Where do all the IT graduates work ?

[Leodis]

Everyday I work in IT and everyday a piece of my soul dies.

 

[T4tomo]

70% of IT graduates from 2011-2013 were known to be in employment whereas 73% of Mass Media graduates were known to be in employment.*

So, if there are more jobs than graduates in IT and more graduates than jobs for Mass Media graduates, have a go at explaining the figures.

*Higher Education Statistics Agency

But your 73% media grads aren't working in the Media, that the point I was making, a good deal are in non Media related employment.

On the other hand most of your IT graduate will be working in IT as they haven't the personality for an alternative career.

 

[vernon]

Aside from my turn it off/on again comment earlier, I do actually work in IT

I'm the IT Operations Manager for a cluster of schools and academies. At one time a few years back the IT was going to be out sourced to a call centre for the most part. Fortunately (for me) the managemebt saw the value of keeping me and my team on to support the federation of schools

Neither myself or anyone in my team has an IT degree. I prefer to employ on experience rather than pieces of paper

I work in a school that was in a cluster of schools that was served by a centralised IT department formed from the staff that were previously IT technicians in the individual schools. The service was no better or worse than the managed services offered by companies like Research Machines and Viglen. The service didn't require degree level qualifications just competent technicians with sufficient skills to keep the system running. When the rolling five year contract

Centralised managed services came about through the since abandoned ICT initiatives driven and bankrolled by the government who more or less insisted on managed services for all major ICT systems purchased with the funding provided for the magic elixir of accelerated and enhanced learning through the deployment of ICT resources. ICT has still to prove itself to be value for money - witness the abandonment of ICT examinations in schools and the insistence of computing as its replacement and the near absence of ICT* skills in the National Curriculum

I predict a contraction of school IT facilities at the end of the next renewal of contracts of the schools that benefitted from the PFI new schools money. There's certainly shrinkage in the number of companies touting for business at the BETT exhibition on the hardware and services front. It's already manifested itself in my school with the number of dedicated ICT suites being halved, the number of lap tops and notebooks being drastically reduced and the whiteboards in every classroom becoming very expensive projection screens.

Schools will not see expenditure on computer infrastructure on a comparable scale again.

*ICT skills being the ability to use the programs found within an office suite of software plus graphics manipulation for the manipulation and presentation of data.

 

[vernon]

"IT" covers a multitude of different things: do you really need people who know about UML, third-order normal form and formal methods if all they're going to be asked to do is install software and rack new servers?
'

That's essentially the engineer vs mechanic argument that Sir Monte Finniston used in his eponymous report in 1979.

 

[vernon]

But your 73% media grads aren't working in the Media, that the point I was making, a good deal are in non Media related employment.

On the other hand most of your IT graduate will be working in IT as they haven't the personality for an alternative career.

You cant make that assertion. You have the same lack of data about IT graduates as you do about the Media grads any point of view proffered based upon the data supplied is supposition.

 

[Arrowfoot]

IT or Computer Science as an academic discipline after its first introduction in Universities began to wither away as the general populace especially the young could or more less do the things that was thought in the earlier curriculum

It split into 2 distinct direction, half of it went into engineering and hard sciences and the other half when into a multitude of specialised application based courses or disciplines more along the Polytechnic types of levels.

IT firms thus began recruiting software and hardware engineers, grads with physical, mathematics and the usual engineering background. Among these, those that required coding skills took up supplementary course or attended vendor specific courses.

On the specialised application based courses or disciplines, you those with media focus or the likes UI etc.

Those with pure Computer Science Degrees are those graduated in the 80s and early 90s. with the odd universities offering a general Computer Science programme.

 

[vernon]

Guy I went to school with is in IT, he's VP for a large software concern. He lives on an island in a river, and drives an Aston Martin.

The only difference is he's now a wealthy bore instead of a spotty teenage one.
.

My kid brother is not in IT, has an O level in metalwork as his solitary academic qualification, owns three villas in Turkey, a villa in Egypt, two industrial estates in County Durham, a portfolio of rental properties in County Durham and Teeside, a restaurant and a pub, lives in a six bedroomed barn conversion in thirteen acres of land and his other car is an Aston Martin.

The only difference is that he's a wealthy entertaining thug instead of a spotty impoverished teenage one.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Those with pure Computer Science Degrees are those graduated in the 80s and early 90s. with the odd universities offering a general Computer Science programme.

Really? The local university offers a Computer Science BSc course. You needed pretty good grades to get on it. When I searched around about a year ago, there were plenty of universities offering Computer Science BSc courses. You tended to need better grades for the Computer Science course than the Electronics Engineering course, although Electronics required Maths and Physics iirc. Interestingly, the local uni also offers an Information Science BSc, which I think includes trouble shooting computer problems, networks, digital communications, webpage design, maintaining databases, and probably more commercial oriented computing.

 

[Arrowfoot]

Really? The local university offers a Computer Science BSc course. You needed pretty good grades to get on it. When I searched around about a year ago, there were plenty of universities offering Computer Science BSc courses. You tended to need better grades for the Computer Science course than the Electronics Engineering course, although Electronics required Maths and Physics iirc. Interestingly, the local uni also offers an Information Science BSc, which I think includes trouble shooting computer problems, networks, digital communications, webpage design, maintaining databases, and probably more commercial oriented computing.

See my last sentence.There will always be the odd ones.

In the 90s, the IT giants began to move to hard sciences to recruit. Mathematics became a core requirements because the engine of IT was becoming Algorithms. Interestingly Bank's Forex, Derivatives etc were also fishing from the same pool.

IT and Information Science is an amazing field. The advice however is go the way of the hard sciences, including engineering, maths, physics and then aim for IT giants. Banks are the same. Learning finance and business is no longer going to cut it. Its engineering, hard sciences followed by Masters from a business school.

 

[vernon]

See my last sentence.There will always be the odd ones.

In the 90s, the IT giants began to move to hard sciences to recruit. Mathematics became a core requirements because the engine of IT was becoming Algorithms. Interestingly Bank's Forex, Derivatives etc were also fishing from the same pool.

IT and Information Science is an amazing field. The advice however is go the way of the hard sciences, including engineering, maths, physics and then aim for IT giants. Banks are the same. Learning finance and business is no longer going to cut it. Its engineering, hard sciences followed by Masters from a business school.

There's more to IT than working for financial institutions.

 

[vernon]

There's more to IT and the hard sciences than working for financial institutions.

 

[Aperitif]

Your country needs you...it. Well, sort of...saves graduating.

 

[Yellow Fang]

See my last sentence.There will always be the odd ones.

In the 90s, the IT giants began to move to hard sciences to recruit. Mathematics became a core requirements because the engine of IT was becoming Algorithms. Interestingly Bank's Forex, Derivatives etc were also fishing from the same pool.

IT and Information Science is an amazing field. The advice however is go the way of the hard sciences, including engineering, maths, physics and then aim for IT giants. Banks are the same. Learning finance and business is no longer going to cut it. Its engineering, hard sciences followed by Masters from a business school.

Strange that Maths is a core requirement, because I rarely had to use it. We used an odd sort of computer arithmetic at one place I worked at. Sometimes I used a bit of trigonometry, just as a way of testing some graphics feature, but I did not have to. Apart from a bit of hexadecimal arithmetic and some boolean logic, that was about it. I doubt if even those hard science and engineering whizz kids recruited by financial sector use much actual maths in their code.

 

[Arrowfoot]

Strange that Maths is a core requirement, because I rarely had to use it. We used an odd sort of computer arithmetic at one place I worked at. Sometimes I used a bit of trigonometry, just as a way of testing some graphics feature, but I did not have to. Apart from a bit of hexadecimal arithmetic and some boolean logic, that was about it. I doubt if even those hard science and engineering whizz kids recruited by financial sector use much actual maths in their code.

I think I best clarify where I coming from. UK and US and most of the 1st world countries cannot compete with the likes of India and China on mainstream IT development and support as the cost base is much lower. Lots of off-shoring including coding The focus is high end IT work including innovation, high end graphics, etc that would give us the edge. This is where the IT giants have preference for the hard sciences and maths. Google, facebook etc depende heavily on algorithms to get ahead.

As to Bank, I was not referring to The IT department. i was showing that they too like high end IT for banking products are bringing in grads with hard sciences to structure products, find multiple price points and handle complex pricing matrix and time based pricing, complex risk modelling etc. Gone are the days when a degree in finance would get you thru the door for the top end graduate schemes for Banks. Physics and Maths interesting has an edge.

 

[Mark1978]

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