IT Skills Required by Manufacturing Companies and the Effectiveness of University Educational Programs

Abstract

The focus of the research addresses the obvious gaps between the IT educational programs being offered against the market requirement in manufacturing companies, with the primary goal of identifying these gaps in both technical and interpersonal development aspects, these gaps were the subject of research on many articles investigating the abilities of IT graduates to perform in the workforce. A data-oriented approach was employed to gather deeper insights into the graduate’s abilities from several resources, manufacturing companies and the targeted demographics yielded positive responses for the survey from 38 professionals including HR, Managers, and IT employees. To support these prospects an analytical approach was done on the IT curriculum using the QUT University website as well. The results from the survey depicted the shortcomings in the educational abilities gained by the students and their applicability in practice covering a wide range of the gaps in their learning process and knowledge, awareness of different subjects that are required by the industrial complex such as cyber-security, cloud computing expertise, teamwork skills, and communication, and viewed the necessary needs of dealing with the newly emerging technologies augmented with artificial intelligence and machine learning. The paper views the requirements of training, how to further enhance the educational experiences, and the importance of revisiting and revising the educational program in the long term, as well as bridging these gaps with proposed methods of collaboration to improve the program outcomes and increase IT graduates job opportunities.