Forecast for I.T. Work Force Gloomiy - I Knew It Was Coming

eWeek is reporting in Gloomy Forecast for IT Work Force By Roy Mark:

"Our continued leadership is not inevitable and may not be sustainable," Fred Tipson, Microsoft's senior policy counsel, said in an afternoon panel discussion focused on upgrading the current and future work force's digital literacy and math and science skills. "The question is whether our work force or some other country's will be beneficiaries of new technology."

Tipson referred to America's ability to continue to produce high school and college graduates with the skills needed to be successful in today's technology work force as "dire."

Panel moderator James Whaley, president of the Siemens Foundation, added, "We can no longer assume the talent pipeline will be here."

Judy Moog, national program director of the Verizon Foundation, gave the panel participants little reason to question Tipson or Whaley's statements. According to Moog, 70 percent of the nation's eighth graders are below sufficient levels in reading skills and "might well never catch up."

Moog also pointed out that in terms of "quality" of high school graduates, America has fallen to 19th out of 26 nations surveyed. Moreover, she said, nearly half the U.S. adult population—some 93 million people—have very poor or marginal literacy skills.

"Literacy is the price of admission for competitiveness," she said. "People need to access a torrent of information over a vast array of devices. America isn't succeeding fast enough."

But it doesn't look like they have identified the actual cause, that being the best and brightest aren't going into I.T. professions due to more prestigious, higher paying, and stable opportunities elsewhere, primarily due to H-1B visas:

Tipson said Microsoft breaks down the issue into three phases: digital literacy, in which a person learns basic skills, digital fluency, meaning the skills are applied, and digital mastery, in which the first two steps are translated into advanced skills.

"We have a [digital] mastery gap, which is why we keep going outside the country to hire," he said. Microsoft is one of largest users of H-1B visas, a specialized-occupation temporary worker visa.

And their solution to the problem, none, other than panelist Robert Leber of Northrop Grumman suggests:

Only if the business community gets behind efforts to support schools and training programs that emphasize digital literacy, math and science skills.

"The future is not young people, it's keeping the business community involved," Leber said. "Young people need a global view of what's coming, not a xenophobic view about what's happening in other countries."

Moog, too, rooted for business community involvement but characterized the progress made on literacy in the last 10 years as "sad." Whaley said a possible solution was a lifelong "earning account" that would allow to workers to periodically retool their job skills.

My solution, allow I.T. salaries to reach their natural levels, meaning only allow H-1B Visas to supplement domestic candidates when absolutely necessary by putting a premium on H-1B hiring and then use the money collected by the premium to fund I.T. scholarships.

If salaries rise some 20 to 30 percent as some in the industry think they would, given the pressure on salaries being placed on other professionals by insurance and government sources. The best and brightest will once again regard I.T. as a highly desirable field to enter.

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