[Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?

[Cameron Bell]

Unfortunately the current assessment and VTAC admissions scheme means 
that students tend to take a strategic approach to subject selection. 
The ENTER score is the goal. While a few students have a clear pathway 
mapped out and will chose subjects based on interest, many aim to 
maximise the ENTER score, then see what courses they qualify for (often 
making monumental errors of judgement as evidenced by the drop-out rate 
in first year uni). Why would a student take VCE IT if they felt they 
could get a better score by taking say, history. There is nothing about 
having VCE IT as a pre-requisite for ICT courses at the Uni's - they 
want English and Maths Methods. (Does that say anything about the VCE 
courses or is it that they want to make it as easy as possible to 
qualify?) Students could well end up in well paying careers in IT 
without taking it in Yr 11 or 12.
Cameron

Litsa Tzelepis wrote:
> Hi Keith,
>
> I totally agree with you.
> A couple of weeks ago, I took my Y11 students to an ICT conference at VU.
> There were 5 guest speakers, all from various industry corners, discussing
> exactly what you just said. The jobs are out there, there's plenty of them,
> but they cannot fill them.
> They talked about starting salaries at about 50K plus and ongoing employee
> education and training once in these jobs.  They talked about the
> possibility of holding down 2, even 3 jobs,  while travelling between them
> and using the internet as a means of submitting reports, designing websites
> and consulting.
>
> They truly painted a very attractive IT career pathway. Hopefully many more
> conferences of this nature can filter through to our students because they
> just don't know what they're missing out on.
>
> Mind you, after all that, my students were more concerned about how they'd
> convince me of having lunch at Mac'as down the road!
>
> Litsa
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Keith Richardson" <keithcr at fastmail.fm>
> To: "itapps list" <itapps at edulists.com.au>; "List ITA"
> <itapps at edulists.com.au>
> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 5:23 PM
> Subject: [Year 12 IT Apps] What Future IT?
>
>
>   
>> I have read with interest the many contributions to this ongoing
>> discussion.
>> The REAL situation out there in the workplace...
>> One of my sons is a software engineer who has worked in the industry for
>> around 10 years.
>> They are desperate for skilled and qualified IT system engineers,
>> programmers etc. People with the necessary qualifications can almost
>> name the salary they want.
>> I think that we are all suffering the extended backlash from the
>> tech-bubble-bursting. Immediately prior to it, many hopeful
>> wannabee-millionaires studied IT, some of whom were really unsuited to
>> it either psychologically or intellectually or interest-wise, so some in
>> the industry welcomed the clean-out that happened, but it has gone too
>> far, and people's memories are long.
>> Sorry, these observations are no solution, but I would like to know what
>> is going on in the hundreds of brains who would have chosen IT in the
>> past, but now are not.
>> FACT - there are plenty of good-paying jobs out there for everyone who
>> get IT qualifications.
>> NEED -  we need to get this message through to all and sundry - career
>> advisers, parents, friends & relatives who give ill-informed-advice, and
>> the kids themselves.
>> Cheers, Keith
>> Keith Richardson
>>
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