Lack of coolness of ICT driving kids away from careers
26 June, 2009
By Chris Talbot |
The old stereotype of someone sitting in a cubicle all day punching code into a computer is keeping kids today from seeking out an information and communications technology (ICT) career, according to a recent survey sponsored by the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's ICT Skills (CCICT) and Bell.
Conducted by the Conference Board of Canada, the study was based on a survey of Grade 9 and 10 high school students, and while 77 per cent of the students said they thought ICT jobs had average or better than average pay and 74 per cent said they believed such jobs had average or better than average job security, only 30 per cent said they saw ICT careers as interesting. The "cool factor" is largely to blame; ICT jobs aren't viewed as being cool.
David Ticoll, executive director of CCICT, said the results weren't surprising, but instead validated what the CCICT believed about the reasons for a declining percentage of people leaving secondary school entering into ICT post-secondary education. However, the findings do go against conventional wisdom that kids don't want to go into ICT fields because they think the job market is shrinking.
"In a way, this survey validated our point of view on the real reasons for declining enrollments," Ticoll said.
With many traditional ICT jobs being offshored, the overall job market is still growing, he said. Kids are being misinformed about the reality of the types of jobs available, though, he said. Super-specializations along the lines of security and real-time business analytics, as well as multi-disciplinary computing fields that touch on things like intelligent power grids and bioinformatics, are very different from the stereotype of the lone computer geek sitting behind a desk staring at a monitor for eight hours a day, he said.
"No matter what field you're interested in now, you can combine IT with technology innovation in that field so you're at the cutting edge of innovation," Ticoll said.
He said the old stereotypes are becoming obsolete.
"We need more kids enrolling in IT, but only some of them need to enroll in traditional computer science," he said.
Of the students surveyed, 39 per cent said they saw an ICT career as appealing or very appealing, while 19 per cent said said it was unappealing and the remainder weren't sure. Additionally, 30 per cent said they saw an ICT career as interesting, 27 per cent as not interesting and the remaining 43 per cent not sure.
More kids looking forward to ICT careers is necessary if Canada is going to remain a world leader in technology innovation, he said. A lack of talent has less to do with a skills shortage and more to do with losing leadership ground in certain technology areas. For instance, Ticoll noted that Ontario is considered to be a world leader in smart grid technology, but without the people to do the work, the province could lose that edge.
To try to reverse the trend and get more kids interested in ICT careers, the CCICT is planning various national marketing campaigns over the next year, including building an online job marketplace and an ICT week campaign. It is also trying to get an "IT management for business" program into various universities. |
