Peter Jackson column
May 31 2007 By Peter Jackson, The Journal
It's nothing new for business to bemoan the decline in standards among graduates in traditional academic subjects. Employers have long complained that employees fresh from university cannot write a letter that is grammatical or spelt correctly and that their numeracy skills also leave a lot to be desired. We know that British non-language graduates are far less likely to be fluent in another tongue than their European or Asian counterparts.
But, at least we could console ourselves with the belief that we were still in the forefront of more modern studies such as computing and that our geeky but incredibly talented youth would keep us at the very cutting edge of information and communications technology.
Sadly, this no longer seems to be the case.
A recent review commissioned by the British Computer Society, BCS, reveals that the number of students studying computing in higher education has fallen by 40% since 2001 and shows no signs of recovery. This bears out what I have been told in the recent months by academics in the region. And, the BCS believes the situation will get worse and that by 2020 the UK's strong position in computer research will be being seriously threatened.
Whereas we are now second only the US in the standards of our university research into IT, to have so many fewer students opting for computing degree courses is bound to hit that capability as a third of students go on to do research.
The fear is that this could hit sectors such as financial services and pharmaceuticals which rely so heavily on IT advances.
Nobody really knows why we have suffered such a dramatic fall in numbers in those studying IT at university. It could be that the bursting of the dotcom bubble led to disillusionment with IT as a career. Or it could be that over familiarity has bred contempt, that young people take computers and software skills so much for granted that they find it hard to regard them as worthy of academic study.
But, whatever the reason, it must be addressed with some urgency or we risk losing out to our competitors not just on one important sector, but in several.
