Let’s face it, the UK is lame when it comes to creating globally successful tech-start ups, especially in comparison to the US – think Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Google, etc. In terms of UK start-ups, there’s Last.fm and er… um… nope, give up! The new UK government is seeking to tackle this with a bold vision for a “Tech City” in East London. The plan involves creating a world-beating technology hub, injecting funding and rolling in big boys from the US to lend a hand. This all sounds great, but for us there’s a very serious Achilles’ heel; the declining interest of UK students in development and programming jobs.
We can’t find good tech students
We were recently tapped up by an employer who sought to find out whether our student jobs board attracted candidates for tech roles. Interestingly, the reason they got in contact was because their ad didn’t receive many applications on another well-known student jobs site. We responded in a typically candid fashion and informed the employer that they would receive applications but not to expect a deluge, as media stories would suggest.
Through combing our data it appears that for approximately every 10 students that apply for writing/journalism work experience, or every 5 candidates in the case of marketing/pr jobs, there’s 1 application for a tech role. Something is awry. We wondered whether this was unique to our job board, but we now know this isn’t the case. Our suspicions were cemented in a report produced by High Fliers Research, which shows that students are snubbing tech jobs. The report also claims that IT recruitment has actually expanded over the past decade, but interest from students and recent graduates is at an all-time low.
The fact that IT recruitment has expanded does not surprise us. We’re seeing an increasing demand by SMEs for tech students with Web Development skills. Indeed, FreelanceStudents during its earliest scrappy days looked for UK tech students and as the site was not operational, we posted ads on an external job board. Our results were interesting. A few applications came in from UK students, but shed loads arrived from over-skilled graduates from the shores of India, Pakistan and Eastern Europe, despite the ad stipulating ‘UK Students’.
Wake up!
Alarms bells should be ringing for the government, industry, and educators. Competitive advantage, driven by innovation, has never been more important in today’s high-tech world and software programmers are the seed of this new economy. Yet, output of UK computer science courses appears to be plummeting, whilst it would seem that of Eastern European and Asian schools is rising.
The High Fliers report puts the decline of student interest down to three factors: fewer people taking IT courses, a rise in the number of IT graduates choosing not to work in IT over the past five years, and pay for IT roles lagging behind other professional posts.
Those planning the ‘Tech City’ need to look at each of the above factors very closely. Judging from the first two, computer science clearly needs a makeover so that it is more compelling to students. Perhaps courses need to become more practical in nature e.g. actually building and managing live sites. But, this wouldn’t be enough on its own to build a lasting world-class industry. To achieve this we believe that programming should be introduced into the education system along with mathematics and other sciences; a point articulated very well by Joshua March in a recent article titled ‘Why aren’t we teaching our kids how to code?’
Final thought
If our talent base continues to weaken then we cannot fulfil David Cameron’s mission of turning the UK into a world-beating technology hub, but instead we are likely to find ourselves playing catch up to the US, Asia and Eastern Europe.
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