As technology change...
The current shortages of Information Technology (IT) skills has created higher salaries for the desired IT skills and demand for more IT trainings to increase the number of people who have those skills. Today graduates with IT skills receive much higher salaries but if they have special skills such as Big data analytics, Cloud computing, System Security and Mobile development, they often receive multiple job offers paying over $100,000 dollars. (2013 data).
The increasing use of information technology worldwide has created a huge need for skilled workers with extensive expertise. From the U.S. to Europe, from Asia to Africa, the shortage of IT skilled workers has reached a severe critical shortage and it is expected to continue for the next decade. The issue is no matter how many people are trained, the shortage will continue because technology changes so fast that most schools cannot catch up. Few years ago, web development is hot but today it is no longer in high demand as there are too many of them. India and China have produced over a million web developers per year and ready to supply them to the world and overnight this need disappeared. Few years ago, programming is a desired skill, if you can code you can have job but today, you need much more than just programming skills, you need soft skills and business knowledge as technical skill alone is not enough. Although C++ and Java are the main languages that were taught in every university but today the need is beginning to shift toward more specialized language such as “R”.
Several years ago, computer training was on programming languages then it changed into development lifecycle to develop software products but today, students must learn more than just develop software but combine their technical skills with soft-skills to be desirable. They must learn to be designers, collaborators, or inventors of new technology. By creating new technology, or finding new uses for existing technology, they solve complex business and scientific problems. As collaborators, they work on teams with electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, statisticians, mathematicians and other specialists to design computer hardware, virtual reality, and robotics etc. By working on architecture, they find new ways for computers to process and transmit information. By collaborate with electronic engineers, they design computer chips and processors, using new materials and techniques to make them work faster and give them more computing power. When working with virtual reality, they use technology to create special simulated situations for video games that make users feel like they are actually in the game. By collaborate with robotics engineers, they develop robots or machines that can do work on their own without people controlling them. Robots perform many tasks, from sweeping floors, assembling cars, lift heavy materials in factory production lines, and drive airplanes and cars etc. By focus on data analytics, they can organize structured and unstructured data to identify certain patterns and trends, and by collaborate with business and marketing people; they are changing the entire consumer markets and significantly increase sales and profits, etc.
Information technology changes fast, every year new technologies are created and new skills are needed therefore training of software students also needs to change too. The issue is with the exception of few top universities who can changes fast, most universities cannot adjust fast enough which create a big gap between what the industry needs and what university can produce. The imbalanced supply and demand have led to an IT skilled shortage all over the world and it will continue. Today both IT students and professionals must adopt a lifelong learning attitude to constantly improve their knowledge and skills via additional reading and learning from technical websites or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Because latest technology materials and training courses are often written in English, having a second language such as English is essential for most technical people.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
