Jamika Burge is heading back to Virginia Tech this fall to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science, but her research is spiced with anthropology, sociology, psychology, psycholinguistics - as well as observing cranky couples trade barbs in computer instant messages.

“It’s so not programming,” Ms. Burge said. “If I had to sit down and code all day, I never would have continued. This is not traditional computer science.”

For students like Ms. Burge, expanding their expertise beyond computer programming is crucial to future job security as advances in the Internet and low-cost computers make it easier to shift some technology jobs to nations with well-educated engineers and lower wages, like India and China.

“If you have only technical knowledge, you are vulnerable,” said Thomas W. Malone, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of “The Future of Work” (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). “But if you can combine business or scientific knowledge with technical savvy, there are a lot of opportunities. And it’s a lot harder to move that kind of work offshore.”

Ms. Burge’s research, for example, is in a hot niche called computer-supported cooperative work, which studies the ways people use technology to communicate and collaborate in work groups and social networks. She spent the summer as a research intern for I.B.M., and her job prospects seem bright.

On campuses today, the newest technologists have to become renaissance geeks. They have to understand computing, but they also typically need deep knowledge of some other field, from biology to business, Wall Street to Hollywood. And they tend to focus less on the tools of technology than on how technology is used in the search for scientific breakthroughs, the development of new products and services, or the way work is done.

In other words, if your only claim to IT fame is that you’re a great computer guy, well, you’d better get hopping learning another trade. I happen to be an IT field person, but I also have an extensive and reasonably thorough knowledge of my industry, wireless communications. If I didn’t have that, I’d be like so many other people who graduated college with some sort of MIS degree…

…Jobless…

Read the rest of the article. It’s interesting.

Source: NY Times