Fear of job loss due to outsourcing IT career loses sheen among US students

And, from an American IT publication:

InformationWeek Daily Newsletter www.informationweek.com Monday, July 25, 2005

1. Editor's Note: Why Kids Aren't Getting Into IT

Bill Gates is one of the towering figures of the past 150 years or so, ranking--in my view--with Franklin Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, and the Wright Brothers. But occasionally, he utters things that show his perspective is a bit, well, skewed.

Gates wonders why more kids these days don't go into computer science. He said last week that even if young people don't know that salaries and job openings in computer science are on the rise, they're hooked on so much technology--cell phones, digital music players, instant messaging, Internet browsing--that it's puzzling why more don't want to grow up to be programmers.

This is spoken like a man who was born well off, attended Harvard, and became the wealthiest man in the world. By contrast, kids these days are worried about survival and money in a way that we haven't seen since before the baby boom. The kids who will enter college in a few weeks are kids who turned 14 when the planes hit the World Trade Center. They spent most of their adolescence, the time when kids get ready to enter the world of adulthood, learning about terrorism, war, the economic downturn, outsourcing, layoffs, increasing deficits, the health-care crisis--am I leaving anything out here? They resemble, in outlook, the generation that grew up in the Depression and fought in World War II. They have grown up knowing the world is a scary place.

Even today, the headlines about IT careers fall far short of exuberance. The headlines are mixed and cautiously optimistic, like we all have cancer and we've heard from the doctor that we might be in remission. IT staffing is finally back to its summer 2001 levels. Foote Research reports that pay for key skills like application development and database knowledge are gaining fast and returning to their pre-crash levels. On the other hand: Fewer employers are offering IT students summer internships and part-time jobs this year. Hewlett-Packard cut 14,500 jobs (while also hiring 1,302 people). And hanging over it all is the miasma of fear that businesses will give our jobs to workers in India or China, fear that's never dispelled by rebutturances that outsourcing isn't such a big problem or is even good for us.

Why aren't more kids entering IT? It's because they, quite reasonably, don't know if there will be any jobs for them when they graduate. You can read more of my thinking on this topic--and weigh in with your views on this critical issue--at my blog entry.

Mitch Wagner www.informationweek.com