DCU Information Technology degree - comments?

spr1nt3r

Hi all,

I have decided to go back to studies this year. I have already submitted the application to DIT for evening degree study in IT. I am however doubting if I will be able to travel. Online course would be much better.

I came across DCU BSc (Hons) in Information Technology (PAC Code: DC343). Seems like a decent course. Did anyone do this before or is doing it now?
I would appreciate any tips on this. I just need a degree to further progress in IT career (mainly customer support, hardware maintenance, PC troubleshooting etc.).

Thank you.

summ3rbay

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summ3rbay

I did this course a few years ago and you could say it is, actually, a "Legacy" University Degree. To clarify this degree course was originally conceived and designed in the mid 1980’s. At a time when few participants would have had a personal computer at home. As a result most of the content in the course was designed to be not actually computer based.


This was probably the thinking about how the orginal course was put together. A quarter of the original course was comprised of “Communication Technology” modules. It was the mid 1980’s, a time when the IT industry in Ireland was mainly based on manual assembly “screwdriver and solder” activities for PC assembly for companies such as Apple in Cork or Digital in Tipperary. A knowledge of basic electronics was useful for this type of work- hence, a large section of Communication Technology modules at that time was composed of Electronic engineering content.

A second quarter of the orginal course was comprised of “Human Sciences” modules. This was because if you were a IT professional in the mid 1980s you would have worked for large organisation or the Civil service as these were the only organisations that could afford IT .You would most likely spend as much time worrying about Trade Union resistance to the introduction of technology/job losses as you would about to the technology itself. So a knowledge of organisational psychology and in particular what was termed “resistance to change in organisataons” would be useful to any IT graduate of 1985.

It was also a time before the current ERP and CRM "off-the-shelf" packages and when bespoke software was a fact of life for all companies . So with the very basic programming knowledge the course provided in it's computing modules a new graduate would also benefit maybe from a cursory knowledge of what psychologists viewed to be good interface design in this era .

A third quarter of the original course content was comprised of “Management Science” modules. Most likely because mathematics was always good for creating logical thinkers and so it originally comprised a large section of the 3 compulsory management science modules. Well until resistance by students, and significant numbers, "sick to the teeth" of mathematics, starting jumping ship at the Diploma stage to complete their degree by attending night classes at TCD, forced a rethink by the program board. One of the Management Science modules,MSB, then became , for a while, a “start your own business course” to remove mathematics from the final 6 Degree modules.

The final quarter of the orginal course was comprised of “Computing” modules. Why? Well, in the mid 1980’s the only computers with enough computing power for business applications were Main-frames. These were supplier-serviced, i.e. if you worked as the IT guy in Erin Foods you would organise for 2 guys to fly over via Concorde from America once-a-year to change the memory modules and reboot the system. So the course wasn’t going to teach you this. Instead computing modules taught rudimentary stuff such as the difference between hardware and software and how the registers inside processors worked, how storage media such a magnetic tapes work and some very very basic programming training in Fortran.

This is how the degree was first devised. You could say, for the time, and with the limitations imposed they did a good job combining electronics, psychology, mathematics and computing with 4 modules in each area and only the need for very occasional access to the what would now be termed the primitive PC's of the era to participate in the course.


Fast-forward 35 years - which of the 4 original subject areas have relinquished space or indeed an entire module in their particular area to accommodate changes in IT Eco-system since 1982…..and the answer, none!! The program's 4 subject structure area remains the same. What was then (for an 1980'era IT graduate essential skills/ requirements reaching across the decades and still governing the direction and content of the current presentations of the course.

Go contrast the DCU Open Education IT syllabus to any syllabus for any evening Computing degree course in the any local Institute of Technology. Look up online the difference in content is stark.


The current course may be suitable for someone years of industry experience and maybe an old RTC 2 year Cert. Assuming you can get exemptions for the 8 Diploma modules and just doing the 6 degrees modules to get a degree scroll, this course is probably enough.


However, for someone, just starting out, with IT as their chosen career path, it is my opinion that this course is not suitable for that purpose. As graduate of this course in 6 years time you will want to be sit down with any graduate from any other college in the country and be a peer to them. In a job hunting scenario you don’t want to be some “also ran” degree candidate.

Let’s face it you will be competing against kids coming out of college with a lot more specialised degrees than you. (For example someone with a degree in Software Engineering is likely to get any programming job before you). IT is now a lot more specialised that 35 years ago with degrees in Business Information Systems, Games Development, IT Support, Cloud Computing and even the Internet of Everything to name just a few.

My advice to you, would be to ring DCU Open Education and ask them 2 questions :

1.“what specific(not generalised) job title in IT does this course prepare me for?”

2.“what search term should I put into a jobs site such a Irishjobs or Recruitireland to find a list of the available jobs that this course prepares me for and will having this Degree in IT from your University be enough to get me one of those jobs?"

From a quick calculation the current 14 modules will cost somewhere around 12 grand and you will be putting in the same 4 years of full time study as the kids studying computing in Third level . Perhaps it is best in that treat like buying a car; you'd always ask about how the car is going to perform before you start handing over your cash, wouldn't you?

spr1nt3r

Thank you for detail and honest advise. I am also looking into Springboard courses in DBS and DIT. I have studied Business Studies in DBS and found the college to be very good with decent lecturers and overall good atmosphere. I am actually seriously considering going back to DBS for Higher Diploma in Science in Computing (IT Infrastructure & Networking) since I have some IT knowledge but lack in networking.
Did anyone have any experience with them? IT courses in particular.

spr1nt3r

Thank you. Seems like DCU is not for me. I am homing in on DBS Vs Griffith college. I have done non-IT studies in DBS before and found it to be a great place. Not so sure of Griffith, tons of mixed reviews.

shamrock2004

spr1nt3r wrote: »

Hi all,

I have decided to go back to studies this year. I have already submitted the application to DIT for evening degree study in IT. I am however doubting if I will be able to travel. Online course would be much better.

I came across DCU BSc (Hons) in Information Technology (PAC Code: DC343). Seems like a decent course. Did anyone do this before or is doing it now?
I would appreciate any tips on this. I just need a degree to further progress in IT career (mainly customer support, hardware maintenance, PC troubleshooting etc.).

Thank you.

To be honest, choose a course that looks interesting to you. Read through the module descriptions. You don't want to be studying something you won't find interesting. At the end of the day, the qualification is just a stepping stone to get you into a job. The real learning begins on the job, fact.