IT is back in business
Published on 29 March, 2007
CQU IT lecturer Mike GregoryMore IT students needed to fill job vacancies
"IT job vacancies are going through the roof, so it's the perfect time to study IT."
This is the message from Central Queensland University's Information Technology (IT) lecturer Mike Gregory.
While Australia is experiencing a huge demand for Information Technology (IT), Central Queensland University has reported a continual drop in IT students over the past 5 years.
This has been the trend across most universities in Australia, despite the demand for IT workers up over 60% in the past year. In fact, IT job vacancies have surpassed accounting, engineering, mining and sales and marketing. [data sourced from Olivier - http://www.olivier.com.au/ ].
Mr Gregory believes the high demand has come about due to new technology in mobile phones, operating systems, the World Wide Web and the games industry.
Latest advances in technologies has allowed for mobile phones to be used as a computing platform; broadband is now available for telephony, entertainment and collaboration; there is an increasing use of wireless technologies; we have a growing computer games industry; there are new operating systems emerging like Vista, Leopard and Linux; and there is the brave new world of open source.
"Everything cool in IT 5 years ago is still there, plus there's more.
"IT jobs often provide good salaries with the ability to work overseas.
"US predictions and Australian job statistics point to an IT jobs market boom, but school students aren't listening."
"We want to let parents, high school students and mature-age students know that if they choose to study IT, they are almost guaranteed to find work easily and quickly on completion."
Recent statistics show that software engineers and programmers are in highest demand, followed by IT marketers and salespeople, consultants in networks, communications and security, and desktop support staff.
There has been a consistent decline in interest in IT courses throughout Queensland
There is a great demand for IT professionals in 2007