Information System Innovation as a Social Action: The Case of Career and Vocational Helping Systems

Abstract

I n the past 10 years, under the common problems of unemployment of people with a higher education and the devaluation of diplomas, the concepts and practices of higher education governance have emerged and have gradually been embedded in university operations. Higher education in Taiwan faces the same problems as the rest of the world. Thus, guided by policies of the Taiwanese Ministry of Education (TMOE) and fuelled by the media, the education-job gap is becoming a discursive truth. With this background, the TMOE has invested numerous resources to establish an information system (IS) that attempts to guide the direction of university education using information technology. If the IS is poorly designed, the scope of its side effects and harm will be magnified by a massive number of IS users and the characteristics of procedure standardisation. We suggest another form of action -IS competition, in which more positive social changes can be created. Based on the analysis of the available data, the action of IS competition does have a positive impact on society. Keywords: disciplinary technology, information system, career and vocational helping systemsIn the past 10 years, under the common problems of the unemployment of people with a higher education and the devaluation of diplomas, concepts and practices of higher education governance have emerged, such as employability (Harvey, 2001), competence-based education (Frank et al., 2010), and higher education evaluation and accreditation (Kehm, 2010), and these concepts have gradually been embedded in university operations. Since information systems (ISs) can deal with complicated affairs, the information technology of higher education is included in this wave of higher education governance. With the progress of the wave, university professors are realising that the forms of curriculum outlines have become more and more complicated. There are increased options and charts in the forms of course outlines, academic and service activities, and learning portfolios. In addition, performance indices now include the number of interns, employment rate and tracking of graduates. Generally speaking, in the New Liberalism stream of thought, educational authorities tend to consider and regulate schools and students through competition in the global economic production system; and ISs have gradually become management tools to discipline schools and students within higher education governance. Administration, Fu-Jen Catholic University, 510 Chung Cheng Rd, Hsinchuang, Taipei County 24205 Taiwan ROC. E-mail: 051525@mail.fju.edu.tw According to Foucault (1982), a social governance system includes a legitimacy base that comes from the mutual production of power and knowledge and a variety of governance practices that are foundationally supported by this legitimacy. However, in the process of gaining a legitimacy base, a number of unreasonable governance practices may also be implanted. These irrational practices will not help solve the problem, and they may even cause more problem...

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