Important to have graduated? That's it! Experience abroad a merit? Hardly!

Skills supply Education and training

Last week, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise presented the survey Companies' views on higher education. The most striking conclusions:

  • Employers value some form of work experience first and foremost.
  • The fact that employees have completed their studies and graduated is not particularly important.
  • Experience abroad, at least during the study period, seems completely uninteresting.

The results are broken down by broad sectors, but unfortunately not in such detail that the IT industry is reported separately. The closest to hand are 'Professional services', which includes IT consultancies, and 'Transport and communication', which includes telecommunications.

In the chart above, I have made a separate run on the sub-sectors mentioned. In contracting, the interest in degrees is greater, yet only 40% consider it fairly or very important. In no case is the interest in international experience higher than 10%.

It is often argued that the IT industry is global (which presumably requires some kind of experience of the outside world), and that to compete successfully, academic standards must be maintained at the highest level (which presumably requires a degree). However, the survey results suggest otherwise. What is not adding up?