By Steve Ranger, 10 January 2006 16:10
NEWS
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.
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."
Comments
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1. Ben Griffiths
Having recently graduated with a MEng in Computer Software Engineering I would agree that my course did not provide me with the skills to enter the work place.
However teaching vocational subjects is not the place of universities. Yes I could have received 4 years .net training and probably found work quicker but I would only be useful for the next 2 years. Universities teach the skills required to continuously educate ourselves through our lives as new technologies emerge. The onus is on the individual or industry to teach whatever skill is currently required.
But then I'm unemployed so maybe you shouldn't listen to me!
2. Richard
Which skills for which people?
More clarity would greatly improve the debate:
At a recent Government forum, the head of E-Skills was talking about one type of skill needed, whereas each questioner from the audience was asking about their own "pet" specialist skill.
Different types of users clearly have different needs:
eg. Users need better "user" skills; Power users need better "power user" skills (and perhaps skills in helping other users); Support staff need better "support" skills; Designers need better "design" skills etc. etc.
My view is that people should be taught generic skills rather than just how to work a specific version of a particular application. Unfortunately much commercial training does the opposite, making skills less transferrable and rapidly out of date.
Most of us do office type work, using standard general purpose office software. Productivity is vital but where are the courses to help us make the most of our PCs?
Professional secretaries used to be taught how to organize an office, a filing system, the boss's diary etc.
Most of us now have to organize ourselves, without guidance or training: We might know how to work individual applications but where can we learn to organize our work more efficiently using our modern PC tools?