Jeff MacKie-Mason expects that in 20 years almost every university will offer a bachelor's degree in information studies.

But for now, it's less than a handful and the University of Michigan is about to join those ranks, becoming one of the nation's only information schools to offer an undergraduate degree in a discipline that, up until now, has been considered a graduate studies specialty.

"We're a little bit ahead of everybody else," said MacKie-Mason, dean of the U-M School of Information, the first fully-dedicated information school in the nation. "There are almost no degrees in the country like the undergraduate degree we're getting."

Some top information schools, including programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Cornell University, offer information science degrees, but other similarly ranked schools, including the University of Illinois, limit offerings to informatics.

The U-M Board of Regents Thursday unanimously approved a new bachelor's degree offering in information studies, which will be administered through UMSI and begin in fall 2014 with the first class graduating in winter 2015.

"There has been a science of information for over 65 years, understanding the way that organisms communicate with one another," MacKie-Mason said. "What has really changed, especially in the last 20 years, is the revolution in the production and distribution and use of information that came as the result of digitalization."

MacKie-Mason said that because of the proliferation of information, individuals "rely on it more and more."

"Everybody has a cellphone now, everybody has email and everybody has texting so it's really becoming a much more intrinsic part of everything we do."

Undergraduates who major in information studies will learn how to maintain and build information systems, analyze information flows and dissect how interactions between people, information and technology affect the economy, politics, healthcare and other fields. Students also will learn social computing skills.

The university established an informatics degree four years ago and students on that track can choose to specialize in bioinformatics, data mining, computational informations and social computing. The informatics major, which is administered by the College of Literature, Science and Arts, will likely remain in place, but the social computing track will be moved to the information science program.

The first informatics graduating class, in 2010, included 10 students. Two years later, in 2012, the class included more than 60 graduates. Last year 140 students declared information as a major and more than half studied social computing.

"The program has been growing very strongly," MacKie-Mason said. UMSI employs 36 faculty members and plans to grow its staff by five more next year.

As reliance on information increases, so do job opportunities in the field: U-M informatics graduates have gone on to work for the health and insurance industries, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies.

"They've all been getting jobs and they’re all over the place," MacKie-Mason said. "The jobs are everywhere."

Added U-M Provost Philip Hanlon: "It's a very exciting development that the School of Information wants to bring its unique interdisciplinary strengths to the undergraduate population."

This is the second degree expansion for the U-M School of Information this year.

In December the Board of Regents approved a new master's degree in health informatics, a field that leverages information technologies to maintain and improve health and patient care. That program begins this fall.

Kellie Woodhouse covers higher education for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at kelliewoodhouse@annarbor.com or 734-623-4602 and follow her on twitter.