Education and Training in IT Skills
- What measures can be taken to make sure that the development of IT qualifications keeps up with technological advances?
- What can be done to make sure education and training in IT skills adequately reflect academic and vocational needs?
- Should we focus more on school-age education and training, or through-life training?
- Are there any other topics we need to consider?
February 18th, 2011 at 11:38 am
One of the key problems educators face in developing new IT qualifications is the pace of change. By the time a new qualification has been devised the technology upon which it is based has moved on. Simply having a degree in IT is no guarantee of work. You are also required to have relevant Manufacturer and Software developer or administrator certifications. I favour encouraging employers to be more closely involved in curriculum development. I gained my IT skills through work rather than education and was fortunate enough to have my training and certification paid for by my employer. I would also encourage the educators to embrace the currently available array of vendor based certifications (which are kept up to date).
Maybe the answer is to look at giving business better tax breaks for taking on trainees and sponsoring their vocational/professional qualifications.
At present taking IT certifications is an expensive business and I feel something should be done to try and lower that cost for individuals who wish to qualify. For example if someone wants to become an IT system tester they would be expected to have an ISEB Certification in Soiftware testing. This can cost in excess of £1000 as you are required to take an authorised training course beforehand. This certification would make a person more employable than an academic qualification. Unlike degrees, the student has to find this money up front and indeed would probably also take other certifications to complement the software testing qualification.