Is the ICT University Degree the Best Option for being a Successful ICT Professional?1

This paper provides an analysis of the skills required by ICT professionals when entering the ICT labor market in the Czech Republic. While the core ICT skill set includes basic elements of soft-ware engineering and networking, new areas of skills are constantly emerging, redefining the portfolio of skills that ICT practitioners need. Qualitative analysis has shown that proportion of core ICT skills in knowledge profiles required by industry is between 59-85 percent for different IT roles. During quantitative analysis we have found that at about 58 percent of new university graduated employees in the ICT sector in the Czech Republic did not pass through a formal ICT education. This forms potential threat to the ICT oriented study programs and requires further development of their curricula in direction of business needs