Joined-Up Approach
Are business and academia aligned when developing a cohort of tech specialists? BT’s Wendy James and Staffordshire University’s Robin Oldham look at the question from both sides.
Words: Lawrie Holmes
Illustration: Alex Williamson
The war for talented tech specialists is ratcheting up. As organisations of every stripe seek to gain an advantage over their peers by leveraging technologies like artificial intelligence, they’re feeling a greater urgency to bring in graduates with the necessary skill sets.
BT is no exception. The telecoms giant is busy hiring the software engineers required to roll out ultrafast full fibre broadband across the UK by the end of 2026, replacing the army of more conventional hardware engineers that the company once employed.
But this push comes at a time when there is a 20 per cent UK shortfall in such graduates, alongside similar gaps in countries (like India) that have long been sources of tech talent for the UK. It’s a situation the telco’s Leadership, Learning, Talent and Diversity Director Wendy James describes as a “challenge”.
In this climate, BT has to find ‘work-ready’ graduates that possess not only the right tech skills but also the correct mindset. Wendy says universities have regularly come up short when it comes to delivering the specific skills required: “Line managers say that universities are often teaching on platforms or systems which industry doesn’t use.”
That said, she notes that some universities have been better than others at getting their graduates fit for purpose. “I find those universities that partner with someone like TechSkills are working to build out qualifications that are work-ready and relevant to employers,” she says. “So I would say, a big tick in the box for them.”
She goes on: “Instead of the old-fashioned sort of computer science degrees, where there was a lot of theory and you were often studying languages that were slightly outdated, now we have more suitable qualifications, built by employers working in partnership with universities.”
Taking the lead
In recent years, a government push for digital apprenticeships has come some way to addressing that disconnect, says Robin Oldham, who has been lecturing in tech subjects at Staffordshire University since 2000.
As the university’s Course Director for Computer Science – Digital Apprenticeships, MoD and Flexible Learning who has been overseeing digital degree apprenticeships for the last five years, working with around 100 organisations, he sees first-hand how academia and business are pursuing a joined-up approach. “It’s been really interesting and rewarding to see the real benefit of working together so much in this space,” he says. “We’re able to get feedback from what the apprentices are doing and what they’re drawing from their managers and mentors in the workplace to help influence our approaches.”
BT is also partnering with universities such as Cambridge, University College London and Bristol to run a talent programme called Leader Lab, in which staff spend a year at various institutions immersing themselves in latest technologies. “By having those partnerships, we bring some real-world thinking about how you then implement those technologies into customer solutions,” says Wendy. “And the universities give us leading-edge thinking in the spaces like quantum [computing] and cybersecurity.”
The need for speed
It’s an approach that will hopefully meet the problem posed by companies being driven to ever faster timeframes to head off the threat of more rapid waves of disruption. In turn, this poses a challenge to universities about how to prepare students for a corporate world that may have changed beyond recognition by the time they arrive there. “As much as learning to be a software engineer, they’re learning to be responsive and able to react to changes in the landscape and the changes in the technology available to them,” Robin explains.
“In some senses, we don’t even know what technology those heading into their careers will soon be learning. But, with the right preparation, they can thrive with that challenge.”
New technologies also bring complexities that threaten to undermine the value they can bring to the corporate world. “With ChatGPT, there’s been a lot of concern about the use of it for cheating in academia and, therefore, a fear that academia might pull the shutters down,” says Wendy. “Academia needs to think about how to use it and not go running to the hills because they’re worried about cheating. There needs to be a focus on how to think critically about what’s coming out and whether it’s accurate and how people are using these tools, rather than trying to lock it in a cupboard. That’s just not going to work.”
Both sides are in agreement that, despite the different lenses through which they are looking at the challenges, a happy medium can be reached through dialogue. Indeed, Staffordshire University runs an internal Industry Advisory Forum, with attendees including the likes of Amazon Web Services, IBM, Cisco, FHL Cloud Solutions and CodeWeavers, which meets regularly to discuss technology advances, course design and industry needs.
More broadly, corporates including BT, Cisco, Amazon and IBM are developing strategic workforce plans, which they have started sharing with universities so that they can adapt their own planning. “Recently, we had a session with course directors from universities on how to move forward,” says Wendy. “We’re also feeding information into academia on areas such as a need for greater diversity. What we’re hoping for is that they will respond in their course design and frameworks.”
There is common agreement that the pace of change driven by advancing technology is creating a gulf between the needs of the business world and the ability of universities to meet that need, but both the academic and corporate worlds are moving to a more collaborative approach where sharing information of detailed business plans will enable a tailored academic approach to flourish. The future looks bright.