BestOnlineCollege.org is an advertising-supported website. Many of the school and program listings that appear on this site are from partners who compensate us, and this compensation may affect how, where, and in what order listings appear (such as featured placements). This compensation does not influence our editorial content, evaluations, or rankings, which are determined independently using publicly available data. We do not review or feature every school or program available in the marketplace. Our goal is to provide accurate, unbiased information so you can make informed decisions. Read our full Advertiser Disclosure.
Key takeaway: Management information systems is the technology degree that lives in the business school. MIS programs train you to specify, build, and manage the systems an organization runs on – databases, enterprise software, business processes, and the projects that change them – and they pair that technical work with an accounting, finance, marketing, and operations core that a computer science degree does not include. The degree is common at both the bachelor’s and master’s level, usually titled BS or BBA in Management Information Systems and MS in Information Systems or MSIS. There is no accreditor specific to MIS; the checks that matter are institutional accreditation and, often, business-school accreditation such as AACSB. Compare accredited programs below.
The defining feature of MIS is where it sits. Computer science generally reports to a college of engineering or arts and sciences and is organized around computation itself – algorithms, theory, systems, and the mathematics underneath them. MIS reports to the business school and is organized around organizations that use computation. That placement shapes everything downstream: the admissions math, the required core, the internships, the recruiters who show up, and the first job titles. Accredited online programs generally deliver the same curriculum and degree titles as campus programs; browse the best accredited online colleges to compare schools that offer them.
These accredited schools offer online programs. Request information to compare programs, costs, and formats.
Every school list on this site is ordered by the BOC Score, computed from the most recent school-level data published by the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS). To qualify, a school must be currently operating and accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Each eligible school is then scored on five measures, percentile-ranked against schools at the same credential level:
Schools without enough outcome data appear after ranked schools, without a score. Advertising never affects these rankings. Read the full methodology.
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:Accreditor: Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior Colleges and University CommissionIPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
MIS graduates work in corporate IT departments, consulting firms, healthcare systems, banks and insurers, government agencies, manufacturers, and software vendors. The occupations below are commonly associated with management information systems coursework. Median annual wages come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program.
Entry requirements differ across these occupations, and one of them is not an entry-level job at all. Computer and information systems manager roles, which had a median annual wage of $175,140 (BLS OEWS, May 2025), are management positions typically reached after several years of technical and project experience rather than directly from a degree; the high median reflects that seniority. Computer systems analyst roles, at a median annual wage of $105,850 (BLS OEWS, May 2025), are the most characteristic MIS destination – the person who sits between business users and technical teams, works out what a system needs to do, and specifies it well enough to be built. Network and computer systems administrator roles, at a median annual wage of $99,130 (BLS OEWS, May 2025), suit graduates who take the infrastructure electives rather than the analysis and process electives. Individual outcomes vary by employer, geography, and experience.
An MIS degree trains you to design, select, implement, and manage the information systems an organization depends on. Coursework covers databases, systems analysis and design, business process management, enterprise systems, networks, information security, and IT project management, layered on a business core of accounting, finance, marketing, operations, and business statistics.
MIS sits in the business school and computer science generally sits in engineering or arts and sciences, and that difference is real rather than cosmetic. Computer science goes deep on algorithms, data structures, theory, operating systems, and the discrete mathematics behind them, and its graduates mostly build software. MIS goes deep on how organizations use systems – requirements, process design, data modeling, vendor selection, implementation, and project delivery – and its graduates mostly decide what gets built and make it land. Programming appears in MIS, but as a tool rather than the subject.
Both, deliberately. Most MIS programs are administered by the business school and require the same business core as accounting or finance majors, then replace the functional specialization with technology coursework. That is why an MIS graduate can usually read a financial statement and write SQL, and why the degree recruits into hybrid roles that need someone fluent in both vocabularies.
Less than a computer science degree, more than most people expect. Typical programs require SQL thoroughly, an introductory programming sequence in Python, Java, or a comparable language, and applied work in reporting, analytics, or application development tools. What is generally absent is the theory-of-computation and advanced-algorithms depth. Programs vary widely on this point, so read the required course list rather than assuming.
Not one specific to MIS. Verify recognized institutional accreditation through the U.S. Department of Education database. Beyond that, most MIS programs sit in business schools, and business-school accreditation from AACSB, ACBSP, or IACBE is a meaningful additional signal. A smaller number of information systems programs hold ABET computing accreditation under its information systems criteria. Any of the three is a real check; none is required for a program to be legitimate.
MIS curricula generally combine three bodies of coursework, and students who expect a pure technology program are often surprised by how much of the first one there is.
The first is the business core. At most schools the MIS major sits inside the same core as every other business major: financial and managerial accounting, microeconomics and macroeconomics, business statistics, finance, marketing, operations management, and business law or ethics. This is not filler. Systems work is mostly work on business processes, and you cannot specify an order-to-cash system usefully if you do not know what an account receivable is.
The second is data and systems. Database design and SQL is the anchor course in nearly every MIS program, and it is the skill graduates report using most. Around it sit data modeling, systems analysis and design – requirements gathering, process modeling, and specification – plus networks and infrastructure, information security management, and business intelligence or data warehousing. Enterprise systems coursework covers ERP platforms and the integration problems that come with them.
The third is delivery and management. IT project management covers scope, scheduling, budgeting, risk, and the reasons software projects fail. Business process management covers analyzing and redesigning how work flows through an organization. Many programs add IT governance, vendor and contract management, or systems implementation and change management. Most finish with a capstone in which a team takes a real or simulated organizational problem from requirements through a working solution.
At the bachelor’s level, expect roughly 120 credits, with the business core taking a substantial share and the MIS major itself running somewhere around 30 to 40 credits. At the master’s level, expect roughly 30 to 36 credits, with the business core assumed or compressed into a short foundation sequence.
The work splits into three rough shapes. Analysis roles – systems analyst, business analyst, ERP or applications analyst – translate between what a business needs and what a system can do. This is the center of gravity for MIS graduates, and the analyst title is where most of them start. Delivery and management roles – IT project manager, implementation consultant, product owner, and eventually IT manager or director – own the work of getting a system built, bought, or changed without breaking the organization around it. Technical specialist roles – database administrator, systems administrator, security analyst, business intelligence developer – go deeper on one platform or layer.
Consulting is a heavier recruiter of MIS graduates than of most majors, because the degree produces exactly the profile large consultancies staff implementation projects with: someone who can run a requirements workshop in the morning and write a query in the afternoon. Titles are inconsistent across employers, so read the responsibilities rather than the title. For general labor-market context on the occupations MIS graduates commonly enter, see the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook.
MIS or a related field? Choose MIS if you want to work at the seam between business operations and technology. Consider computer science if you want to build software and go deep on how computing itself works, business administration if you want the management core without the technical specialization, technology for a broader survey of computing and IT program options, or data analytics if your interest is analyzing data and communicating conclusions rather than designing the systems that produce it.
Compare programs by topic:
