Skills and Education

1
(No Transcript)
2
Skills and Education

• Professor Keith Mander
• Council of Professors and Heads of Computing
• Deputy Vice-Chancellor
• University of Kent
• K.C.Mander_at_kent.ac.uk

3
Issues

• What skills are we talking about?
• Do enough people have the skills that society
  needs?
• If not, how are the required skills to be
  acquired?
• What are the policy implications?

4
What skills?

• Deep technical skills necessary for UK to retain
  and extend competitive advantage
• Integration skills necessary to build complex
  systems
• Skills as users, in a knowledge economy
• Skills with users

5
Enough people?

• Full-time undergraduates
• Numbers accepted for Computing programmes in HE
  fell by 42 between 2001 and 2006 entries
• Opportunities for graduates have not fallen, and
  will increase
• No improvement now possible before 2011
• Part-time (UG and PG)
• Numbers increasing, perhaps as employers use HE
  for CPD

6
Education past and future

• Part-time or full-time?
• Funded from public sources, employers or
  individuals?
• Measured or rapid response?
• Local-to-student or local-to-provider?

7
Policy implications

• Acquisition of skills will be one of the key
  policy agendas to 2020
• Can the education sector adapt its provision to
  this more volatile market? How? Is it
  sustainable?
• How will funds flow?
• Is there an appetite for real partnership between
  industry, education and the sector skills
  councils?