IT education providers must step up: new survey
Only 3% of CIOs believe that the current education system sufficiently meets the demands of the IT employment market, according to new research.
The independent survey commissioned by Robert Half found that many respondents believed education providers need to enhance their services for IT employment.
“As Australian companies accelerate their use of new technologies, there’s increasing concern that the current IT talent pool has not kept pace with market demand and skills that are required in the modern IT sector,” said Andrew Morris, Director of Robert Half Australia.
“Education systems and providers play a key role, not just to guarantee a continuous flow of skilled IT professionals into the employment market, but also to help upskill existing staff. With companies increasingly investing in training to develop the skills of their current IT workforce, it only further emphasises the key role that education providers play in helping to close the current and future skills gap.”
In 12 months, the IT sector has created nearly 19,000 additional jobs. This represents an annual growth of 9.6%, compared to 1.6% for the overall Australian employment market.
However, while employment in IT continues to boom, Australia is increasingly confronted with a shortage of staff in many IT functional areas. More than eight in 10 (82%) Australian CIOs say it is more challenging to find qualified IT professionals compared to five years ago, highlighting the important role of education as these institutions can help supplement the influx of skilled IT staff into the employment market, as well as help upskill existing technology staff.
With a 109% increase in security incidents and cyber-attacks in Australia in 2016 and 53% of Australian IT leaders saying cyber-security is the functional area where it is the most difficult to source skilled job candidates, it is not surprising that IT security has been identified as the number one area that requires greater focus on by IT education providers (41%), followed by data/database management (34%), software/application development (32%), and systems administration and networking (29%).
“Technology is changing continuously and rapidly which also implies the required IT skillsets are evolving continuously and rapidly. To keep up with the changing marketplace and to equip their students with the skills required in the workplace of the future, education providers need to ensure their STEM qualifications, courses and degrees evolve at a similar speed technology does," said Morris.
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