‘Lack of computer graduates a threat to the economy’

IRELAND will lose its competitive edge unless more students take up computer courses, a leading academic has warned.

Ireland’s economic progress will be put at risk if there is not a sharp increase in the number of information and communications technology (ICT) graduates leaving the country’s colleges, according to Dr Mícheál Ó hÉigeartaigh, head of the Department of Physical and Quantitative Sciences at Waterford Institute of Technology.

He says “massive opportunities” are being missed as third-level students spurn computing and information technology courses after the perception took hold in 2002 and 2003 that there was a major cool-down underway in the sector with fewer firms recruiting.