Here are the three questions posed to industry representatives. I will include responses as they come in to me, but will remove identification for the time being.
1. In your experience, do you believe that current graduates come equipped with the knowledge and expertise to satisfy your needs? Perhaps you could expand a little on what you see as their strengths and weaknesses and in particular your comments on any shortfalls in the current curriculum would be of value.
2. Are you currently experiencing problems in attracting sufficient suitable graduates? If so do you expect to have to pay significantly higher salaries (say more that 15%) next year in order to be able to hire them?
3. Would you be interested in helping schools in your recruitment areas in marketing their programs? This could include time, provision of guest speakers and lecturers, scholarships or internships and even cash resources.
EditQuestion 1 Responses
A
I think that the expertise (i.e. skill level) of the graduates is high and they have good knowledge of current technology. The problem is that not every business (in fact I'd say very few) actually uses current technology across all of their enterprise. Based on my experience I'd say that an average business uses about 10% current technology, 70% older technology, and 10% obsolete technology. Thus a new grad is only immediately useful in a small portion of the technology.
I'm not suggesting that the curriculum should include older technology as a focus, but rather that it would be nice if grads had some experience converting systems from older to newer technology. Most of the experiences students seem to get involve creating something from scratch, but most of the new systems development we do involves an ancestor system which must be
understood as part of the process.
B
From an analyst perspective or a very junior developer – yes. In the past I have hired college grads right out of school and put them in analyst and / or testing roles so they can get their feet wet, come up to speed on processes and procedures, particularly methodologies. This is basically the time for them to learn the ropes in regard to systems development lifecycle and the various activities associated with the lifecycle – requirements, analysis, design activities, construction, as well as implementation and on-going support. This also gives them some time to become familiar with the systems that are to be enhanced or maintained. In the past I have found that a couple of iterations through a project lifecycle, and most folks are ready to move from the analyst role into a junior developer role if desired.
A lack of understanding around a formalized methodology is what I have consistently seen. Most folks coming out of school need the exposure to methodologies and processes / procedures. I know I did way back in the day. It is not all about sitting down and hammering out code. Gaining good communication and interaction skills with stakeholders is key as well.
C
An increased focus on programming logic and less on languages is needed due to model driven development being mainstream. UAB is changing the curriculum to have more concepts in the major and then separate tracks to focus on forensics, security, advanced programming etc. We are very fortunate that UAB has been progressive in communicating with local business leaders to continually adapt.
D
I think students today have a good understanding of desktop and web applications and in most cases the skills to develop them. However, I don't see students having a holistic view of the IT infrastructure and how to help organizations cost-effectively and incrementally evolve core IT systems towards modern architectures and technologies, reducing maintenance burden and freeing up more resources to focus on developing new business requirements and capabilities. With the small focus I have at my company, here are the challenges I am trying to help our clients overcome:
Understand and document business functions in existing systems
Identify functionality that can be reused for new systems
Enable existing and new IT staff to leverage modern architectures and
technologies
Enhance team collaboration and productivity
Free up maintenance budgets for new development
Here are the solutions my company offers to clients that we are also trying to build skills around at the university and college levels...
Modernize Asset Management: Discover reusable assets within existing IT systems and position them for evolution to SOA
Modernize Architecture: Rapidly construct new and integrate existing assets into modern architectures
Modernize Skills: Break skill silos by simplifying development across heterogeneous platforms (mainframe, mid-range and distributed)
Modernize Infrastructure and Processes: Improve development processes, environments and infrastructure to reduce costs, improve quality and productivity
EditQuestion 2 Responses
A
We have had no trouble filling relatively generic positions (e.g. MS .NET developer), but we have a much harder time with specialists like Oracle and SAP. Salary is an issue, although our location (Lincoln) is also a factor.
B
To be honest we have not looked at college grads in the recent future from an IT perspective – so no issues at this time.
C
Yes. Many schools in the US are having large problems attracting high school students into the IT curriculum. The main concern of the students is that all of the
phone IT jobs have moved off shore which could not be further from the truth. We are focusing on a grass roots campaign
paper editingto meet with the high school counselors at their annual conference to communicate our need and the programs available at UAB
energy.
We have been very successful with internship programs that have scholarships for the tuition and pay for the work the students will do at the company. UAB IT classes take place at night so this really supports the internship model.
D
Yes, there will continue to be shortages of these skills in the US labor market until business and academia can fix the problem of decreasing enrollment into IT related degrees. This will cause
custom papercompanies like mine and our clients who use our technology to pay more for the skills that we will all require to make us competitive in a global economy.
EditQuestion 3 Responses
A
I'm open to the idea in principle but would need to know more specifics.
B
Yes - we would be interested.
C
Definitely. We need to get organized with the various municipalities and create a plan of attack. We are working with our metropolitan development board to create legislation that would provide funding of academies in the high schools that focus on IT, so it gets students interested before they have made decisions on what they want to do. Working with the high school counselors is also key as they play a large role in molding student decisions.
D
Yes and I already do with many schools, but primarily with the Universityof Nebraska - Lincoln.
EditGeneral Comments
- Ask the industry for their suggestions on how to attract more students into IS courses
- Better promotion of IS scholarships into schools (I noticed this myself with [my son], that the information on scholarships wasn’t that readily available or promoted via the schools)
- We need some IS ‘heroes’ and success stories in Australia for future IS grads to aspire to imitate. Eg Gates, the yahoo guys, apple. Can industry identify any of these and how best to promote ?
- Suggestions on how the new government's ‘education revolution’ and ‘broadband plans’ be leveraged to attract more IS students at university.