The New, New Curricula

In Australia, Mann's message comes at a time of apparently declining interest in IT as a career. For instance a sharp contraction in IT job prospects has seen student numbers within the IT faculty at Monash University plunge by almost a third in two years - so much so that the university at the time of writing was looking at cutting up to 100 staff from its IT faculty.

Faculty head Professor Ron Weber last year told The Age a faculty review and restructure could result in up to 70 academic and 30 administration jobs being lost. In a memorandum to faculty staff, Weber said full-time IT student numbers had been in "marked decline" since 2002 when 5800 students were enrolled. This year the faculty expects fewer than 4000 full-time students, well below the numbers it initially predicted. "We ignore these dramatic changes to our circumstances at our peril," he wrote.

As a result of a strategic review, Monash says it will halve from eight to four the number of undergraduate courses on offer, and reduce the number of schools from seven to five.

With the decline coming at a time when business is crying out for IT staff with both business and IT skills, Australia's IT Skills Hub - the joint initiative between the National Office for the Information Economy and the federal Department for Education, Science and Training (DEST) - has been liaising with universities to attempt to broker closer industry relationships, while the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) works with TAFEs to ensure that curricula satisfy industry needs without sacrificing intellectual rigour.

IT Skills Hub CEO Brian Donovan says employees are increasingly looking for IT staff with business knowledge and who have a range of "soft" skills, from the ability to communicate with clients to team play and consulting skills. Donovan says some universities, such as Swinburne, Monash and UTS, are starting to bring business and technology skills together, but describes the efforts to date as somewhat patchy.

Michel Hedley, national manager of the AIIA's IT workforce policy, says there are at least signs that universities are reviewing their IT curricula more frequently. And to fill a new demand for students with double majors, some universities are running courses linking IT with medicine, business or architecture. Even students who still prefer the straight technology courses now have greater choice. For instance at Swinburne University of Technology, students can choose between a Bachelor of Applied Science (computing), Bachelor of Applied Science (computer science and software engineering), Bachelor of Engineering (telecommunications and Internet technologies), Bachelor of Information Systems, four separate Bachelor of Multimedia courses, Bachelor of Software Engineering and a Bachelor of Design (multimedia design). Other faculties are offering similar choices.

At the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), meanwhile, Visiting Professor of e-Business Professor Steve Burden agrees giving students business skills remains a challenge, and one that most people in industry would wish universities would do better. On the other hand, he says most faculties are acutely aware of the problem, are trying hard, and are getting better at addressing the need.

At UTS many courses are designed in collaboration with IT. IT students also have the option of taking up a Management of IT Masters, which includes some management subjects, while on the management side, courses designed primarily for professional managers also include components of innovation and technology management.

"We run a number of short courses as well, because we think that the two most interesting drivers at the moment, from my discussion with CIOs, are probably innovation and how to manage and create innovation and an environment for that, and secondly outsourcing," Burden says. "We ran a major workshop just about two months ago at which we had 150 people, a number of CIOs and some professional outsourcing people. We brought academics and industry people together; we had the boss of Asia Pacific from Boston Consulting Group talking, probably the most successful outsourcer of services - Shell - who moved to number two in the world, talking, and then I gave a paper on some ARC research we're doing on best practice outsourcing. So we try and work with industry to keep up to date, and we're slowly getting better at it I think."

The masters course is also proving popular with CIOs keen to enhance their business skills.

"Some of our students are CIOs. I think in the last couple of years there's quite a swing, with CIOs realizing that while technical skills are obviously important, they don't have to be the leading technical person any more, and that management skills, and linking technology with management, help the CIOs with the strategic issue of technology and how that melds with the corporate plan. Those sorts of things are the skills they need and a lot of the existing senior people need to gather new skills to handle that," Burden says.