Yesterday, the 5-year-old bipartisan industry organization TechNet, which was formed to lobby in Washington for national technology and innovation, briefed the National Press Club about its findings that IT in the United States is in danger of losing its competitive edge. Citing TechNet's "Innovation Policy Agenda," Rick White, TechNet president and CEO, said that math, science, and engineering education in the US has been falling and continues to fall behind that of other countries. Combine this with the woeful state of broadband deployment in the US and problems with Internet security, and you have a recipe for, if not outright disaster, then certainly dire straits for IT and the US economy in the not so distant future. Reading this news as I did upon finishing the article "Who Says a Woman Can't Be Einstein?" in the March 7 issue of Time magazine made me wonder once again why we just can't seem to connect the dots. Yes, the brains of males and females are different. We get it. But difference doesn't mean inferiority in any one area, only that males and females process information differently. Yet we continue to shoehorn schoolkids into a one-size-fits-all educational system that might get the job done--barely--but doesn't seem to really serve any child really well. For example, an interesting insight from the Time article comes from Leonard Sax, a physician and psychologist who's studied the differences between the brains of girls and boys intensively. According to Sax, "The reason women are underrepresented in computer science and engineering is not because they can't do it. It's because of the way they're taught." But if TechNet is correct, it isn't just girls who aren't being taught well in math, technology, and science. We need to demolish the myth that these subjects are difficult and arcane and bring them back into the realm of "ordinary" education and everyday life.
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An interesting view of "losing the IT edge". Not what I expected to read. However, I think the matter of losing the edge in the IT sector is not a schooling issue alone. Yes we need to overhaul some of our techniques in education but the REAL problem happens when those High School graduates have to make the decision of what career path they want to take. Like anyone else, the goal of making big bucks is prime time in their thoughts of career choices. The IT industry just doens't have that kind of income anymore in the US. The outsourcing of tech jobs overseas has devalued the average highly skilled IT job to well below what it should be worth. Obviously this is taken into account by the undergrads and although the hard-core tech nuts may , more often than not, choose the tech path, the casual enthusiast who would have had his/her interest piqued with the allure of large salaries is left soured by the once bright future in IT and "cool" stuff they learned in HS to only find out that the real world industry is the pits. You might ask yourself "For what reason?" .. money on the corporate scale; the bottom line profit. Never-mind Joe Q who really wants to work in the sector but can't risk the low salary or who thumb's his nose at the sector becuase of the lack of incentive.
Big IT in America is chewing up the American IT edge from the inside out. If there is little incentive , then there is little forward movement. So come on Big IT..dangle the carrot for us again!
Anonymous User March 09, 2005 (Article Rating: )
The only way for Big IT to dangle the carrot again is to come up with another Y2K. In 1998 and 1999, if you had a pulse and knew what a computer was, you could get a job making big bucks. Now, as the IT field as an industry begins to mature, those really nice big dollar jobs aren't there any more. Thanks also to the H1B jobs our congress has continued to allow, further eroding the job base.
Regardless, IT is beginning to mature and it's harder to get those jobs because there are fewer and fewer of them, it's harder to justify the expenditures anymore. IT spending is in the toilet, has been for a few years now. Trends say it's going to change but thanks to SOX compliance (and other new federal business regs), that money is going into finding out how to become compliant; not new jobs just complicating the hell out of our existing ones.
Is education the problem? Not for IT. This is a field that sees dramatic changes with a new major OS from MS every 3 years and major changes to development tools at least as often. When it takes 4+ years to get an advanced degree, by the time you graduate you have outdated knowledge. Its impossible to educate people in things that don't yet exist. Kids today know that and they are smart enough already to run away.
It's not right to combine other forms of engineering and advanced educations in with IT because of the resons above. When was the last time entire archectural design methodologies were completely revamped, history of work dumped and was started over? How about automotive engineering? We see new cars all the time but the basic design has been around since 1900 - 4 wheels, an engine, space for occupants and a method for controling speed and direction.
Signed 'Used up and burned out'
Anonymous User March 09, 2005 (Article Rating: )
The question has to be raised about why IT funding is 'in the toilet'.
Is it fundamentally because businesses have not seen the outcomes of IT that they were promised when 'anyone who had a pulse and knew what a computer was' were able to dazzle with bull*?
Businesses have IT setups to allow them to run their businesses better. The technology is just the tool set. What they need is to be able to use the tool set and see the results. I believe that they dont know and / or dont understand how to use the tools. The result is that they have spent the money (and get caught up in the spiral of continual upgrades) without seeing the rewards. They dont see that they need to learn to use these tools effectively to get the rewards. But they are not going to spend more money on them because they have been burned in the past.
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Like anyone else, the goal of making big bucks is prime time in their thoughts of career choices. The IT industry just doens't have that kind of income anymore in the US. The outsourcing of tech jobs overseas has devalued the average highly skilled IT job to well below what it should be worth. Obviously this is taken into account by the undergrads and although the hard-core tech nuts may , more often than not, choose the tech path, the casual enthusiast who would have had his/her interest piqued with the allure of large salaries is left soured by the once bright future in IT and "cool" stuff they learned in HS to only find out that the real world industry is the pits. You might ask yourself "For what reason?" .. money on the corporate scale; the bottom line profit. Never-mind Joe Q who really wants to work in the sector but can't risk the low salary or who thumb's his nose at the sector becuase of the lack of incentive.
Big IT in America is chewing up the American IT edge from the inside out. If there is little incentive , then there is little forward movement. So come on Big IT..dangle the carrot for us again!
Anonymous User March 09, 2005 (Article Rating: