More technology graduates needed

By ADAM GIFFORD

A Ministry of Economic Development survey of university courses has found more potential information technology-literate graduates in New Zealand than originally thought.

But the 2300 potential graduates identified was still considered a low figure.

Ministry IT policy adviser Frank March says the vice-chancellors' survey was done in response to inquiries by technology giant Motorola about the feasibility of setting up a research laboratory in this country.

Based on returns filled in by graduates, they reported our universities generate about 1000 IT and computer-science graduates a year.

"The Motorola thing was a wake-up call. What was disturbing was the apparently low number of graduates," Mr March says. "We looked at the numbers which came out of the vice-chancellors' survey, and we were equally aware many students doing majors in other areas such as mathematics were also doing some IT papers."

The ministry survey matches information from university calendars, with pass rates.

It identified 659 papers with direct relevance to IT, of which 519 had students enrolled last year. Some papers, especially at a post-graduate level, are not taught every year.

Courses were weighted on whether they were somewhat relevant, relevant or highly relevant to IT.

A stage-one e-commerce paper merited one point, while a fourth-year paper in electrical engineering or programming was given 12 points.

Mr March says there were greater numbers of, and more specialised, courses offered at higher levels. Many of these may have had only one or two students in a class and be directly related to some ongoing project or commercial development.

Auckland, being by far the largest university, has a larger number and range of courses than any of the other universities.

It also has a higher share of "relevance value points" than its share of enrolments, suggesting it has more "IT relevance" than other universities.

Mr March says this is to be expected since it has one of the country's two engineering schools. On the other hand, Canterbury University, which also has an engineering school, seems to have less IT relevance than might be expected.

"The survey does illustrate the depth of teaching in New Zealand."

It shows, for example, that about 2300 people are getting IT-relevant degrees, but that number is still low, Mr March says.

"It means we have more than we thought but not nearly enough."

Mr March says in future he would like to expand the survey to cover polytechnics, where there are many non-degree courses in subjects like electrical engineering. He also wants to bring in subjects such as linguistics and mathematics which can give people a good basis for programming or technology jobs.

"This is just a baseline survey. We really want to do this over a number of years to measure changes over time, and it might assist universities in their planning."

The survey is part of the ministry's IT statistics report.


Related links


Ministry of Economic Development survey