An alarming shortage of computing graduates was revealed last night as thousands of jobs remain unfilled in the IT sector.
And empty places now exist on virtually all full-time college computing courses.
The grave state of the sector is highlighted in a report which shows that while the industry is one of the economy's few remaining growth sectors, over half of the new hires in software companies in Dublin are from abroad.
The report calls for urgent intervention to plug the sills gap and for a campaign by the industry to highlight career prospects and overcome the "nerd" image associated with computing.
Details of the graduate shortage are revealed by the Third Level Computing Forum - a think-tank made up of the heads of computing departments of all third-level organisations as well as industry representatives and government agencies.
Its report says there is a need to improve public understanding of computing and predicts a shortfall of 2,000-3,000 graduates per annum.
The report shows:
- Less than one-in-five of the intake is women
- Numbers studying computing have failed to recover from the 70 per cent drop in applications following the "dot-com" collapse
- High failure and drop out rates, especially in first year with students ill-prepared to study computing
- Difficulty in recruiting Irish graduates to do research.
