BERKELEY, California - There aren't enough geeks.
That, in so many words, is the problem several members of the Clinton cabinet, high-tech industry reps, and a smattering of wonky academics gathered to address at the University of California, Berkeley's oldest classroom building.
And to solve that shortage, the Clintonites came armed with a program: US$6 million for school-to-work programs to move students into the estimated vast numbers of vacant infotech jobs, another $3 million for training "dislocated workers" for jobs in IT.
"It is critical American workers are prepared to take advantage of these new high-skill, high-wage jobs," Vice President Al Gore asserted in a statement. He added that the United States must redouble efforts to recruit women and minorities into high-tech.
The posturing followed a series of recent reports detailing a dearth of geeks, or "skilled IT workers," a term no one bothered to define at the press conference. These IT jobs include system operators and electrical engineers, as well as accountants and Cobol Year 2000 debuggers. Employers generally reject candidates for these positions who don't hold a four-year college degree, but complain that many applicants with bachelor's degrees aren't fluent in the right computer languages.
One study, from Virginia Tech, reports that 340,000 infotech jobs need a qualified worker. Another study, released last week by the Information Technology Association of America, the trade group that hosted today's press conference and the concurrent IT Workforce Convocation, said that as many as one in ten infotech jobs right now lacks a warm geek. Moreover, the ITAA says, in 10 years the United States will be short 1.3 million IT workers, noting that the number of US graduates from computer science programs has fallen by 40 percent since 1986 (enrollment in such programs, however, was up 40 percent in 1997). The shortage, says ITAA president Harris N. Miller, is nothing short of "a fundamental threat to the economic growth of the US."
"One-point-three million - that's more than 40 times the enrollment at Berkeley," noted Commerce Secretary William Daley. He told the press conference his agenda for IT job development includes four town hall meetings around the country this year, a campaign to give geeks a hip image, and $17 million in seed money for telecom assistance to schools, hospitals, and libraries. Daley said we should look on the geek shortage not as a problem, but as a challenge, or even opportunity.
Several in South Hall, Room 202 clearly see the situation as an opportunity.
After the "cabinet meeting," representatives of the infotech association, Oracle Corp. and Sylvan Prometric among others, detailed a plan of attack to close the geek gap.
The ITAA rep spoke of regional offices and a national network of programs the Arlington, Virginia-based trade association would supervise. Many of the "solutions" described by Sylvan Prometric's Stephen A. Hoffman, meanwhile, sounded like for-profit ventures (electronic standards tests and credential programs). It was hard to tell from Oracle vice president Klaus H. Andersen's quick, eloquent speech whether his firm's declared commitment to education will serve to win workers better wages or merely increase Oracle's user-base.
Andersen did make perfect sense on two points, however. First, that Cobol "boot camps" and other initiatives to train programmers to solve the Year 2000 problem are short-sighted. And, second, that the ITAA projections of thousands of unfilled IT jobs doesn't take into account that in 10 years, computer technology will have advanced to the point that less technical expertise will be required of the average symbolic analyst for her to be proficient.
The conference's most salient remarks were sparked by audience questions.
A man asked Daley what a software firm that needs help now should do, since all the programs enumerated will take years to produce the software whizzes he needs today. Could Daley foresee granting more work visas for foreigners or support of "outsourcing" overseas? No, said Daley, that's "politically infeasible." Asked later if this were a satisfactory answer, the questioner said, "Well, at least he's honest." And where does that leave you? "I'm hosed," he said.
Then a woman asked the Department of Education's assistant secretary for vocational and adult education, Patricia W. McNeil, whether the government has considered vocational or junior college programs as a key to solving geek scarcity.
Yes, McNeil said, pointing to what may be the true answer to the demand for more geeks: Encouraging employers to relax on the four-year-degree requirement so that technically advanced veterans from the armed services and well-trained junior college grads can gain entry to the knowledge work force.
