Dimanthinie De Silva, PhD Scholar, Queensland University of Technology
With regards to the technological advancements in today’s world, it has been revealed that undergraduate students, particularly in Information Technology, are expected to possess not only technical competencies and domain-specific knowledge but also competencies in strategic thinking, cognitive agility, workplace agility, performance excellence, and adaptive resilience (De Silva et al., 2024). The analysis of over 220 job advertisements from the Australian IT job market, sourced from Seek, Indeed, and Glassdoor, revealed that educational qualifications are not the sole requirement for fresh graduates entering the workforce and securing employment in these competitive environments in Australia.
A successful professional today is expected to hold a flexible mindset, enabling them to understand global issues and offer innovative solutions while adapting swiftly to changes in technology, market trends, and workplace dynamics. Undergraduate students in higher education must be prepared to perform as professionals under pressure and to navigate uncertainties in the world. The career opportunities available for IT professionals today include a wide range of industries including education, finance, law, hospitality, defence, real estate, and others. Therefore, individuals entering the workforce must acquire experiences and expertise in an array of domains, as they may be employed in organisations not primarily focused on IT. Also, it was distinctly demonstrated that the competencies and skills demanded of graduates cannot be quantified or confined as in previous eras in today’s society. The number of skills that are necessary today may be varied by tomorrow. It is essential to choose the appropriate skill in accordance with the context, as each skill is significant.
In the next five years, the World Economic Forum anticipates that technological advancements will impact 44% of employee skills in all sectors and it is important that graduates who are entering the workforce possess the necessary skills and competencies for the future (World Economic Forum, 2023).
The graduates entering the workforce tomorrow must maintain this curiosity about changes to be better positioned and thrive in their various responsibilities inside the workplace. In today’s fast-paced environment, adaptability is not only a skill but a necessity, enabling students to stay resilient in adverse situations and recover from challenges.
Today, businesses and entrepreneurs are placing a greater emphasis on innovation, and organisations expect high productivity and work improvements. In order to satisfy these demands, it is necessary for individuals to acquire new competencies and skills. These requirements are not very different in other regions of the globe. In the most recent event, the eLEARNING FORUM ASIA 2025, these insights were presented and discussed, revealing consistent industry trends across Asian regions. This highlights the worldwide necessity of aligning higher education more closely with industry requirements and the competency development of graduates. It is time for higher education to go beyond incremental changes as the skill development of a learner happens through the experiences they acquire. While knowledge acquisition was the primary focus in the past, the current era is seeing the development of skills and competencies.
The accreditation of Australian undergraduate IT programmes by the Australian Computer Society (ACS, 2024) ensures that the curriculum is in line with industry standards and that graduates will possess the technical expertise required by the industry. Also, the university curricula today reflect both the content that students will learn during their educational journey and how they will learn it, especially with the accreditation bodies’ requirements and the quality assurance process. These pedagogical practices align with their learning objectives and ensure students acquire the necessary skills and graduate attributes.
However, can this piece of document guarantee the student’s progression today? Although this emphasises the transparency and responsibility to students, parents, and employers, could there be any discrepancies in the implementation of actual delivery inside the universities? As academics, it is now crucial that we begin to reflect the practices we utilise in our classroom teaching to assess whether we have accepted the responsibility that has been placed upon us (ACM & IEEE-CS, 2020; Department of Education Skills and Employment, 2021; UNESCO, 2022).
References
ACM, & IEEE-CS. (2020). Computing curricula 2020 CC2020 paradigms for global computing education. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3467967
ACS. (2024). ACS accreditation of higher education. https://www.acs.org.au/cpd-education/acs-accreditation-program.html
De Silva, D., Huijser, H., Cunningham, S., & Press, N. (2024). Essential professional skills and competencies for future Information Technology graduates: Meeting IT industry demands 2024 International Conference on Engineering Management of Communication and Technology (EMCTECH), Vienna, Austria.
Department of Education Skills and Employment, C. (2021). Higher education standards framework (Threshold Standards) 2021. https://www.teqsa.gov.au/how-we-regulate/higher-education-standards-framework-2021
UNESCO. (2022). Beyond limits :New ways to reinvent higher education. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000389912
World Economic Forum. (2023). Future of jobs report 2023 insight report. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf