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Recruiting IT Students?
spacemonk asks: "I teach at a community college and our enrollment numbers are down in our IT programs. We have found that many have the perception that there are few IT jobs. We feel this is causing many students, who might be interested in IT, to enroll in other programs. There is obviously a lot of conflicting information regarding the impact of off-shoring, and so forth, but much of what we have found indicates that the IT job market is improving, and IT is still a career that can offer job opportunities to students. For example, we have had internship opportunities that we have not been able to send candidates to, simply because we don't have the students. Needless to say, this is very frustrating. How would you honestly describe the IT job market to students considering this major? What can be done to recruit more students into IT programs?"
and not be able to communicate with users or other developers, and you have a chance. that's all that american business seems to want in the operator/coder/bugfix categories. until business gets off its slide to the bottom in salaries, respect, and perks for employees, you are going to have a rotten yield both in enrollments and in placements at the associates' level.
the good news is, training "c" level corporate officers appears to be something that you can do in a semester, so you can crank out a lot of them. all the candidates have to be is bullheaded, obnoxious, steal from the safe on the way to and from the coffeepot, and have the ethics of a sick snake. and they don't appear to have to read history or corporate reports to make a living. so staff up for "c" level training.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Don't. Just don't.
If you want to promote something, promote jobs that America still has a use for.
For the time being, we have a use for engineering.
Not so much in the sciences, except those that are directly related to medicine.
The government and people have a lot of use for lawyers of all kinds. Encourage your students to study something in which they can get reliably high grades (for GPA) and to study for the LSAT.
Service industry is growing; management and administration job prospects remain excellent. Medicine, from low-end workers to technicians to nurses and doctors, will continue to grow. With the boomers beginning a severe old-age decline, gerontology is a great field to be in.
If someone wants to do IT, that's great for them personally, but it isn't the best career choice. The job market may grow, but the old style code chef is now the fry-cook coder. The money isn't there, the jobs aren't there--why equip your students to fail? Encourage them to go where the jobs are.
WRONG. You cannot recover, you can only reset your password. You fail. Get some experience and then show up.
I hate to break it to you, but with your hiring policies that's all you're going to be able to hire. Whomever made that policy really needs to reeveluate it. They are not living in reality! They are being enslaved to the numbers.
I really hate it when people who don't know shit about business get VC money - that means your bosses.