Despite the infrastructure and technology available, SA continues to produce a worryingly low number of graduates in the ICT industry.
This is according to Professor Andre Calitz of the Department of Computing Sciences at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU).
"In comparison to other developing economies, SA still ranks very low on IT enrolments at varsities as well as students graduating and making it into the working environment," he says. To emphasise this, he mentions that, at some point, NMMU was sitting with a higher number of bursaries on offer than the number of students applying.
Calitz attributes this to a number of factors, one of which is that South African universities are too slow to adopt change and add new modules to IT-related courses. "While the industry itself is moving at a rapid pace, with new technologies cropping up daily, there's a delay in adopting these changes at varsity level."
In the US, he adds, as a sign of how the industry is expanding at tertiary level, universities have started issuing master's degrees in big data. For Calitz, slow implementation processes at government level - where issues of policy, governance and protocol should still be adhered to - need to be improved before anything is put in place.
He refers to the recent ban on the use of open source software by the Gauteng Department of Education, stating that steps such as these can derail the industry's progress.
Industry's visibility is another cause for concern, with Calitz suggesting that IT companies should invest money in marketing the industry and making it more appealing to younger generations.
According to Brenda Scholtz, senior lecturer at NMMU, old perceptions about IT - that it's boring, nerdish and not 'sexy' enough - still exist. She states, however, that the university is exploring a number of programmes to re-ignite interest at an educational level.
"One of the things we have explored is sending our students back to their former schools to promote IT to students at that level. Also, as part of the requirements for their honours degrees, students have to spend four hours a week doing IT-related community work."
She notes that the university hosts parents' evenings that focus on IT-related careers. To this end, Calitz adds that the university has developed what it terms the 'excellence club'. "This is an incentive-based platform created to encourage students to be innovative and develop technology-driven solutions, with the best idea getting some form of incentive."
Calitz concludes that more effort should be put into bridging the gap between basic education, tertiary education and IT companies.
Share
