Outsourcing American jobs to foreigncountries is increasingly becoming a computing industry standard,as the job market for lower-level computer programming jobs isfollowing the same trend as customer service jobs.
    Jobs once lucrative before the dot-comboom in 2000 are being shipped out to countries such as India,which receives “about 80 percent of offshore jobs,” said RudyHirshheim, a University information systems professor.
    Though outsourcing is causing thetechnology job market for college graduates to be smaller than itwould be if jobs were not moving overseas, “the decline is due moreto the dot-com bust than outsourcing,” Hirshheim said.
    The number of Information Systems andDecision Sciences majors peaked at 627 in 2001, following thedot-com boom of 2000, but in 2004 the the number of majors plungedto 250.
    The drop is sharp, but the high part ofthe graph is discounted as an outlier to a more steady growth, saidISDS Chair Helmut Schneider.
    Though the industry is rebounding, mostof the jobs lucrative before the dot-com bust are moving overseasfor cheaper labor.
    ”The average systems programmer in theU.S. would make around $63,000 a year,” Hirshheim said. “The sameskill in India would cost about $6,000.”
    Companies outsourcing these types ofjobs are increasing their profit margin, and are able to spendmoney saved on wages elsewhere.
    The types of jobs that are in danger ofmoving overseas are “jobs where you sit in front of a computer allday, jobs where there is no human interaction,” Hirshheim said.
    Often, these are technical computer jobsin maintenance, that generally are less attractive to collegestudents, Hirshheim said.
    To combat increased outsourcing, theISDS department is beginning to put more emphasis in trainingstudents for jobs less in danger of being eliminated in the UnitedStates.
    ”We look at avenues that can’t beoutsourced, anything customer-facing, like project management,security or networking,” Hirshheim said.