Alumni attitudes on technology offered in their undergraduate degree program

In the spring of 2011, data collected from alumni of a mid-sized, south-central public, 4-year university using a 36-question, Likert scale survey indicated significant differences between perceived value of the college of business technology content and the actual impact this material has on job capabilities upon graduation. Two specific questions were targeted in this study; the first question inquired as to whether graduates perceived that the college of business technology content impacted their job capabilities upon graduation, while the second question asked whether that same technology content was valued by the student as important knowledge. Each of these questions were split into four parts; a) spreadsheet skills including analysis, b) database functionality, c) social networking, and d) Microsoft Office® software fundamentals. Participants were asked to either respond to each question using a strongly disagree, disagree, uncertain, agree, or strongly agree scale. Further, the discipline [major] of the respondents was utilized to allow comparison between each group within each question. A combination of t-tests and an ANOVA were performed to identify significance between the two questions of focus; and again between disciplines by question. The key findings indicate significance in the comparison between questions in every discipline group in most question sets with the exception of Information Systems majors.