A very special student

Amanda Cox has reached Graduate Certificate level in Master of Management (IT) and is the Database Administrator at the Townsville Port Authority.  Apart from trying to juggle a demanding full time career and her studies, Amanda has to cope with Type 3 Osteogenesis imperfecta (sometimes known as Brittle Bone Disease) which is a genetic bone disorder. X-rays have shown that Amanda had had over 120 broken bones and something as simple as a sneeze can cause her to break a rib. During my discussions with Amanda she invariably described her illness as a ‘nuisance’.

Taking a plane trip to Brisbane to sit her industry certification exams represents a risk for Amanda and she has to employ a full time carer every time she travels - a special word of thanks to David Englin from Prometric in trying to arrange local testing facilities in Townsville.

Enrolments continue to grow

Since we launched the IT Masters Degrees at the beginning of 2003 the number of enrolments has continued to expand with overall student numbers now at 662.   Over one third of the new enrolments are coming from referrals from Alumni & current students - the average demographic of students is that they are 34.7 years old and have had an average of 9.3 years working in the IT industry.  Go to http://www.itmasters.com.au/studentmap/ to a Google Map with a global view of where students are enrolled and which Masters they are doing. 

Certification Trends: ITIL is hot!

One of the major certification trends over the last 5 years we have seen a has been strong growth in ‘Vendor independent’ certifications such as those offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium, Inc. [(ISC)²]. However, the Vendor independent certification that has really exploded has been ITIL (see chart below).

ITIL was originally created by the UK government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA), which had the role of advising on how government agencies could best make use of technology. ITIL has now established a clear leadership position as a methodology for effective delivery and management of IT services. It is used in a wide range of systems and network management products, and is supported by an ever-growing army of consultants, trainers, and advisors. More recently, ITIL has even seen increasing popularity in North America, an area not always noted for its receptiveness to business ideas from overseas. Typically, despite its origins, Americans now like to describe ITIL as "an emerging worldwide standard for IT service and support". Microsoft has used the principles developed in ITIL as a key element in its Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) which is embedded in many of its enterprise products, including Systems Management Server. Microsoft is far from being the only company which had added ITIL into its proprietary management framework. HP's OpenView, CA's Unicenter, and IBM's Tivoli families all have support for ITIL within some of their components, as do many other more specialised management platforms and tools vendors.

We have incorporated ITIL certification V3 into a combined ITIL and Project Management Institute (PMI) steam of the Master of Management (IT) and Master of Systems Development.

ACS Foundation Scholarship Program

One of the great recent initiatives from the Australian Computing Society (ACS) has been the establishment of the ACS Foundation.  The ACS Foundation was established in August 2001 to encourage both private and public sponsorship of IT higher education and research projects. Since its establishment the ACS Foundation has raised over $12 million in cash and in-kind donations towards its programmes, awarded over 650 scholarships to students, with over 35% of our scholarship winners achieving all HDs, and over 80% achieving a Distinction average or better in their subjects.

We are investigating setting up an IT Masters Postgraduate Scholarship program with the ACS Foundation targeted at attracting the ‘brightest and best’ IT Graduates to commence their IT careers in donor companies.  The scholarship winners would study part time for their IT Masters Degree via Distance Education with Charles Sturt University whilst gaining relevant industry experience within the donor companies.  Please email me at martin.hale@itmasters.com.au if you think your company may be interested in getting involved with the Scholarship program.   

IT Masters info packs

We put together an updated IT Masters info pack that include course outlines, subject descriptions and charts showing what credit is available for which industry certification exams.  If you would like one posted out to you, register your address at http://www.itmasters.com.au/survey_redirect.html

Are you eligible?

One of the most common questions we get is do I have the experience and / or qualifications to gain entry into a Masters Degree?  Click here to complete an online questionnaire on whether you have the required qualifications and/or experience to meet the entrance requirement to get into one of the Masters.  We will contact you within 2 weeks of receiving your completed questionnaire to advise results.