IT graduates have the highest unemployment rate across all degree subjects at almost double the average for students leaving UK university courses, according to new figures from the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu).
The annual Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey of over 200,000 graduates shows that, while the unemployment rate of IT students fell again this year to 10.3 percent, it is still substantially higher than the average of 6.2 percent across all subjects.
IT graduates have higher unemployment rates than students in performing arts (6.6 percent), media studies (8.6 percent), history (6.8 percent) and art and design (10.2 percent).
Two-thirds of IT graduates entered employment immediately after finishing their course and within six months after graduation this figure rose to 71.5 percent.
The view from the grads: Two of IBM's 2006 graduate intake explain how they went about joining one of the industry's biggest names.
Marion Ballard: "I went to Bournemouth University to study Business Information Technology and got a first. I didn't know anything about programming before starting the course, having originally wanted to study Art History, but loved it after the first few months.
"I did a placement (industrial trainee role) at IBM in my third year as an application developer, working on VoIP services. My current role on the Foundation scheme is in application services as a database administrator. I work on back-end support for a number of projects."
Premal Patel: "I am from London but spent a number of years studying in India. I then came back to the UK and attended the University of Surrey, where I graduated with a degree in marketing. I went on to attain a Master's degree in Business Information Technology from Kingston University.
"I also worked a year for an IT reseller in London and then worked at a small IT consultancy company in New York, also for a year.
"I have recently joined IBM as a technical pre-sales specialist and am part of the Websphere team working within the Financial Sector. My responsibilities involve working with the sales team to ensure the client gets the right solution for their requirements, basically providing technical advice to both the client and sales force at IBM."
Almost half (42.4 percent) of the 12,565 IT graduates who responded to the survey went into the IT profession. This is the third year in succession that figure has risen and Hecsu claims it provides evidence of recovery and expansion in the IT sector.
The other main employment destinations for IT graduates were as private and public sector general managers (9.6 percent) and the business and financial profession (6.3 percent).
The average first job salary for any graduate going into the IT profession is now £20,886, which is above the average graduate salary of £17,690 but still some way behind those entering clinical medicine, who can expect to earn £31,054 in their first job.
More worrying for the IT industry is the decline in the number of students wanting to study IT. The level of students applying for computer science degrees has halved in the last five years, leaving a shortfall in new entrants needed each year, according to Hecsu.
The Hecsu survey is based on responses from 206,965 out of the 256,460 students who graduated in the summer of 2005.
silicon.com's Will Sturgeon contributed to this article
Talkback
Perhaps this is because IT degrees are not teaching what Industry wants? One degree in 'E-commerce' was teaching less technical skills than many entrants already had..
Perhaps in the IT feild it is better to get professional qualifications and be able to demonstrate skills?
What area of IT do you want to be in? If its in Business, perhaps a business degree would serve you better. If it's in media..
You get the picture ;)
The main reason for this is lack of expertise in current IT professionals. They are just completing a course and thinking that they will get a high profile and high salaied job without having experiance in their domain. this leads to dissatisfaction in their workout and official routine. Also due to this they do job hopping frequently, Which no top ranking company will like in their employees attitude. This some time didnot show fruitful results to candidate and finally they either are job-less or they have to make U turn in their career by joining a mid cap company.
Vibhu Dwivedi
Server admin.
KLGSYSTEL Ltd.
The article discusses the fact that many IT graduates are unable to find employment within the UK at all. This is not so much down to attitude or 'job hopping' as you put it but to the fact that graduates have little or no commercial experience. With most of the traditional entry level jobs in IT now off shored it has become increasingly difficult for IT graduates to get that first job to spring board their career. This is causing a real crisis in the industry which will worsen as time goes on. A similar thing happened in engineering in the UK 20 years ago and there is now little of this industry left in this country.