make, or possibly fix, widgets needed by the populace outside the cloistered world of academia? Certainly, there are pockets within higher education where the first, laudable, aim remains paramount, but many institutions are shifting towards the other option.
At Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), a significant step has just been taken in exactly that direction, with two Masters courses starting in September that aim to turn students into money-earners within four months.
It's the result of a collaboration between SHU's Computers and Computing department and Microsoft, one of the world's mightiest business and ICT brands.
The dual aim is to produce Masters-level students within the usual time-frame of 18 to 24 months, and at the same time to train future consultants fully versed in the Microsoft Dynamics package of programmes, an all-encompassing business management tool.
As Microsoft tries to expand the use of these so-called enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relations management (CRM) tools into small- and medium-sized businesses in the UK and further afield, it needs a supply of technical experts and managers, working for key IT support businesses, to help individual companies install the system. "The general IT manager of a business will not be able to buy Microsoft Dynamics at PC World, load it and just get on with their work," says Richard Barker, SHU's faculty marketing manager.
SHU is convinced the Masters courses will meet an economic demand and provide excellent employment chances for students. Both aims, says the course leader Chris Bates, are exactly what universities such as SHU should address.
"We are not in an ivory tower, trying to produce PhD students who'll go off and invent something," he says. "We are about producing skilled workers for the British economy."
A unique element of these courses - an MBA in Information Systems, and an MSc in Enterprise Application Development - is that, after just four months, it's planned that students will leave Sheffield to work full-time as "billable consultants" specialising in Microsoft Dynamics installation and support.
While they're at work, they'll have to complete the rest of the academic content of the course by distance learning, returning to SHU after a year to complete a research module and do preparatory work for the practical project, the final component of their degrees.
Bates is convinced that, on academic and practical grounds, it is a rigorous and demanding course, in no way diluted by the commercial requirements of Microsoft. "There is no sense in which we are lowering our standards. That would be futile."
Links with the commercial world aren't new at SHU's computing department, which already has arrangements with several of Microsoft's competitors, including Cisco, Oracle, SAP and Sun Microsystems, all of which serve to provide future channels of employment for Hallam's students.
In fact, the entire subject area is driven by a focus on employability. About 2,000 undergraduates are engaged in 21 different first-degree programmes, all of which have a substantial work placement element. And between 200 and 300 postgraduate students are at stages of acquiring higher qualifications, either tied to expertise with specific brand-name products or linked closely to a job description that is in demand.
The "Microsoft Masters" courses are modelled on existing postgraduate programmes. The aim is to take two cohorts of about 20 students on each course every year. The MBA is targeted at graduates with a business- or IT-related degree and at least three years' commercial experience - people likely to be developing a strategic overview of how an ERP/CRM system can serve a company.
The MSc is aimed at the more "techie" characters, skilled at writing codes and making systems work. Raw, recent IT graduates will be accepted here.
Both groups, though, will have to find fees of £10,000, a quarter of which Hallam will pass on to the IT training company, InterQuad Systems, which will, alongside SHU's academic input, train the students on the specifics of Microsoft Dynamics.
This element should ensure that, after just a term, students are employable by businesses in Microsoft's supply chain.
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