Proceedings of the 2007 Computer Science and IT Education Conference
Is the ICT University Degree the Best Option for being a Successful ICT Professional?1 Ota Novotný and Petr Doucek Faculty of Informatics and Statistics, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic
[email protected] [email protected]
Abstract This paper provides an analysis of the skills required by ICT professionals when entering the ICT labor market in the Czech Republic. While the core ICT skill set includes basic elements of software engineering and networking, new areas of skills are constantly emerging, redefining the portfolio of skills that ICT practitioners need. Qualitative analysis has shown that proportion of core ICT skills in knowledge profiles required by industry is between 59-85 percent for different IT roles. During quantitative analysis we have found that at about 58 percent of new university graduated employees in the ICT sector in the Czech Republic did not pass through a formal ICT education. This forms potential threat to the ICT oriented study programs and requires further development of their curricula in direction of business needs. Keywords: ICT Education, ICT Skills, ICT Curricula, Roles in ICT, Knowledge profiles. (1 This project is supported by Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in the frame of development project “Transition of the Best Experience between Universities and Practice” and evaluation of data sources was realized in the frame of the project MSM61384398910 – “Methods of Knowledge Acquisition from Data and Their Use in Economical Decision-making”.)
Introduction A number of different types of providers are involved in the delivery of ICT education services in the Czech Republic resulting in a variety of formal and informal qualifications. Influences such as globalization, and the increased popularity of outsourcing and offshoring have recently combined to produce an environment where ICT graduates need to have up-to-date and industry-relevant knowledge and skills, so that they can be successful in this highly competitive environment. Importantly, these skills must allow mobility across different countries and regions, as many ICT projects involve international collaboration and working overseas. Given the intense global competition in ICT education it is essential that universities deliver high-quality courses that are closely aligned with global industry requirements. (Scott, Alger, Pequeno, & Sessions, 2002) Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact
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Skills required by ICT professionals range from highly technical knowledge (needed to develop software systems and applications using advanced computer languages and tools) to project management and people skills, and can involve specialized expertise for a given industry sector or type of business (Barnes & Malcolm, 1971). While the core ICT skill set includes the basic elements of software engineering and networking,
Is the ICT University Degree the Best Option for being a Successful ICT Professional?
new areas of skills are constantly emerging, re-defining the portfolio of skills that ICT practitioners need (Helfert & Doucek, 2007). Skills shortages can arise as a result of competence shortfall or mismatch between available skills and those desired by the industry. Most Higher Education policies have a long-term impact and cannot address immediate demands that result from rapid changes in the technological environment. To set up and formally pass the accreditation process of a new study program takes in minimum one year (Novotný & Doucek, 2007). As a result, vendor-based certification courses and various types of continuing education courses are becoming increasingly popular with ICT professionals (Denning, 1999) and provide a fast track method for acquiring up-to-date skills. Above listed facts were also confirmed in the last three years by annual interviews with ten key employers of the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics graduates.
Problem Formulation What are the skills necessary for being a successful ICT professional in the Czech Republic? Is it necessary to have a formal ICT University education before entering ICT labor market? What is the current proportion of the graduates having formal ICT education among new employees in ICT roles?
Project Description As a reaction to the low flexibility of the Czech Republic formal education system in the area ICT skills and also to the potential threat from non ICT university study programs, the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics decided to initiate a research project in order to map: •
ICT education offered in the Czech Republic.
•
Demand for ICT skills in the Czech Republic.
The aim of this project was to motivate universities and formulate recommendations for further development of the Czech university education in the area of ICT. The main goal of the project was firstly to: •
Identify at all universities and technical specialist schools, which are involved in ICT education, topics of their education process, number of credits devoted to different IT subjects.
•
Identify the actual number of students, expected number of graduates in an actual school year and actual number of new students in the first year.
The second goal was to do a survey of the ICT graduates skill requirements in the Czech market (ICT Skills Monitoring Group, 2002). The investigation started in September 2006 and in April 2007 we have got the first preliminary results. Part of this project was devoted to the analysis of current IT workforce age and skill structure.
Methodology All the project phases and methodology decisions were discusses and agreed by the team consisting from members of three leading Czech IT associations (CSSI, SPIS, CACIO), experts from five Czech universities and selected ten employers of ICT university graduates in the Czech Republic. Note: Chapters "Who is a ICT Professional - Roles in ICT", "Skill Categories", "Knowledge Levels" and "Survey" contain the basic project methodology and citing information provided in
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(Doucek & Novotný, in press). We have decided to include them in order to provide clean project context to the reader.
Who is an ICT Professional - Roles in ICT Let us now consider the situation regarding the availability of ICT professionals in the Czech Republic. To evaluate the demand and supply of ICT professions over the last 10 years is rather complicated, as a precise definition of an ICT specialist in statistical nomenclatures is still not available. In addition to the obvious ICT professions such as programmers, network or data base administrators, there is number of professions that combine ICT background with other qualification, e.g. ability to optimize enterprise processes, ability to implement the methodology needed for ERP systems, advanced SAP user, or ICT business specialist. (Economic Results of MarketOriented Services, 2005) Our project prefers classification of specific roles in ICT (rather than particular professions which are in this context too detailed) (Round & Lovegrove, 2004) underlining the competitive ability of graduates based on their knowledge potential. ICT specialist in this context is educated and qualified to use his/her knowledge potential mainly in the design, implementation and operation of ICT and their application. (Fernandez & Tedford, 2006; Round & Lovegrove, 2004) We have defined following roles (Voříšek & Feuerlicht, 2006a, 2006b): •
Business Process Analyst/Designer.
•
IS/ICT development and operation manager.
•
Businessman in ICT products and services.
•
Developer / IS Architect.
•
Administrator of applications and of ICT infrastructure.
•
ICT Expert user.
End users of ICT are not (for the purpose of this project) considered as ICT specialists, even though most of the current university graduates (doctors of medicine, financiers, architects) are by definition active in data processing and computer aided operations (Barnes & Malcolm, 1971; Round & Lovegrove, 2004). We decided to exclude this category from our research because it does not require specific ICT education. For example, user of SAP application software is not, according to our classification, an ICT specialist, but a methodology designer responsible for the overall SAP architecture is covered by our role definitions. This exclusion makes our ICT Specialist different form the ICT Specialist defined e.g. by OECD wide definition (Information and Communication Technology, 2004). Final list of roles resulted from the discussion of the project team and was reviewed by above listed institutions and employers.
Skill Categories During the research methodology design we have been concentrating on the 18 skill categories (based, but not limited to the respected IT curricula – Strawman curricula) (Strawman, 2004) and their importance in the university graduate or employee profile. Final list resulted from the discussion of the project team and was reviewed by above listed institutions and employers. We have identified the following skill categories: Process modeling (MS01), Application functionality (MS02), ICT service definition and operation (MS03), Architecture analysis and design (MS04), Software engineering (MS05), Data engi-
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neering (MS06), ICT infrastructure (MS07), Operational Excellence (MS08), Communication and presentation skills (MS09), Team leadership skills (MS10), ICT market knowledge (MS11), Organizational management methods (MS12), Enterprise finance and economics (MS13), Sales and marketing (MS14), Statistics (MS15), Law (MS16), Business sectors (MS17) and Other (MS18). Note: Category MS18 Other was provided in the questionnaires for informative and crosscheck reasons (in order to get the total number of credits for study program) and was not used in the further analysis, clustering and distance measurement.
Knowledge Levels In order to compare the “amount” of knowledge devoted to each skill category by university program or by business requirements we have defined non-linear scale as follows: •
Level 0 - No knowledge.
•
Level 1 - Overview (relevant to 1-3 credits or intensive training days).
•
Level 2 - Basic orientation and terminology (relevant to 4-8 credits or intensive training days).
•
Level 3 - Good orientation and basic practical skills (relevant to 9-32 credits or intensive training days).
•
Level 4 - Good orientation and good practical skills (relevant to 33-64 credits or intensive training days).
•
Level 5 - Highest knowledge quality and advanced practical skills (relevant to 65 and more credits or intensive training days).
One credit is in the Czech Republic understood as 90 minutes direct (in university) and 45 minutes of indirect (home) education in each of 13 weeks of one semester. In total it is equivalent of 1170 minutes of direct and 585 minutes of indirect education. We have decided to use non-linear scale in order to conform to industry requirements (different non-linear expectations from each knowledge level) expressed to us by the employers. We have decided to compare (and express) one credit of university study program to one intensive training day, because not all the businesses we had planned to include in our surveys were familiar with the university credit scheme. Above listed scale was initially developed by the project team and approved after analysis of the pilot surveys (see below). A set of knowledge levels for each of the skill categories is in our research defined as “knowledge profile” and is used for comparison of the business requirements with the supply of universities.
Survey Initially, we developed the survey questionnaires for universities and for the businesses (legal entities) in the Czech Republic. We tested these questionnaires at the pilot survey in small number of universities (5) and businesses (15). Then we updated them based on the comments received and distributed them among all universities and other HEI (Higher Education Institutions) in the Czech Republic.
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Survey among Universities and HEI The surveyed population: All faculties and HEI providing IT related study programs based on evidence of the Czech Ministry of Education. There were 54 faculties and 19 HEI identified in that evidence on 2006/03/01. Questionnaire was sent out to all these subjects. They were asked to fill this questionnaire for each ÍT related study program they provide. Response rate was 81% for faculties and 42% for HEI. We have collected the data about 203 IT related study programs.
Method of sampling from the population: Therefore we have surveyed the whole population no sampling method had to be used. Missing quantitative data (number of enrolled, number of students, number of graduates) from non response we have reconstructed from the official resources of the Czech Ministry of Education. Missing qualitative data (number of credits devoted to each skill category) were not reconstructed and these faculties and HEI institutions were included into final results as "not classified" segment.
Variables a) Number of students, number of enrolled (new entrants to the study program each year) number of graduates in the school years 2000 to 2006 and expected numbers for some following years. b) Number of credits devoted to each of 18 skill categories defined. c) Classification variable: level of study program – HEI, bachelor, master (2 year), master (5 year; these are the "pre Bologna" programs ending in 2006 or 2007 school years)
Survey among Businesses The surveyed population: The survey covered all active economic subjects in the Czech Republic on 2005/12/31 (the survey was held in 2006). According to data of the Czech Statistical Office, there were 1 266 336 subjects of various size and main economic activity (Table 1). Size of entity: According to the number of employees, 6 categories were used: 0, 1 – 9, 10 – 49, 50 – 249, 250 – 999, 1000 and more. Sector of main economic activity: There are 17 main sectors in Industrial Classification of Economic Activities of the Czech Statistical Office. According to the requirements on information technologies, these sectors were coded into 3 categories: sectors with the lowest requirements (MIT), sectors with the middle requirements (SIT) and sectors with the highest requirements (VIT). Table 1: All active economic entities in the Czech Republic on 2005/12/31 0 MIT SIT VIT Total
1-9
10 – 49
50 – 249
250 – 999
1000 +
263 289 697 380 49 851
49 914 138 555 9 590
14 270 28 014 2 216
4 317 6 217 710
369 1 164 170
87 182 41
1010 520
198 059
44 500
11 244
1 703
310
Total 332 246 871 512 62 578 1266 336
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Method of sampling from the population: According to the size of subject and to the category of its economic activity, the population was grouped into 18 subpopulations. Then, stratified sampling was applied. Proportionate allocation when the sampling fraction in each of the strata is proportional to that of the total population was not useful here. There are no homogenous subgroups in the population. As we can see in Table 1, their size is very varied. Because of number of employees the variation of number of IT workers in subject certainly is very heterogeneous, too. Optimum allocation requires knowledge of this variability (it was un-known). So, we took this heterogeneity into account at least in the following way: the sampling fraction was higher in strata with more employees and in sectors with the higher requirements on information technologies. The interviewing methods used were CAWI and CATI. Realized sample size was 1002 (Table 2). Table 2: Structure of the observed sample 0 MIT SIT VIT Total
56 56 56
1–9 28 56 110
10 – 49 28 56 160
50 – 249 28 56 122
250 - 999 37 71 26
1000+ 16 36 4
168
194
244
206
134
56
Total 193 331 478 1 002
Variables a) Number of IT employees in 2006 in the following structure: business analyst, IT manager, IT salesman, architect of information networks, administrator, advanced user. Expected number of IT workers for some following years. b) Knowledge requirements on particular professional positions: there were 18 skill categories (thus, 18 ordinal variables with values 0 – “no knowledge (0 training days)” … 5 – “highest knowledge (more than 65 training days) ”. c) Classification variables: number of employees, sector of main economic activity, requirements of the sector on information technologies, IT supplier or customer, national or exterior owner.
Number of IT employees: Sample distributions in the particular strata are highly right skewed (duly incidentally) and they include outliers (the box plots were used to make the explanatory data analysis). Therefore, to characterize their location and variation, and for estimates of total number of IT employees in Czech economy, medians and median absolute deviations were used. In the stratum “entities without employees”, the proportion of “IT entities” in that stratum in population was estimated.
Knowledge requirements: With respect to nature of variables, medians were used again. To compare different professional positions and different skill categories, box plots (for sampling distributions) and scatter plots (for medians) were used.
Other Data Sources For the purpose of our analysis we needed the data about age structure of the IT workforce which we were not able to collect by above defined survey. Therefore we have used data from the Czech Ministry of Social Affairs "Average Wage" project. They have provided to us subset of their
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January 2006 data used for their calculations – age of employees in ICT roles. Roles were based on ISCO codes defined by OECD wide definition (Information and Communication Technology, 2004). Finally we have used the information about demographic structure of the Czech Republic population in the 2006 which has been supplied to us by the Czech Statistical Office.
Qualitative Analysis – IT Knowledge Proportion In this part of the analysis we have been concentrated on the proportion of the core IT skills (MS01 to MS08, MS11) in the knowledge profile of the business requirements of each IT role. We have been evaluating this proportion as the number of training days devoted to gain core IT skills at required level divided by the total number of training days devoted to gain all skills (MS01-MS17) at required level.
Quantitative Analysis In the quantitative analysis we have been concentrating on the proportion of the total number of ICT study programs graduates in the total number of IT employees of certain age. He we had to adopt following assumptions: 1) 49% of the employees of the certain age (in our case 26 years old) have the formal university education. We have based this assumption on the data from the Ministry of Social Affairs (see above). 2) Majority of graduates leave university at age 26. Majority of bachelors do not enter the IT market, but continue to the master studies (80% of bachelors). This is common situation in the Czech Republic. 3) Every ICT university graduate is getting his/her job in the ICT. Due to the high demand at the ICT labor market there is practically no unemployment of graduates in this area. 4) Migration (especially in the direction out from the Czech Republic) in the area of ICT is very small. Therefore we can expect all graduates to have their first position in the Czech Republic.
Results Overview Qualitative Analysis Knowledge profiles of each of the above listed ICT roles are described in the Table 3. All values (knowledge levels) are expressed as medians of the survey sample. More detail information about project evaluation can be found in Novotný and Doucek (2007) and Voříšek, Doucek, and Novotný (2007). The data in Table 3 show that employers require knowledge in all defined areas and therefore no skill category is omitted in any of the ICT Roles. It is also interesting, that even for the Developer / IS Architect role businesses require in all skill categories minimally knowledge level 2.
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Table 3: Knowledge Profiles of ICT Roles
ICT Role/ Skill category
Business Process Analyst/ Designer
IS/ICT Development and Operation Manager
MS01 Process modeling
4
4
3
4
3
3
MS02 Application functionality
3
4
3
4
4
3
MS03 ICT service definition and operation
3
4
4
4
3
3
MS04 Architecture analysis and design
3
4
3
4
3
3
MS05 Software engineering
3
3
3
4
3
3
MS06 Data engineering
3
3
3
4
3
3
MS07 ICT infrastructure
4
4
4
4
4
3
MS08 Operational Excellence
4
4
4
4
4
4
MS09 Communication and presentation skills
4
4
4
3
3
3
MS10 Team leadership skills
4
4
3
3
3
3
MS11 ICT market knowledge
4
3
4
3
3
3
MS12 Organizational management methods
3
4
3
3
3
3
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AdministraBusinesstor of applications and man in ICT products Developer / of ICT in- ICT Expert and services IS Architect frastructure user
Novotný & Doucek
ICT Role/ Skill category
Business Process Analyst/ Designer
IS/ICT Development and Operation Manager
AdministraBusinesstor of applications and man in ICT products Developer / of ICT in- ICT Expert and services IS Architect frastructure user
MS13 Enterprise finance and economics
3
3
3
2
3
3
MS14 Sales and marketing
3
3
4
2
2
3
MS15 Statistics
3
3
3
2
3
3
MS16 Law
3
3
3
2
3
3
MS17 Business sectors
3
3
3
2
2
3
We will get a better view by concentrating on proportion of the core IT skills (MS01 to MS08, MS11) in the knowledge profile of the business requirements of each IT role (Table 4). Note: The smaller is ICT core skills proportion, the smaller is the role of ICT core skills in the knowledge profile of relevant ICT Role. Table 4: Knowledge Profiles of ICT Roles Business Process Analyst/ Designer
IS/ICT Development and Operation Manager
AdministraBusinesstor of appliman in ICT cations and Developer / of ICT in- ICT Expert products and services IS Architect frastructure user
Required ICT core skills (in number of training days)
177
225
177
273
153
105
All skills (in number of training days)
297
369
297
320
215
177
ICT core skills proportion
0,60
0,61
0,60
0,85
0,71
0,59
Quantitative Evaluation Figure 1 describes the structure of IT workforce in the Czech Republic in the year 2006. Note: Peak between 24 and 36 years old employees is the result of the pro-population policy of the communist regime.
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In this year there were 8350 ICT employees aged 26. University education had 4092 of them (see above assumptions). In the same year we have had 1710 graduates of IT related university programs (based on survey results). The proportion of ICT university graduates to total number of university graduates in ICT roles is therefore 1710 / 4092=0,42.
9 000
Number of ICT employees
8 000 7 000 6 000 5 000 4 000 3 000 2 000 1 000 0 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61
Age
Figure 1: Age structure of the Czech Republic IT workforce
Discussion Overall results show the emphasis given by potential employers of ICT specialists (in this case university graduates) not only to the ICT core skills (MS01 to MS08, MS11), but also to the ICT soft skills (MS09,MS10,MS12) and to the non ICT skills (MS13-MS17). Similar conclusions were presented in (Farber, P., 2005). Results also show that there are no special requirements for highly skilled university graduates (knowledge level 5), but rather for graduates with knowledge in all the listed skill categories. In discussion which we had with selected employers (members of above mentioned team) when validating the project results they expressed the strong need for the soft and non ICT skills as the product of the universities (or of the educational process) rather than for the ICT core skills. Employers expressed that they are able to easily improve the knowledge of their employees in the ICT core skills, but that they have problem with improvement of ICT soft skills and also with non ICT skills. It corresponds with our survey results and also it fits very well to some forecasts and studies realized by Gartner (The ICT Professional Outlook, 2005). Emphasis on the ICT core skills is in our project visible in the business requirements for the Developer / IS Architect and Administrator of applications and of ICT infrastructure roles. Other roles have in their profile at about 60 percent of ICT core skills and therefore they are potentially available for non ICT university graduates, who are usually having better ICT soft skills and also with non ICT skills.
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This finding puts different light on strictly technically oriented ICT curricula which were recently favored as the best starting point for the employment in ICT. Missing ICT soft skills or non ICT skills would disqualify these graduates on the future labor market. From the quantitative point of view current situation in the Czech Republic conforms to the above listed facts, because our survey has shown that at about 58 percent of ICT employees with university education in the Czech Republic did not pass through ICT oriented study program.
Conclusion Current ICT University curricula orientation towards the ICT “core” skills would result in loss of the competitiveness of ICT University graduates, because potential employers are requiring ICT “soft” skills and non ICT skills for all the relevant ICT roles (positions). This strengthens the competition among ICT graduates and non ICT university graduates at the ICT labor market.
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Is the ICT University Degree the Best Option for being a Successful ICT Professional? Strawman, J. (2004). Computing curricula 2004 overview report including a guide to undergraduate degree programmes in computing: Strawman draft. ACM/AIS/IEEE, 1 June 2004. Retrieved from http://www.acm.org/education/curricula.html Voříšek, J. & Feuerlicht, G. (2006a). Vliv globálních ICT trendů na změny požadavků trhu na ICT specialisty (In Czech). In J. Pour & J. Voříšek J. (Eds.), Systems Integration 2006. Prague, 11.06.2006 – 13.06.2006. VŠE FIS, pp. 337–350. ISBN 80-245-1050-2. Voříšek, J. & Feuerlicht, G. (2006b). The impact of global ICT trends on demand characteristics for ICT professionals. Proceedings of the 5th Conference Europe (pp. 151–164). Martinique 05.11.2006 – 10.11.2006. Paris : IUT Pari Jussieu. Voříšek, J., Doucek, P., Novotný, O., (2007). Competitivenees of the Czech ICT HEI Graduates on the Labour Market in the CR (Konkurenceschopnost absolventů IT oborů VŠ a VOŠ na trhu práce v ČR), (In Czech), Praha, ČSSI 2007, ISSN 1214-6242 , http://www.cssi.cz
Biographies Ota Novotny, Ph.D. is working as senior lecturer at the Department of Information Technologies, University of Economics, Prague. His main research field concentrates on IS/ICT services management, modelling, measurement and human resources in IS/ICT. He has been representing Czech Republic in ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7 – Subcommittee for Software and System Engineering (responsible for elaboration of ISO/IEC Information Technology standards) since 2002. He has been working as an independent consultant in a number of projects connected with his research field since 2000. He is co-author of two books, author and co-author of several textbooks, conference papers and journal articles. Prof. Petr Doucek, Ph.D. has graduated at the Faculty of Management at University of Economics, Prague in Mathematical Methods in Economy in 1984. Since 1997 is he assistant professor for information management. He has been working as a member of the Department of System Analysis at the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics at University of Economics, Prague since 1990. His main topics in research and development work focus on information management, IS/ICT security management, project management and impacts of information society on human. He is author and co-author of seven monographs, 15 textbooks for students and more than 100 articles in proceeding books of international conferences, congresses and in reviewed international journals. He took part at more than 30 information system projects in Czech as well as in international companies. He represents of Czech Republic in ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27 – Subcommittee for Information Technology Security since 2002.
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