Employers and universities ignore IT skills crisis

Employers and universities are failing to provide the IT skills needed by workers, while vocational courses are gaining support, according to two separate pieces of research.

Despite seeing skills shortages as a "significant threat" to their business performance this year, few employers in the IT industry are doing anything to help.

It's clear that more people than ever are open to the idea of vocational training to get the skills they need rather than automatically opting for university study.

-- Rod Flavell, CEO, FDM

Three-quarters of IT companies predict their business will be threatened in 2006 by a lack of staff, and three out of five claim to suffer from a lack of skills amongst their existing workforce.

But research into foundation degrees, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills, concluded employers are "still not going far enough".

Nearly half (45 per cent) of employers are not involved with any kind of vocational training for their workforce and only one in 20 has got involved with designing courses to help plug the skills gap.

Foundation degrees, introduced in 2001, are designed in conjunction with business so they are tailored to each employer's needs.

For example, Capex Health developed a foundation degree in Health Informatics - to provide it with staff who are skilled in IT and healthcare.

The company's CEO, Charles Lilley, said in a statement: "They had to have a particular aptitude for IT and for customer-facing situations, such as configuring systems and user training, and we chose a Foundation Degree because of the practical side that it offers."

Separate research shows that nearly half of IT graduates surveyed (46 per cent) believe their degree course has "failed to provide them with relevant IT skills".

And 53 per cent of respondents in the survey, sponsored by recruitment company FDM, said they would have preferred to complete vocational or on-the-job training.

FDM CEO Rod Flavell said in a statement: "After three years of studying, many graduates are finding that they can't afford additional training to get them ready for the work place. The e-Skills Council needs to urgently address the issue of universities failing to offer training in the latest programming languages."

He added: "It's clear that more people than ever are open to the idea of vocational training to get the skills they need rather than automatically opting for university study and we will see this trend rise dramatically in the next few years."