Are old software contracts devaluing my degree?

Eric — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:19:03 +0000

I attend the University of Alberta. I’m 3/4 of my way through a business degree. One of my required courses is Management Information Systems (MIS) where we are taught about project management and database structure and information flow, etc. etc. For me it’s quite dull because I have a lot of experience with this stuff already. I am learning a thing or two though, so it’s not completely useless.

Our latest project requires us to develop a single web page using Microsoft FrontPage that includes an Access database we created last week. This is worth 10% of our course mark.

Microsoft discontinued FrontPage in 2006, two years ago.

I emailed our professors asking why we are being taught to use a non-standards compliant, outdated and discontinued pile of junk. The response I got back was that “the school of business has a contract for support with FrontPage until the end of this semester.” Apparently the university is using our tuition to strike deals that are in effect for years after they are useful. Smrt.

I’m meeting with one of the profs tomorrow morning to discuss it. I realize this isn’t entirely his fault so I hope he helps me fix the problem. I intend to make sure the school of business knows about this sort of crap. This would make a great article in the Gateway (our school paper), and it would be something for our Business Student’s Association (apologies for their website) to get their fingers into.

You wouldn’t pay $468.60 for a math course using slide rules, so why should we pay to use outdated software?

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Are old software contracts devaluing my degree?