Impact of IT Worker Shortage on Physics and Engineering education
So depending on the source, one finds a shortage of 100,000 to 300,000 workers in Information Technology today -- this is forecast to grow with 1 million more jobs created by industry by year 2004
So physics and “physical technology” aspects of engineering (e.g. aerospace engineering) could compete with this trend and try to attract good students from this field
My suggested alternative is to note that IT work typically requires the technical and problem solving skills abilities associated with physics or engineering and often NOT taught in Computer Science
Thus set up new curricula opportunities within the general IT educational arena that we call Internetics
- IT minor with a basic physics/engineering education
- Engineering/physics/math methods minor within an IT education
Note IT job opportunities are in applications -- perhaps more so than in “basic systems”