Dave is 100% correct in his assessment. I would add that we have focused too much in the books on records management on skills that should be taught at the community college level, not at the level of an undergraduate degree and especially not a masters or doctoral degree. The schools that are teaching RIM at the graduate level are all making RM and extension of archives studies because the teachers are all archivists. Few RIM practitioners teach graduate school.

When I was chair of the education development committee, I had several long conversations with the dean of SLIS at Indiana University--he is now my dean. Records management wasn't on his radar screen because no one is knocking on his door asking for RIM graduates. We discussed how ARMA could "seed" qualified professors in various graduate schools: we would need enough people with doctoral degrees (in almost anything at this point) who were RIM practitioners and consultants and several million dollars to basically pay the institutions to take the teachers.

My own experience as a visiting professor and now as an adjunct professor in a school of library and information science is that we were strange bedfellows. My concern as a RIM practitioner is the protection and enhancement of organizational information assets. The concern of schools of library and information science is on culture and academic research period, they don't give a hoot for what goes on inside a business or non-business organization. That is for business schools and schools of public policy. That is also one of the primary differences between what we do and what archivists do. They are concerned about preservation of cultural heritage, not running a business or government agency smoothly.

We have a lot of hard questions to ask before we can get a satisfactory answer to RIM and higher education.

Best wishes for a great weekend and a Happy Easter!
Carol
Carol E.B. Choksy, Ph.D., CRM
CEO
IRAD Strategic Consultant. Inc.
(317) 294-8329

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