David Kellam can do but he's opting to teach.
He graduated from Queen's University last year with a degree in computing. But he's turning away from the tech sector as a long-term career prospect. Instead, the 23-year-old went back to Queen's and enrolled in the faculty of education.
"I see no need to get myself stuck in a grey box somewhere pounding out code that may or may not be used inside some whale of an application," Mr. Kellam says.
He is among a growing number of North American students and grads steering away from tech-sector jobs, presuming the industry is still in a post-bubble slump, with little in the way of employment opportunities.
How wrong they are, according to industry experts, who point to strong evidence that the tech industry is on the rise again and facing a supply-and-demand hiring disconnect.
It's a disconnect that Bernard Courtois, president and CEO of the Information Technology Association of Canada, finds disturbing. "People only retain that the bubble burst."
Withering interest is showing at the university level now. New enrolments in North American computer science programs were 10 per cent lower in the 2004-2005 school year than the year before. That follows a 23-per-cent drop in 2002-2003, according to the Computing Research Association, a group of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering and related fields. Enrolment has been in decline for the past four years.
Dean McKeown, manager of the school of computing at Queen's, says enrolment in the Kingston, Ont., university dropped 20 per cent during the 2004-2005 school year and levelled off this year.
Moreover, the Canadian tech industry is also looking for ways to brace against a "double dip," as more current employees reach retirement age even as fewer new employees emerge from universities, says Terry Powers, president and chief operating officer of IT staffing firm CNC Global Ltd.
"It's definitely creating some concern among Canadian companies."
The surge in the number of computer science students in the late nineties coincided with the industry bubble, when many were lured by the prospect of six-figure starting salaries in a sector experiencing unprecedented -- and, in hindsight, unsustainable -- growth. Since then, demand for computer science degrees has plummeted.
At an annual meeting of computer science program heads earlier this year, attendees brought up concerns about fading interest in the field, and the effect on big corporations, such as International Business Machines Corp. and Microsoft Corp., four or five years from now when today's weak enrolment numbers will translate into fewer technology graduates, Mr. McKeown says.
Declining interest at the university level comes at a time when overall demand for information technology professionals is growing. Demand for IT workers in Canada has doubled over the past 18 months, according to CNC Global.
In fact, employment growth for information and communication technology professionals between 1990 and 2004 was about four times higher than overall employment growth in Canada, according to an Industry Canada survey released in August, with the strongest growth experienced by software engineers, followed by programmers, systems analysts, computer and electronic engineers.
The current growth "is a clear indication that there's a strong demand for IT professionals right now," Mr. Powers says.
"Budgets seem to be loosening and we're seeing an increase in project starts, especially within large organizations. At the same time, the recent spike in requirements for full-time IT professionals suggests that employers are becoming more confident."
Offers-per-candidate are also up, according to research by CNC Global. Twelve months ago, a good candidate could count on one or two "solid offers."
Today, the same candidate will see four or more, CNC says. As a result, employers are dealing with more turndowns and many are accepting their second or third choices, CNC adds.
