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Delivering the Future

A new report into the future of the UK’s knowledge economy reveals cause for celebration, but also some concern as the demand for qualified IT professionals far outstrips supply. Ian Delaney reports.

The Microsoft-sponsored report, developed in conjunction with the BCS, Intellect and City University among other partners, shows that the country needs to reskill or redeploy workers if it is to cover existing needs for IT professionals, let alone prepare for growth.

The UK’s Knowledge Economy is currently very strong. We have seen a boom in the creative industries, in the financial services sector and particularly the gaming sector, says Gordon Frazer, MD of Microsoft UK at the launch of the report. The Knowledge Economy already represents 40 per cent of our GDP, and is set to grow to 50 per cent by 2010, meaning that it is also the fastest-growing sector of our economy. Globalisation has actually proven a healthy influence upon this sector, despite the sort of fears about outsourcing expressed in the media. Other countries are outsourcing their IT and knowledge working requirements; and their outsourcing them to us. The UK has a considerably healthier export market in this sector than the US, Japan, France, Germany or Italy. Growth is accelerating, said Frazer, but so too is the skills gap.

The annual requirement from industry for IT professionals is between 156,000 and 179,000 individuals. However, in 2005, only 15,930 people graduated from computing degrees. And of them, only 42.4 per cent were employed in the IT sector following university.

The reasons for this are many. IT still suffers a poor reputation for job security following the 2001 dotcom crash. There is no ’straight’ computing GCSE course. The intake into A-level courses has suffered a five-year drop of 43 per cent to just 6233 candidates. Perhaps most critically, IT is still very much viewed as a ‘male’ career choice: 80 per cent of those entering the IT profession are men. What makes the situation even more bleak is that the die is seemingly cast for the next five years: it takes two years to do an A-level and three to complete a degree. Even if extraordinarily successful ways to popularise IT as a choice for school and university students were introduced now, it would be 2012 before those measures bore fruit.

According to Keith Mander, chair of the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing, this crisis can only be averted through a different attitude towards learning. There needs to be better provision for part-time study, reskilling existing workers. There needs to be a move from the measured, long-term approach to curriculum development to ‘rapid-response’ solutions to short-term skills shortages. Public funding for educational development might be supplemented by employers. Lastly, universities need to become more accessible to people in their own local area through the increased provision of distance learning solutions. Education has often been delivered in a ‘just in case’ fashion - we learn things because they might become useful at some point, and the primary requirement has been memory. Nowadays, we’ve got Google and the need for memory is arguably lower. Education establishments might consider a move to ‘just in time’ learning as a consequence, with search skills as the primary requirement.

Mander cited the work done by the School of Pharmacy at his own university, Kent. A staff member developed a piece of work on new developments in the subject, which she gave away as a cover CD on Pharmacy Today magazine. There was a caveat, however. Readers could receive accreditation for their understanding of the CD’s contents by attending a course at the university. More than 10,000 pharmacists applied for the course. Were such an approach to developing and marketing taken by IT departments, they might experience similar success, Mander suggested.

The full report, as well as last year’s precursor, is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/uk/developingthefuture/default.mspx