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The Decline in Computing Graduates:
A Threat to the Knowledge Economy and Global
Competitiveness
[This paper has been produced by the Council of Professors and Heads of Computing [CPHC] (representing
the UK HE Computing sector), with support from e-skills UK (the Sector Skills Council for IT & Telecoms),
the British Computer Society [BCS] (the professional body for IT Professionals) and Intellect (the industry
body representing the UK technology industry).]
Overview
The UK is currently sitting on a ticking time-bomb – all of the evidence shows a significant and increasing gap between
supply and demand for IT professionals in the critical IT sector of the UK economy which, if left unchecked, will
severely damage the competitiveness of UK industry in the global marketplace, and will hit smaller employers and the
public sector particularly hard. Input direct from industry bodies suggests that companies will increasingly move their
computing work offshore, global corporations will choose not to place their operations in the UK, and the pipeline of
skills into advanced level computing roles will be severely disrupted, compromising innovation and productivity in all
knowledge economy sectors. The UK IT sector has historically focused on short-term solutions, i.e. taking more non-
Computing graduates and migrant graduates, and off-shoring jobs, rather than with long-term solutions supporting
Higher Education (HE) and increasing the available pool of UK Computing graduates. We need to find long-term
solutions, so increased national investment, recent developments such as the Revitalise IT programme, and increasing
employer engagement through e-skills UK needs to be supported and proliferated.
UK government policies reflect a view that market forces will adjust naturally to meet industrial need, but this is likely
to lead to a stabilisation on those roles that cannot be off-shored, i.e. client and business facing, with a significant
decline in UK-based capability in advanced tech