Quality of IT graduates not good enough.

[Digout]

Seems the myth about Ireland being the software captial of Europe is now being exposed. Google could not find suitable people to fill 100 positions.

RTÉ Business: Software chief's warning on graduates

[Dios]

I dunno, you hear this argument every once in a while from IT industry chiefs. What it usually boils down to is that they can't find IT workers at a low enough wage.

[Mazzy Maz]

I graduated with a degree in Information Systems (fancy name for programming) from LIT in 2002 and to be honest I wouldn't have hired me back then. Six years later and I've only just gotten my first IT related job (with Google funnily enough), though I'm not an engineer.

I think the major issue here is the type of education we receive at second level. We are not being taught to think or be proactive, rather we just learn to regurgitate Shakespeare quotes for the leaving cert. The result is that your average college student isn't particularly well equipped to make the most of their college education and enter the workforce as a proactive and mature adult. Of course I'm generalising here, but I think there's some truth in it.

[seabhcan]

Irish unis are too focused on Arts courses, because they are cheap to run.

"Talk and Chalk" they call it. Over 40% of Irish uni students are doing arts. They might as well not be for all the good it will do the economy.

I'd like to see fees reintroduced for all but the top 5% of Arts students, while Science and Engineering remain free. Also, the standard degree on the continent is 5 years. With extra funding, tech subjects could be lengthened.

[locke]

There's been a noticeable drop off in the quality of graduates, mostly because at the time of the dot-com bust, IT courses went down to being the lowest points and the choice of people who wanted to go to university and didn't know what they wanted to do. This has been feeding into the people who are actually leaving university in the last few years.

However, we're not doing enough to hang onto people either.

I have a Maths degree and I would say that half of my class are now living outside the country - mostly in the UK, but I know of people in the Sweden, Canada and The Netherlands too.

There's a few reasons. Traditionally London offered higher salaries, while The Netherlands offered a 30% tax rate.

More important is the way IT jobs are still very narrowly focussed into the Greater Dublin region. For graduates of UCC, NUIG, UL and various regional ITs, given the choice of living in Dublin or London, they'll just opt for London - higher salary, similar cost of living, more to do and probably as easy to get home. Given the chance to stay in their region, they might have stayed, but that options just isn't there.

[Pauli]

Irish unis are too focused on Arts courses, because they are cheap to run.

"Talk and Chalk" they call it. Over 40% of Irish uni students are doing arts. They might as well not be for all the good it will do the economy.

I'd like to see fees reintroduced for all but the top 5% of Arts students, while Science and Engineering remain free. Also, the standard degree on the continent is 5 years. With extra funding, tech subjects could be lengthened.

I've always had a problem with Arts degrees. In the 80s, they were a way of keeping the unemployment figure down, at the end of which those who spent the 3 years in UCD or wherever received some of the most expensive toilet paper the State could produce. I doubt if much has changed. My father was a HR director of an American multinational and said that in the 80s he would have difficulty interviewing Arts graduates. He maintained that they had a high level of expectation but had very little concrete to offer a business.

[Factorem]

Irish unis are too focused on Arts courses, because they are cheap to run.

"Talk and Chalk" they call it. Over 40% of Irish uni students are doing arts. They might as well not be for all the good it will do the economy.

I'd like to see fees reintroduced for all but the top 5% of Arts students, while Science and Engineering remain free. Also, the standard degree on the continent is 5 years. With extra funding, tech subjects could be lengthened.

IMO a university's primary role is societal, not economic.

[ditchhurler]

I agree with the posters that the problem lies with secondary curriculum and teaching methods - how are we supposed to produce good IT graduates when you can get on an HONOURS computing course with less than 250 points these days( the average LC student gets about 320 points, so it's possible that people with below average IQ are entering honours courses and graduating from them ! - in the light of this the currency of these degrees must be debased in minds of overseas IT companies.

[michaelo]

I agree with the posters that the problem lies with secondary curriculum and teaching methods - how are we supposed to produce good IT graduates when you can get on an HONOURS computing course with less than 250 points these days( the average LC student gets about 320 points, so it's possible that people with below average IQ are entering honours courses and graduating from them ! - in the light of this the currency of these degrees must be debased in minds of overseas IT companies.

Are you relating leaving cert points with IQ?

[seabhcan]

I have no problem with Arts generally, its just that 40% shouldn't be arts graduates. If 40% were Engineering grads I'd also think we have a problem.

The proportion of funded arts degrees needs to be caped at 5-10% of students.

I know such a cap would probably push universities to create arts-like degrees in other departments - but this might be a good thing. For example there are too few students doing things like "Engineering and German", or "Medicine and Social Care"

Balance is good.

My other gripe is that there is almost zero contact betten students in different departments. We simultaneously produce scientists with no business understanding and Business and Marketing graduates with no science and technology understanding. We should be pairing up engineers and business students for joint projects.