IT grads top jobless league table

IT graduates have the highest unemployment rate across all degree subjects at almost double the average for students leaving UK university courses, according to new figures from the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu).

I didn't know anything about programming before starting the course, having originally wanted to study Art History, but loved it after the first few months.

The annual Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey of more than 200,000 graduates shows that while the unemployment rate of IT students fell again this year to 10.3 per cent it is still substantially higher than the average of 6.2 per cent across all subjects.

IT graduates have higher unemployment rates than students in performing arts (6.6 per cent), media studies (8.6 per cent), history (6.8 per cent) and art and design (10.2 per cent).

Two-thirds of IT graduates entered employment immediately after finishing their course and within six months after graduation this figure rose to 71.5 per cent.

The view from the grads:

silicon.com caught up with two of IBM's 2006 graduate intake and asked how they went about joining one of the industry's biggest names.

Marion Ballard: "I went to Bournemouth University to study Business Information Technology and got a first. I didn't know anything about programming before starting the course, having originally wanted to study Art History, but loved it after the first few months.

"I did a placement (industrial trainee role) at IBM in my third year as an application developer, working on VoIP services. My current role on the Foundation scheme is in application services as a database administrator. I work on back-end support for a number of projects."

Premal Patel: "I am from London but spent a number of years studying in India. I then came back to the UK and attended the University of Surrey, where I graduated with a degree in marketing. I went on to attain a Master's degree in Business Information Technology from Kingston University.

"I also worked a year for an IT reseller in London and then worked at a small IT consultancy company in New York, also for a year.

"I have recently joined IBM as a technical pre-sales specialist and am part of the Websphere team working within the Financial Sector. My responsibilities involve working with the sales team to ensure the client gets the right solution for their requirements, basically providing technical advice to both the client and sales force at IBM."

Almost half (42.4 per cent) of the 12,565 IT graduates who responded to the survey went into the IT profession. This is the third year in succession that figure has risen and Hecsu claims it provides evidence of recovery and expansion in the IT sector.

The other main employment destinations for IT graduates were as private and public sector general managers (9.6 per cent) and the business and financial profession (6.3 per cent).

The average first job salary for any graduate going into the IT profession is now £20,886, which is above the average graduate salary of £17,690 but still some way behind those entering clinical medicine, who can expect to earn £31,054 in their first job.

More worrying for the IT industry is the decline in the number of students wanting to study IT. The level of students applying for computer science degrees has halved in the last five years, leaving a shortfall in new entrants needed each year, according to Hecsu.

The Hecsu survey is based on responses from 206,965 out of the 256,460 students who graduated in the summer of 2005.

silicon.com's Will Sturgeon contributed to this article