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Leader: Closing the skills gap
Better IT education could be the key

By silicon.com

Published: Thursday 04 January 2007

The so-called 'IT skills gap' continues to be a problem for many businesses, for both experienced staff and high-quality recruits from university and college.

silicon.com's most recent annual Skills Survey found that while programming languages such as Java and C variants are the technical skills in shortest supply, job applicants are also falling short on the non-technical business skills such as project management, leadership and industry knowledge.

Despite this skills shortage it was surprising to learn this week that IT graduates have the highest unemployment rates of university leavers across all degree subjects - including performing arts and media studies.

Some CIOs also stuck the boot in on the quality of IT graduates in this week's CIO Jury, complaining about their lack of fundamental skills such as writing and arithmetic. What use is a good programmer who can't write a project update or check if it is on budget?

The problem appears to be that many degree courses simply aren't turning out the well-rounded graduates needed in the modern business environment, although it also raises questions about the general quality of primary and secondary education in the UK.

In the case of IT it could be argued that the courses have become too vocational, training students in specific technical skill-sets instead of focusing on IT as a profession which also requires communication skills and business acumen.

For IT to add value to any organisation, the emphasis must be on the information (and exploitation of it) rather than the technology - and this is what the industry and the professional training for it must address.