This summer, while the “game-changing” Foxconn was sucking up all the oxygen, the University of Wisconsin System fired up a new online program to close the skills gap — aka body gap — in the state workforce.
If the grandest vision of Foxconn comes to fruition, Wisconsin technical colleges and universities will have to step up their game. Even though the Badger State ranks seventh in the U.S. in the projected growth of information technology workers over the next few years, according to CompTIA’s 2017 Cyberstates report, the high demand for IT professionals keeps growing.
That Wisconsin needs more IT professionals is hardly a well-kept secret, especially at five University of Wisconsin campuses that now offer a new Bachelor of Science degree in applied computing that is designed to attract career changers to help fill the IT workforce gap. The new degree is offered online through five campuses — UW–Milwaukee, UW–Oshkosh, UW–Platteville, UW–River Falls, and UW–Stevens Point — all of which are now accepting online applications.
Since our economy becomes more tech-based every day, the demand for skilled IT labor will not subside anytime soon. Mobile computing, cloud computing, “big data,” and the internet of things all increase the need for a workforce with the skills to gather, manage, and protect data across industries — especially Wisconsin’s “Big 3” of agriculture, manufacturing, and health care — and they demand that Wisconsin businesses adapt accordingly.
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Amy Kuether |
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David Schejbal |
One way to meet the demands for IT labor is to induce people to change careers. David Schejbal, dean of the University of Wisconsin–Extension, and Amy Kuether, the Extension’s applied computing program manager, believe that if enrollment in the new degree mirrors that of other UW online degrees, students will range from those looking for new opportunities to those who are seasoned professionals but lack the degree needed to advance in the IT field.
The average age of the Extension’s online students is in the mid 30s, many have families, and the majority work full time, so the applied computing program offers a degree of time management flexibility. “We have a number of career-changers who come to us,” Schejbal says. “The average age of our students is in their mid 30s, but the age span goes well into the 60s, so we have a number of folks who want a second career or who are in a position to pursue a personal passion.”
Degrees of development
When the UW–Extension develops these degrees, it does so with fairly extensive market research about jobs and needs, and its research pertains primarily to in-state residents. About 75% to 77% of the students in UW online programs are from Wisconsin, and Schejbal expects that trend to continued in this program. “We look at job openings and we look at in-state competition in terms of other programs,” he notes. “We look at salaries for the jobs, etcetera, to identify which degrees are most likely to bring the biggest benefits to residents of the state.”
As part of the research effort, Schejbal and Kuether note the program was developed with faculty and industry input and with in-demand job skills in mind. Those skills include software engineering skills, programming and coding abilities, communications, leading change, and data management, so it runs the gamut of the skills people need for both technical and applied expertise.
“What’s interesting about those courses is what we often hear from industry, and this is not only from IT but from industries across the board, is they really need people who understand general business stuff or understand how to communicate with others, not just within their disciplines but across disciplines and across audiences,” Schejbal notes. “So you want to make sure that in addition to a very robust technical curriculum, we also provide some of those softer skills so that folks can work in the industry very effectively with different audiences.”
Adds Kuether: “Between the in-person, individual interviews, focus groups with industry experts, and the research done in proprietary databases, it’s very well informed in terms of what’s current and what’s needed in the job market.”
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Consumable education
The UW will offer bachelor’s degrees in computer science in four ways: online, on-campus, as a hybrid of both online and on-campus coursework, and through the UW Flexible Option. The flex option allows adult students to advance at their own pace, and that means quickly if they have previous experience in a given field.
The online format also makes it easier for those already in the IT field, as well as career changers, to qualify to fill open positions around the state, and such career transitions should lead to a higher-paying occupation. “It definitely enables, particularly those who were working in the field and have an associate degree or a two-year degree, the opportunity to advance their careers and pursue occupations with higher earning potential,” Kuether states.
Wisconsin technical colleges offer associate degrees, which are the entry-level degrees into a particular field, including computing related ones. On the other end of the spectrum, the UW–Extension has started a master’s degree in data science, which is its hottest-growing degree, and it also wanted to provide the applied computing degree-completion program at the baccalaureate level so that those individuals who want to get deeper into the field of IT or prepare for the master’s degree can, as Schejbal suggests, “do it in a pretty consumable way for adults.”
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