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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)

They are talking about this topic: Educational Partnerships

 

The quotes below are about this issue:
For primary curricular recommendations, employers suggest phone application coursework, additional group work to enhance teamwork skills, and training on security protocols.

Employer Quote Region
"I think the big issue—and I'm sure a lot of us can share this—is that we need to be more proactive rather than reactive with trends. You know, we're seeing things like mobile cloud and we know that that's what's going on right now. So, we need to start looking at it. I think it's great that we're teaching standards and concepts that have been around for a long time in schools. But I think we need to start—and professors and educators need to start—looking at the emerging trends even if they're three, four, or five years away. Because when a student starts a four-year program, they're going to know C++, and that's great. Okay. But what am I going to do when a company needs 15 other languages? Or they're starting to do a model approach?" Central
"You mentioned that you're going directly to the vendors for training. The vendors right now, they know their products the best, so they can train people the best. For example, to get certified in VMware, I had to take a class from VMware. I paid money to VMware, and then I took a test and I got certified. MnSCU should try their best to look at some of these best-of-breed technologies out there and try to approach these companies about integrating some of that into the coursework. Like taking tests on-site. [MnSCU college] does this. They test with Microsoft. The students are getting certifications with Microsoft. And—if they were to have to do that after school or outside of school—that would cost them thousands of dollars right off the bat. And a lot of these students, I mean, they're poor college students, right? They don't have money readily available to them to get those certifications. So, that is huge. And I think it would help everybody if you could approach some of these vendors and say, 'Hey, do you want to have a partnership here?' And organizations as big as MnSCU should be able to have a little pull with these companies. So, I would think it is something that might be doable, at least starting off on a small scale." Central
"The other thing is security. I'm shocked at how much software developers, in general, don't understand about encryption techniques. They don't understand security protocols, hash tables, and whatnot. It's kind of surprising how much of that piece of the industry just kind of dropped off. And now we're seeing it. We know with the HIPAA regulations and HLAs—all that stuff that's coming out—it's now going to become part of our life whether we like it or not. That needs to come home—at least into the universities, so that they know about that." Central
"One of my peeves, I guess, is that there are a lot of waterfall traditional project management methodologies being taught and, frankly, I think that's just ridiculous. It should be swathed around. So, you teach Agile and you say, 'Hey, this is how they used to do it.' It's such a high-penetration rate today. There are a lot of people doing kind of in-between stuff, but I think kind of evolving that." Central
"Mobile is another thing. It's really big and it's a high-demand market. And if you want to have better fulfillment rates with students getting jobs, I think having programs that have some sort of mobile aspect is important. I have seen that, and that's great within some technologies—even four-year universities have been doing iPhone courses." Central
"One of the things that I think could be filtered down into the universities—and even into the high schools—is providing them with the tools to keep their eyes open to trends. Like I said, this market changes so rapidly that by the time they get their four-year degree what they've learned might already be gone. And I can say that I'm actually at fault with this because, when I was in college, I was not reading up on what's going on with trends out there in the world. Not picking up a software development magazine of some kind and at least skimming the headlines to see what was going on. I think if that was available to the students up-front—if someone said, 'Here are 12 different subscriptions,' or 'Here are these podcasts,' and having those things easily available so that the student can pick them up, I think that would be a huge help in the industry. That they're at least aware of what's coming down the pipe." Central
"And physical tool sets matter. The universities make the students buy books and it should be a full-on requirement that they need to have a laptop. I'm sure some of this is probably happening. But not just the laptop, but access to all the software out there that they need. Whether you can create—or they can roll into their financial aid or roll it into their tuition—whatever it takes. But also enforce that this is not something that's optional. If you're going into this field, you're going to need a laptop and you're going to need that software package. That way, when they start on day one—if they have the curiosity that we're hoping they have—they have the tools in front of them to do it. There's nothing stopping them. They have an internet connection, they have their computer, and they have all the software programs that they need to do what they want to do. Then, it's just completely up to them to explore something. Again, like I said, I'm not sure if that's being done, but it needs to be enforced right at day one. Say, 'This is it. This is what you're going to need in the workplace.'" Central
"We have a very large quality assurance analysis team. We're finding that there are graduates who have computer science or computer engineering degrees that don't have specific experience with quality assurance testing analysis. There are some that are specifically interested in that area, but have not been exposed to it. So, that's something that I think we would love to see more of in the Twin Cities—especially in the educational institutions here." Metro
"From an organizational standpoint, I think it would be helpful if students had some idea of how companies organize themselves to get things done. How we come up with our standard best practices. So, they understand that there's this function, and then there's this other function, and this group relies on this group, and so forth. It's very hard when they come in because they don't actually understand how a company works." Metro
"Software development in the healthcare area would be a sweet degree for us." Northeast
"Employer 1: I think pushing individuals out of their comfort zone during their education process is a good thing. Especially for the real introverted ones. Giving them intervals where they are forced to communicate in group settings or in team settings. I think that can make a difference. Because as soon as they come into our business they're going to be out of their comfort zone regularly in terms of the technologies they have to learn, communication situations, and business situations. They're constantly being put into situations that are going to stretch them. So, the sooner they get used to the idea, the better it is.

Question: And that's something you would put into a curriculum?

Employer 1: Yes.

Employer 2: I'd offer that for the analysts that work for me. The percentage of the time that they are able to be isolationists and focus on just building something is only about ten percent."
Northeast
"It's definitely a balancing act. And I think it would be a very tough task to be establishing a curriculum for IT in a four-year program, unless the first two years is communication and business-focused, and then the last two years focus specifically on current industry technologies. I don't believe this exists—at least I'm not aware of that." Northeast
"What [MnSCU college] has done, at least to a point with their manufacturing sections, is they've gone down to semester-type accreditations. The student picks these blocks and they can keep building on these blocks, and working with them on that curriculum. I think that's where you can really introduce a lot of these soft skills—within these separate blocks where you can find the time to determine what it is and put them in there at the lower-level blocks and then build up on them. And I know we were able to get some items that serve our company quite well in these lower blocks. And the soft skills, that would be a good spot to implement them." Northwest
"This is maybe off-the-wall, but your schools—you have all your different departments for different occupations—and for each one of those occupations, you have some level of IT needs. Rather than having an IT program—maybe you still have that—but you could also have IT programs within your core areas. And those areas go out and find out from that business sector what their needs are, and then that IT program is specialized to that core area. Maybe you still have your main IT also, but maybe you can do it that way." Northwest