IT graduates unhappy with UK courses

Technorati tags: graduate jobs,degrees,universities,IT,graduate unemployment,surveys

46 per cent of recent IT graduates feel that their courses didn't provide them with relevant skills, according to a story which is doing the rounds.

This does not look at all good, and some of the complaints sound very concerning: those surveyed did not feel they were properly trained in Java or .NET, and 41 per cent said that they ought not to have gone to university at all.

Of course, this is another example of a survey that does not do what the writers suggest it does.

Let's take a look at the sample. 500 graduates, all of whom are users of graduate-jobs.com. That's out of a graduating cohort last year of 16,220. Or, if you'd prefer, 3% of last year's IT graduates. They're all, also, signed up to a job-seekers board (an American one as well!), which means that what we have here is an immediate case of a biased sample. People who are seeking work are very likely either not to be working, or in jobs that make them unsatisfied. They are therefore far more likely to be unhappy with their degree, since they aren't doing the work that they wanted to be doing. That doesn't make them representative of anything other than unhappy IT graduates - indeed, with that in mind, I'm surprised only 46% were unhappy with their degree.

Then, let's take a look at the organisation who conducted the poll, FDM. They're, surprise, surprise, an IT training organisation, with an academy where consultants are trained in....hmmm....Java and .NET.

In other words, we have a vested interest conducting a survey on a biased, small sample of IT graduates and then bartering that up into an indictment of the UK university system. Whilst there is some valid information in there (if important commercial skills are not being properly taught, that is an issue), it is lost in the general statistical meaninglessness of the story, and exacerbated by an accusatory tone that is not justified by the data.

This should not obscure some issues with IT graduates. They do still have an unacceptably high unemployment rate on graduating (over 10%), and it's clear that many do have a lot of trouble finding work. But let's have some proper evidence.