The relevance of university degrees for developing work-ready Information Technology graduates

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Research and Development in Higher Education Vol. 32: The Student Experience

July, 2009, 715 pages
Published by
Helen Wozniak and Sonia Bartoluzzi
ISBN
0 908557 78 7
Abstract 

There is an increasing expectation that Universities have a responsibility to produce work ready graduates. Past and current literature focuses on academic, professional associations and employer perspectives of graduates. Understanding and studying the lived experiences of graduates at work has been given little or no attention. In this paper we present the findings of a research study that was undertaken to describe and analyse the non-technical work experiences of recent Australian Information Technology (IT) graduates. We conducted a grounded theory study of such graduates with less than three years experience in the IT industry. They were interviewed to determine their perceptions of the relevance of their University studies to the non-technical skills they needed in the workplace. Additional online surveys were also conducted with IT graduates. The research focussed on the non-technical requirements at work, development of non-technical skills required at work, most useful aspects of University courses and major challenges faced by IT graduates at work. Overall, the findings suggest that while graduates recognise the contribution their University IT degree had made to their technical skills development they greatly value the essential work- ready skills, which they had developed largely through sources external to their University studies. These results have implications for IT academics, graduates and employer groups and general implications for the higher education sector.

Keywords: university degrees, work-ready graduates, non-technical skills