The Center of Excellence for Information and Computing Technology, hosted at Bellevue College, serves 32 of the 34 Washington state community and technical college’s (CTCs) Information Technology (IT) programs. Consistently, and persistently, the Center has heard from community and technical college workforce administrators, professional and technical deans, and IT faculty how difficult it is to recruit and retain IT instructors.
The reality is IT (included within Science, Technology, Engineering, Allied Health, and Math (STEAM)) industry professionals make substantially more money per year than IT faculty. Thus, attracting and keeping talent within IT programs is a challenge. This impedes opportunities to expand IT programs of study in new and emerging technologies, and to prepare a pipeline of talented employees for industry.
This year the Center engaged with faculty unions, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), CTC IT faculty, workforce administrators, and union representatives/presidents to consider and pose potential solutions and challenges.
Click on the report cover image to read the report. This report will be reviewed and discussed with IT faculty in small groups at the May 16-17, 2019 IT Futures Summit.
More information about our Research
- IT Skills Gap Forum: PowerPoint, Questionnaire Results, Session Summary Notes & More…
- Building an IT Career-Ready Washington: 2015 and Beyond
- Building an IT Career Ready Washington: 2015 and Beyond: Introduction
- Section 2. What new technology competencies should the IT graduate be anticipating and searching out to master either in college, a training program, opportunities provided online, or by self-mastery (reading a book, or IT content-specific website)?
- Section 3: Often, IT employers bemoan the lack of innovation and critical thinking in an IT graduate. Why do you think that is? What can a student do to “grow” their own capacity to innovate think critically?
- Section 4: When you are training and/or mentoring a new IT employee, what are the main things you spend the most time on with them to improve their performance?
- Section 5. What Constitutes the Ideal IT Student?
- Section 6: Bryan Stevenson Talks About the Challenges and Opportunities of Creating the Ideal IT Career Pathway
- Section 1. For an IT graduate (whether a 2- or 4-year degree) about to enter the workforce, we asked our IT Professionals what are the top five IT courses and subsequent IT concepts/competencies they should have mastered? For example, networking, programming, database design/development, etc.
- 2019 Washington State IT Faculty Salaries: Challenges and Possible Solutions
- Robotics and Automation: A Retrospective and the Reality of Bot Nation
- State of the Gaming Industry in the King County Region
- STEM to Stern: An Education to Industry Research, Action, and Change Project to Develop Long-term Employer-Education Partnerships
- Emerging Trends in Information and Computing Technology Report
- Disruptive Technology: Presentation