Standard Bank, universities in drive to attract school leavers back to IT
Neil Harper, HR director of Group IT at Standard Bank, says the current IT skills crisis in SA is growing “by the day” as businesses scrabble to meet their increasing demands with a dwindling labour pool.
“The jobs are there, and they are high-paying jobs, but we are just not seeing the pipeline of people coming through the system,” says Harper. “This is going to force businesses to look beyond our borders for IT skills – and I think that this is a big problem for the economy, the industry and the country as a whole.”
Harper says the shortage of IT skills is having a negative impact on business, with many companies being forced to delay launching new products and services because of problems filling IT vacancies. Standard Bank has significantly increased its IT headcount in the past three years, and is still being forced to outsource lower-level jobs to allow its current staff to meet the bank’s burgeoning business requirements.
And if the problem is bad now, it will only get worse in the future. Universities across the country are seeing fewer and fewer students registering for IT-related studies. Part of the problem is that the current generation of young people has no idea of what working in IT is about, says Basie von Solms, President-Elect of IFIP and Professor in the Academy of Information Technology, University of Johannesburg.
“It is not so much a case of demystifying the industry as of changing negative perceptions, which may come from bad experiences with IT systems to which the parents of prospective students may be exposed,” says Von Solms.
“The situation as far as computer-related studies at school level also causes serious worries,” he adds.
“Very often, potentially very productive learners are switched off as far as IT and an IT career is concerned. This relates to the fact that it is often the case that because of a lack of skilled teachers, the material is offered in such a way that learners lose interest. The challenge is to put the 'WOW!’ into IT!!!!,” he says.
The answer, says Harper, is to make school learners and prospective students aware of the 'bright possibilities’ of careers in IT, and encourage them to take the right subjects at school level – most notably maths and science – to allow them to take advantage of these.
“By the time they get to university level, most of our students are maths and science-phobic,” says Harper. “We need to make sure we have pupils taking these subjects to be able to further their own careers in IT. What is more, we have to find ways of ensuring that pupils, students and parents are given high quality information to enable them to make informed career choices.”
According to Professor Carina de Villiers, Head of Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria, a major problem for universities is that a number of schools tend to focus more on distinctions and high pass rates, than the future of their learners.
“In the information sector we need learners with Mathematics Higher grade, or, with the new syllabus, Mathematics, and not Mathematics literacy, to study IT degrees,” she says.
“IT has become so embedded in the learners' lives that they tend to forget that there are people (IT developers) behind the technology used in their cell phones, shops, at the ATM, on the Internet and in everyday life.
“IT has never been a more exciting career than it is today. Whether you are interested in business, music, marketing, art, publishing, technology, games, teaching, medicine, etc. you cannot escape the influence of information technology,” she adds.
Government is well aware of the problem. Minister of Science and Technology Mosibudi Mangena has repeatedly stressed that maths and science studies are key drivers for wealth creation and improving the nation’s quality of life, and government is working to implement several remedial programmes to boost the numbers of maths and science students in schools.
Harper says that improvements to computer science education are vital to SA’s continued relevance in the technology industry. Standard Bank has already forged working relationships with several universities as it looks to promote IT as an attractive career with numerous opportunities for prospective students.
“The IT industry, big business and the country’s educational institutions all have a role to play in building the pipeline of IT skills,” said Harper. “We have to increase the size of the pool – and we have to do it in the face on increasing competition from other organisations and industries. This is a challenge which goes to the sustainability of the IT industry as we know it.”
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