The role of universities in prepaing work ready information technology graduates

The role of universities in preparing graduates for the workforce is a longstanding and controversial issue. In the business world, employers are increasingly interested in what their employees can do and less interested in what they know. There is an uneasy relationship between universities and their curricula and employer expectations of graduates. In the field of IT (Information Technology), minimal research literature exists on understanding graduate perspectives of their work experiences or how to relate their formal study to their work experiences, especially during the early employment years. When we studied the work experiences of recent IT graduates we found that certain professional skills can be developed only during employment. However, universities could be responsible for preparing IT graduates to face unknown, unknowable supercomplex situations, ensuring IT graduates learn how to learn, increasing knowledge and awareness of workplace environments and setting initial job expectations of, and for, IT graduates. We also found that in their degrees, IT faculties need frameworks beyond graduate attributes for the development and inclusion of IT specific professional skills