MASTER IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY…some concerns

By Aurelie A. Peralta

MIT nowadays is a very in demand course especially for IT educators because CHED requires them to be a holder of such degree in order for them to qualify as instructors in the IT courses offered by higher learning institutions in the Philippines. Actually, a lot of scholarship programs are being offered in relation to this course. Colleges and universities are also doing their best to offer such course because as of now, very few are offering it leaving IT graduates with limited choices where to enroll. There is no great difficulty in the offering of such program in a certain institution because the recommended curriculum for this is actually very much similar to the common ICT curriculum of the undergraduate program. The only very noticeable difference is the prefix word “Advanced” in the curriculum courses and the removal of most general education subjects making it a very technical course by design. Since anyone can simply copy and paste this recommended curriculum and course descriptions from an existing MIT curriculum, the big question lies not on the approval of the program’s courses but is more focused on the faculty pool who will teach these technical subjects. Are they really capable of teaching these MIT subjects? Or just simply pretend to know everything and passes the burden to the students by letting their students do all the research and reporting? These MIT instructors must somehow prove themselves really knowledgeable in the subjects they are teaching because it is the first step in gaining the respect of their students. How are they going to prove this? Simple, THEY MUST TEACH, THEY MUST CONTRIBUTE, THEY MUST SHOW FIRST BEFORE THEY DEMAND WHAT EVER REQUIREMENTS THAT ARE NEEDED TO BE SUBMITTED IN EACH SUBJECT. Remember that although in the masteral program students must research and contribute more, they also expect that at least they will learn and get somethings also from their instructors especially since this is a very technical course. In my personal opinion, I think CHED should at least set a test that will qualify one to teach in the MIT program. This is a very technical course so why not have these instructors passed a certain IT certification exam first before they are allowed to teach in the program? The PHILNITS exam I think can be a very reliable measure for this purpose. What do you think?