An ICT Career is worth thinking about!

An ICT Career is worth thinking about! If you went to the show you may have noticed some people from the University of South Australia, School of Computer and Information Science near the IT Competition stand. They also featured on Win SA news on Friday evening.

Students at Grant were treated to a talk on the Monday after the show where we got to play with the virtual reality goggles and listened to a most entertaining talk busting some of the myths about ICT Careers.


Uni SA Lecturer, Kirsten Wahlstrom, helping Grant Students try the experimental virtual reality equipment

One of the clear messages from the talk was that there are great opportunities in ICT for girls as well as boys. In addition there were a number of myths broken in the Uni SA presentation including

Myth? - There are few ICT jobs in Australia due to outsourcing and a general downward trend
FALSE
There were 240,000+ people employed in the ICT industry in Australia in 2006 and in the past 12 months the Australian IT job market grew by 40.4%. South Australia has the highest percentage (97.7%) of ICT employment of all the states in Australia

Myth? - ICT Graduates are well paid compared to other disciplines
TRUE
Graduates earn on average $42,000 in their first year of employment and Uni SA has a practical focus to ICT education making graduates job ready.

Myth? - Uni SA has one of the largest Computer and Information Technology schools in the country
TRUE
The school has approximately 1600 students and received over $1M in research grants last year. They have over 200 industry partners

Myth? - University is primarily for students from the city or overseas
FALSE
Many of the UNI SA ICT top performers come from regional South Australia