Via startupsmart. The number of Australian students undertaking a bachelor’s degree in ICT is in decline, according to a report by the Australian Computer Society. Less than 3% of all undergraduate degrees were in the field of ICT.

“If you meet someone at a party and you say ‘I work for Google’, that’s impressive. If you say ‘I’m a programmer’, that’s kind of lame, even though it’s the same job,” Nissen says.

– Amir Nissen founder of entrepreneurship group Student Entrepreneurs at Melbourne University.

Opinion

With all the success stories in recent months and weeks of Australian companies being acquired by some of the big players in the USA, one that comes to mind is the acquisition of app discovery platform Chomp by Apple, its hard to fathom news such as this. There’s obviously incubators, and other startup-like mentor programs cropping in the Australian investor sector, looking to kindle the next brightest minds in tech startups down under. It seems that a greater majority of these startups are headed up by founders who have a few years or more, working in the more corporate style role of technology. Their shift from working within this tech consulting side of things, to making the leap into the exciting world of startups should be an icon of inspirations for students to join the technology scene.
It would be disappointing, if in this period of time when we are witnessing an increasing growth in Australian backed technology companies, it does not spur the next group of graduates to build and develop the next paradigm-shifting application.