IT industry and higher education: Not much about IT industry

For two decades, higher IT education and the IT industry, where future IT students were going to work, lived in different worlds. The most interesting thing is that this situation did not prevent graduates of IT-specialties from leading technical universities from successfully finding employment in their field, and Ukraine consistently being Europe's leader in software development.

It must be said that some IT-market players understood the importance of interaction with universities, but all such activities (laboratories in universities, open lectures, electives for students) were separate initiatives for a long time and did not appear as a general trend.

A few years ago, such a trend began to emerge - almost all large and medium IT-market players got their own training centers for training junior specialists. Smaller companies - on their own territory, larger ones - began to open joint educational laboratories on the basis of leading technical universities.

In this way, companies solved the issue of attracting young specialists and “grinding them out” with the help of elective classes up to the level of readiness for project tasks. By the way, the question of “getting ready” forces us to return to the main topic - the isolation of education from what the young specialist will have to face in the project and what are the reasons for this desynchronization of universities and industry.

Let's talk about what problems are not solved only by the approach of corporate universities or educational centers attached to companies, and also what should be the development strategy of higher technical education in Ukraine in general, and cooperation between IT companies and universities in particular.

Personnel who decide everything and how to keep them

The main problem for universities at the moment is the outflow of personnel. Low wages, bureaucratic processes, as well as lack of transparency in career prospects, force teachers to go into the industry. On the other hand, the outflow of students is becoming an increasingly important problem, just not from the university, but from the educational process.

The age when students start working has decreased significantly. More recently, students began to work on 3-4 courses. Now there are cases when first-year students become participants of trainee-programs or even full-time junior specialists in the company. What normal educational process can we talk about when audiences are already half-empty at 2-3 courses, and students only appear at the university at the session?

But the “special” disciplines that form and direct the future specialist read right from the 3rd course. As a result, the quality of fundamental and specialized education suffers, and young specialists, due to gaps in education, cannot solve complex engineering problems in the future, which affects their career growth.

It is necessary to motivate teachers to remain working in a university, and students to acquire practical skills at a university. Therefore, the next stage of cooperation between universities and IT companies should be training through joint projects, when students and teachers work on real practical tasks at the university together with industry expert tutors.

Such an approach can solve several problems at once: students are in no hurry to go to work as quickly as possible because they see the presence of business in the learning process, develop, learn, capitalize on their knowledge and look to the future employer. Teachers get real practical experience, useful for their development and for filling training courses with actual content. And universities receive excellent expertise and advertising, which has a positive effect on the image among applicants.

Learn to teach or invest in teachers

We all know the expression “learning is never too late”. In the IT world, this expression has now turned into another trend - “you need to learn all your life.” Continuous learning is especially important for teaching staff. In order to tell students the truly relevant information that any commercial project will need, they need to receive this information from somewhere.

On the one hand, for an active and enterprising teacher, there is a huge variety of online self-learning platforms. But on the other hand, the crucial role of a mentor and a colleague who shares his knowledge and experience has not gone anywhere. Therefore, another important task for mutually beneficial cooperation between IT companies and universities is the training (trainings) of teachers with the involvement of experts from the company.

It is important to develop teachers in those examinations that are important for business and relevant in the market. Such an investment in the teaching resource seems to be very advantageous - the information from the teacher will go to the students, and those will eventually receive the knowledge that business needs - the chain closes.

Such training is extremely useful for the company - it is the experience of interaction with teachers, curriculum development and a course of lectures / practices - in general, gaining experience in educational activities. In turn, after passing the trainings, the teachers remain to work at the university, and the companies set a goal to continue to support and develop both the group that was trained and the community of active teachers in partner universities who want to develop.

Already we can assume that in the near future we are waiting for such training in various examinations as a general trend in the IT-industry.

Most recently, we completed such training for teachers of Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics in the direction demanded in the industry - developing the Linux operating system for the core. Now these teachers independently read this course for young specialists as part of another joint educational program - GL BaseCamp.

Strategic synergy

A very important aspect of the synergy of universities and IT companies is the active involvement of experts from companies in mutual cooperation. The range of options for such cooperation is very wide. This may be, as already mentioned, mentors in joint projects with the university. Experts from companies can give their recommendations on the content of training programs in terms of their relevance to the needs of the industry. This also includes the coordination with the industry of theses in order to bring them closer to solving real business problems and much more.

The next step, and we are only at the beginning of this path, is the systematic involvement of experts of IT companies in training courses in the departments. These can be 1-2 lectures or practices as part of an existing course in the “guest lecturer” format, and then develop into full-fledged courses for students, where business professionals will officially work at the department for a stake or hourly fee.

The task of the companies here is to find active, enterprising speakers who want to contribute to the development of IT education and motivate them. And an important task of the university will be to reduce the bureaucratic procedures associated with the work of such invited teachers. It must be said that this idea has already been implemented in private universities, where representatives of IT companies "pick up" and conduct entire modules as part of the curriculum. 

In state universities, there are also courses that are specialists from the industry, but again, these are rather separate initiatives, rather than systematic practice. When such close integration becomes a conscious strategic approach from both universities and business, we can truly move to a new stage in the development of higher technical education.

The most important aspect, the understanding of which is also found in the top management of IT companies and in the management of universities - that the further development of both is impossible without each other. IT companies will never replace an educational institution with their educational initiatives, but at the same time they are in dire need of qualified personnel. And universities, in turn, will not be claimed by applicants unless they clearly show close cooperation with future employers.