Information Technology in Europe

A new European study on Information Technology (IT) warned that the current IT industry is weaker than it has been in the past and the education systems have not kept up with the skills demand by the industry to compete globally. The study interviewed several thousand industry leaders to identify the skills workers would need to improve their careers; as well as identify the skills they should develop to remain employable.

The study found that more than half of Europe's technology companies said they were concerned about losing skilled employees to competitors. With globalization, many Indian IT companies are expanding their operation to Europe and hire European skilled workers with better salaries and benefits. The study also found that current IT education programs were inadequate and the number of IT students had declined or not be able to work in the industry. There is no mention of business aspect in IT training programs even today the need of business skills is critical. The study recommended that companies should work with employees to provide additional training that the business needs. It also said the government should invest more funding into such efforts to fix the skills gap. A government official agreed: "We have major issue with our IT skills development and if we do not take immediate actions we may lose the best opportunity to improve our economy. Currently our publicly funded education system and our industry needs do not align sufficiently. What we need are: Strong technical skills, better global business understanding, and the ability to think strategically. Today global business knowledge is very important as IT increasingly promotes business growth. It is essential for our IT students to understand the direction of the business and the global trends. We are not protected by the European market as in the past but we must compete globally and this is where we have not doing well.”

Last year many European technology companies agreed to give all workers a pay raise, according to an Information Technology (IT) salary and career survey. The survey of 800 technology companies found 64% of respondents received a pay raise and 42% said they received a large bonus. Only 0.2% said they did not receive a raise or experienced a pay cut. At the same time, senior executives and managers also received large bonus, averaging $600,000 to $1.5 million dollars. According to the survey, most IT workers anticipated another pay raise in 2012. As IT becoming “hotter” with mobile applications, most companies wants to keep their current workers as demand has by far exceeds supply. Even with the extra 40,000 Indian IT workers received special visas to come and work in Europe last year the demand for IT workers is still high.

Last month, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt delivered a speech at the UK Science Museum where he criticized the UK for failing to improve its education system. He warned: “Britain can become a “Farming island” or it can become a “Knowledge island”, I believe the latter is more interesting but it is the British's choice.” He noted that the rapid evolution of technology were set to bring five billion more people online across the world in the next three years, due to the increasing use of smartphones. This will result in demand for more automation, collaboration, and innovation. He declared: “If the past decade has taught us anything, it is that if you connect people with information they will change the world. In this century the spread of mobile phones will push things further than any of us can imagine. Today all countries are facing growing skills shortages in computing at a time when the world needs more IT workers than ever. Basically technological innovations cannot happen without these workers. If the UK is to respond to the challenges effectively, there must be a change in the development and training of IT workers. If students were told to learn all you needed to know in college and then stop, they were misinformed. The key to securing the country's economic strengths depends on the way science, engineering and technology are taught in schools. I cannot imagine a country like the UK only graduates about 4,000 computer science students a year. That is a serious supply problem in a country as rich as this with so many talented people.”

There are a growing number of IT workers in developing countries such as India, China, and Brazil but in Europe the numbers of student enrolling in IT is actually decreasing. There are several reasons but most people blame the archaic education systems in Europe that are too slow to change. Many universities in Europe are managed by people who were educated in the 60s who are very conservative and do not want to change quickly. There are debates about improving education systems but so far it has not brought any significant changes. Last year the Royal Society of UK issued a report called “Shut Down or Restart” which proposes changes to the teaching of IT in both high schools and colleges. After many years of funding education improvement without any results, the UK government has decided to “reboot” the IT curriculum by scrapping the entire existing curriculum and completely replace it with a new curriculum. However, it faces a strong resistance from academic people. One professor said: “It is like pulling the plug out of the wall. How do you put it back and not damage the system? Another professor commended: “We have our tradition; we must preserve it and not surrender to the demand from the industry.” A young student complained: “As long as these professors are still in charge, you cannot change anything.”

Today many young professors left Europe for better jobs in the U.S or elsewhere. Top students also prefer to go to the U.S for better trainings than their local schools. Each year, hundreds of thousand students go to the U.S for training in science, technology and many never return. There is another issue regarding computing and engineering as they often require continuous learning to keep up which is not what students want. The belief of having a college degree and a good job for the rest of the life is still strong among younger people. A college student explains: “Europe is not the U.S or Japan or Asia, they work to death. We are different and we have better lives here.” The concept of lifelong learning is still new and not everybody agree with it.

In the fast changing world of information technology, everything requires technology knowledge. If you do not know something about IT, you will not have a good future. Today we are witnessing the crisis in many European countries such as Greek, Portugal, Spain and others where unemployment has reached all time high with many companies went bankrupt or laid off people. Governments are restructured every few months but cannot solve the problems and as the crisis spreads from one country to another, people start to blame on government policy or the lack of it. Of course, it is a complicated matter but as Europe moves from the manufacturing economy to information economy, many people are unprepared and fell victims to the change where there are few manufacturing jobs but plenty of information technology jobs that have shortage of IT workers.

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University

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