Do undergraduates want a career in IT?
Over 1,100 students, 400 of whom were studying computing/IT courses, were asked if they thought that computing had been well-promoted as a degree choice when they were at school. Over 50% of all students thought computing had received little promotion. Computing students had overwhelmingly chosen their degree on the basis of personal interest and aptitude, whereas other students had largely been driven by more career-related thinking. Up to 90% of computing students do want to work in IT, and females are even more committed than male students. Their main driver is again personal interest in what they expect to be technical work and exciting projects.
The survey found that far fewer non-computing/IT students would consider working as an IT professional – in this sample 18% of males but only 7% of females. The biggest factor turning off the students is their perception that work in IT will be boring.
By the time of the survey (March), 60% of final year students had still not applied for a job. Those in computing were more likely to have a job offer than those on other courses. The strongest influence on their career choice was work experience. Those who had undertaken work experience were very positive, so increasing its availability would be beneficial especially to students outside IT. Notably, female students were much less likely to have had work experience in the sector than males. A surprisingly large proportion of students were yet to meet an employer at all which may explain why they rated campus presentations less highly than we see in other sectors. Three-quarters of students feel that IT employers have lower profiles than employers in other sectors and need to increase their presence on campus. Computing students also appear to rely less on their careers service than non-computing students.
Since the vast majority of computing students do want to become IT professionals, and have effectively made their career choice very early, the key for this group is to increase the flow into higher education in the first place, which means more effective presence in schools and with young people. The report recommends that the IT sector should become better integrated with and learn from current activities promoting STEM subjects, and the wide range of careers available by studying them, to young people. |