Students fleeing from technology

By Heri Jun 16th 2008 in Design

Usually, I quote this kind of article in the found section of montrealtechwatch, but I think this article is an eye-opener on the dire case of (future shortage of) technology talent in Quebec.

The MontrealGazette freelancer Stephanie Whittaker tells the case of Vanier College:

This year, Vanier will graduate only about eight students from its three-year computer technology program.

“We’ve suffered from the Nortel effect for the past few years,” Popovitch said. “Young people have been hesitant about entering the IT sector and their parents are cautious about their children’s college program choices.”

..

“We used to get 300 applicants in the late 1990s for 100 places in the program.”

By contrast, she added, about 20 students now enroll, but by the end of the program, fewer than half graduate.

This echoed an earlier article on montrealtechwatch.

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Comments

Gary Haran June 16, 2008

I heard an official of the University of Moncton stating that they are expecting reduced metrics in the following 10 years. This has more to do with demographics than it does with a field in particular though.

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Maxime Poulin June 16, 2008

I confirm, I’m currently doing a “Technique en Informatique: Gestion de réseau” at Cégep Maisonneuve and we were only about 30 when we started and now we are no more than 15 and only a few, about 5 people are going at the university in engineering after the DEC like me. Good thing for us, there’s going to have plenty of jobs available, but still this situation is alarming for the industry.

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Fred Brunel June 16, 2008

Hi Heri,

Actually, we have the same problem in France. Most students wants to work for the government for the sake of job stability.

How depressing.

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Montreal Tech Watch June 16, 2008

Students fleeing away from technology http://tinyurl.com/6gscj3

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fsbrainstorm June 16, 2008

Retweeting @mtw: Students fleeing away from technology http://tinyurl.com/6gscj3. It doesn’t help that the teachers are also out of touch.

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Taffey June 18, 2008

Has IT become the coal mining of the 21st century? But seriously this is alarming news for the industry in general but specially for the startup’s which need good young talent by the bus load.

Also it would be very interesting so see numbers on the % of people who drop out of the industry. I know many personally who have left for greener pastures but I wonder how this compares to other industries.

Taf

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Heri June 19, 2008

Taffey, I think there was the crash in 2000/2001, which gave IT a bad press. But in most countries, technology came back in full force.

The situation in Québec is maybe more critical than in other places in the world; people might have believed too much in tech in the early decade, only to discover that it’s not a miracle industry.

As a personal note, you can’t also put everything “IT” in the same basket. Myself, I find corporate IT dull. There are much better things to do in technology. But my opinion might be skewed. We are in montrealtechwatch anyway

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