We are all crying out for computer/IT engineers, yet they are not coming...
Yesterday and today I participated in a network meeting for program managers and study counselors for a number of universities that educate civil / university engineers in data and IT. I participated as a cuckoo in the context, but a welcome one since the universities are starved of business contacts. I was also at last year's meeting. One topic that was discussed this year in particular was how to adapt education to the so-called Bologna Process. The challenge here is to reconcile the traditional view of civil engineering education as a coherent professional education with the explicitly academic Bologna concept with its division into two blocks: bachelor's and master's degrees.
Otherwise, the usual questions arose about how to better market their courses. Actually, it is very strange that representatives of programs in the area that has the strongest growth and the best career opportunities - IT - sit and wrestle with various existential concerns: How to get more girls, how to get more students at all, how to get those who still apply to also complete their education, etc. Something strange is, for example, when KTH's mechanical engineering program (taste the word: "mechanical engineering"!) attracts more girls than the computer engineering program.
However attractive, well-paid, exciting and "people-oriented" the jobs that the programs lead to are, it seems that the technical colleges' mix of an overall culture common to all engineering programs (boyish!) and the nerd culture specific to computer science (abstract!) is devastating to get even a few girls to the schools. We are really talking about singular numbers here, at a round table among the educational institutions, the proportion of girls was not even stated as a percentage, but as a number of people - they were that easy to count.
The IT industry, and the IT & Telecom Companies' IT Skills Council, have an important role to play in making the IT profession attractive, and also in feeding back to higher education institutions what skills they should develop. However, the universities themselves must take care of the cultural aspect. As long as the "overall nerd" becomes the epitome of the computer/IT technologist (however unfair that description is), girls will stay at a safe distance.