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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)
They are talking about this topic: Industry Trends
The quotes below are about this issue:
Employers speak of the rapid, ongoing changes in technology and they acknowledge that it is difficult for academic curricula to keep up with industry developments.
| "This is a really a tough industry to be in because of the fact that it's changing so rapidly. And if you don't truly want to be a part of it, then you're going to get lost in the mix and you'll fall behind and get burned-out, quite frankly." | Central |
| "There's a whole new group of people that are going for the two-year degrees. It used to be a bachelor of science for computer degrees. It's changing. They're learning a lot in the two-year colleges." | Metro |
| "With the pace of change, will the colleges and universities be able to keep pace with the rest of the global technology trends? Because the pace of technology is exponentially increasing. You hear today that by the time somebody is in their second or third year of college that what they started for is already outdated. Technology is going to keep ramping up. But the new talent—are we going to keep up fast enough so that they come ready? That's a trend that we're thinking about, and we experience that internally—trying to keep our current workforce up-to-speed technically and with all the skills we talked about. We're just going to reach a point where people get passed by because they weren't educated enough or technology is changing so fast or whatever it might be. So, that's a concern that I have. I don't have the answer. But how do we address that?" | Metro |
| "The difficulty is like, even with cloud computing, I start my college career in 2012, and cloud computing is effective. But three years from now, it's not going to be the dominant thing. So, by the time I graduate, it's old technology, and I want the newest thing, right? So, it's how to grab that. I don't know the answer. But it's a question of how to stay up with that. And that's where I think an understanding of how, basically, things are working is probably a bit more well-rounded." | Metro |
| "It's just that pace of change and the lessening of that lag between where academia is and where the world is. And where the world is, is important." | Metro |
| "The pace of change is happening really fast—that's IT in general—but just getting people used to that. One of the things that we do is Red Hat. We do training. So, one of the vendors we support is Red Hat. And they benefited a great deal from Oracle buying Sun and customers running away from the Sun infrastructure and running to Red Hat. So, we've seen tremendous growth in training and in Red Hat and the whole virtualized infrastructure. I mean, five years ago it was a very different landscape than it is now. Now you've got cloud computing and things like that. That just takes that to the next level. So it just—it's the pace of change." | Metro |
| "Technology is generally moving at such a pace that it's hard to—even within the industry full-time—to stay abreast of everything that's happening. So, it's extra challenging for professors who have to ask, 'Okay, for my students that are starting school today, what are we going to need to do to prep the curriculum so that what we teach is still relevant in four years?' That's just a daunting task." | Metro |
| "It's an interesting balancing act with building and supporting the technologies we have, but also seriously looking at outsource options. And also building the clientele so that we can actually look more futuristic and be prepared for what's coming two years, three years, and four years from now. To be ready for it and to be an enabler instead of having to say, 'No, we don't know how to support that.'" | Metro |
| "When they get into college, the expectation is, 'Oh, well, I'll just focus on a specific area.' But, by the time they hit the job market, it's changed. It's not enough." | Northeast |
| "I don't know if our technical people need to understand the marketing, but they need to understand what they're doing, and how it plays into the marketing. The minute you print a textbook in our industry, it's outdated. So, I mean, what are they going to pick up from a textbook? It's pretty much irrelevant by the time they enter the workforce." | Northeast |
| "It's interesting, marketing has evolved so fast along with the technology, and there's no manual on this stuff. I think at 10:00 o'clock today—I didn't get a chance to watch it—but Facebook just did their IPO, and you think about how that's evolved so fast, and the changes to that, and all the integration and different apps that go along with that. You need people that just really have a passion for it. People who want to engage in it as well. But it's a marrying of marketing and technology, and it's complex." | Northeast |
| "We see such a rapidly changing landscape. So, we need people who can adapt to change. Because even if they have specific skills today, those skills are going to be different in a year or two, so people need to be able to learn and figure things out on their own." | Northeast |
| "The technology just changes so fast, and there's so much information available." | Northwest |
| "We can't get expertise in all the different things you need to know, and we couldn't even hire it out. I mean, they're just not there. Especially in our niche. Because how many people in any given community are going to have really specialized expertise? It doesn't make sense for you guys to train for another employer's platform versus our platform versus the next company's platform. There's just too much out there." | Northwest |
| "The technology, yes. In many cases, by the time we design it and implement it and install it...it's just that there's something newer, better, faster out there by the time we get it in place and operational." | Southwest |
| "The two-year program is a better program because things are changing so fast, all of these different devices that they're using." | Southwest |
| "Your customer, your home—there are many more electronic devices in your home today than there were several years ago—and they all have to interact and interface." | Southwest |
| "I see nothing but increasing requirements as the technology evolves. The technology is continuously evolving. Wireless devices, smartphones—the demands for technological experts are only going to increase." | Southwest |