At the moment we seem to have student protests cropping up at the high price of tuition fees for the next batch of students. Whilst I understand their frustrations, I was in the first year of students who had to put up with the tuition fees when they replaced grants I think we have too many people going to University.

I entirely agree that we should be training our young to be as enabled as possible but often people go to University and end up doing the wrong sorts of things for the job market or have unrealistic goals.

Software development is so fluid and dynamic that on the job training is really a fantastic solution for so many people. Alongside a very tough, rigorous chartered software development Chartered qualification they would be up to speed very quickly. The Chartered qualification (like with ACA and CIMA for accountants) would need to encourage things like a grounding in some of the things you learn on Computer Science degrees in University.

All of this can be done by examination. Also their may need to be streams for different programming languages but the fundamentals are most important. Once they have a sound grounding in that it should be alright to move along.

Of course programming does not sit still so refreshers and possibly even some sort of annual “latest skills” assessment might be required.

It would be tough to get it going but it does seem it would help create a bigger pool of IT Talent and also give young aspirational IT professionals an option other than University.