have emerged as the discipline has expanded and specialisations emerged from computer science to, for example, software engineering, security and games. In the UK the Quality Assurance Agency is currently consulting on a new computing benchmark with a publication date in 2016 (QAA, 2015). The second, a unified approach, was the aim of the Seoul Accord which was signed by eight national professional bodies, including the BCS, in 2008. However the challenge remains that it is only one of seven agreed frameworks (Bacon & MacKinnon, 2010). Finally, in terms of continuing professional development, although the focus on graduate skills has been taken up by the BCS through organising training courses and issuing publications, in general, specific vendor training has been perceived by graduates as having greater value for employment prospects. In terms of autonomy, the BCS, in common with other professional bodies, operates as a membership organisation and is run by a board of trustees. However, Monteiro’s (2015) final category, prestige, is problematic. The IT profession could be said to lack prestige. To be effective, professional bodies need an authoritative voice. With 1.3M jobs in IT in the UK (Office for National Statistics, 2014) and membership of 70,000 only 5% of IT professionals are members (by comparison, accountancy can claim 14% from the same source). According to the National Careers Service (2014) most accountancy jobs advertised require chartered status while very few advertised IT jobs require chartered status. Only one of the participants was a member of the BCS and he had questioned whether this was worthwhile for him. Two others knew of the BCS but had not seen the value of membership, relying instead on self-development and product-based training. Although IT professionals are generally highly skilled, there remain low barriers to entry to the profession. Using data published in the 2001 Employers Skills Survey, employees in computer services have the highest mean skills score across all science, engineering and technology industries (Mason et al., 2002, p. 11). However Donnelly et al. highlighted controls on entry into IT occupations’ and observed ‘loose that only a minority of graduates hold a qualification in computer science (2011, p. 101). This is largely explained by Donnelly et al. as due to the falling numbers of computer science students (from 27,000 to 13,000 between 2001-2007) but also by the fact that 57% of IT graduate recruiters favoured recruitment of graduates with
have emerged as the discipline has expanded and specialisations emerged from computer science to, for example, software engineering, security and games. In the UK the Quality Assurance Agency is currently consulting on a new computing benchmark with a publication date in 2016 (QAA, 2015). The second, a unified approach, was the aim of the Seoul Accord which was signed by eight national professional bodies, including the BCS, in 2008. However the challenge remains that it is only one of seven agreed frameworks (Bacon & MacKinnon, 2010). Finally, in terms of continuing professional development, although the focus on graduate skills has been taken up by the BCS through organising training courses and issuing publications, in general, specific vendor training has been perceived by graduates as having greater value for employment prospects. In terms of autonomy, the BCS, in common with other professional bodies, operates as a membership organisation and is run by a board of trustees. However, Monteiro’s (2015) final category, prestige, is problematic. The IT profession could be said to lack prestige. To be effective, professional bodies need an authoritative voice. With 1.3M jobs in IT in the UK (Office for National Statistics, 2014) and membership of 70,000 only 5% of IT professionals are members (by comparison, accountancy can claim 14% from the same source). According to the National Careers Service (2014) most accountancy jobs advertised require chartered status while very few advertised IT jobs require chartered status. Only one of the participants was a member of the BCS and he had questioned whether this was worthwhile for him. Two others knew of the BCS but had not seen the value of membership, relying instead on self-development and product-based training. Although IT professionals are generally highly skilled, there remain low barriers to entry to the profession. Using data published in the 2001 Employers Skills Survey, employees in computer services have the highest mean skills score across all science, engineering and technology industries (Mason et al., 2002, p. 11). However Donnelly et al. highlighted ‘loose controls on entry into IT occupations’ and observed that only a minority of graduates hold a qualification in computer science (2011, p. 101). This is largely explained by Donnelly et al. as due to the falling numbers of computer science students (from 27,000 to 13,000 between 2001-2007) but also by the fact that 57% of IT graduate recruiters favoured recruitment of graduates with
an-exploration-of-professional-identity-in-the-information-technology-sector.docx