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Experts Warn Of IT Staff Shortage In Armenia
By Nane Atshemian
Armenia's information technology industry, the most advanced in the
region, is beginning to experience a shortage of skilled labor that
could stall its further growth unless urgent government measures are
taken to reform the education system, IT experts warned on Wednesday.
They said that the number and especially the professional level of young
people graduating from the IT programs of local universities is
increasingly lagging behind the needs of one of the most dynamic sectors
of the Armenian economy.
The sector has seen substantial growth over the past decade, creating
thousands of well-paid jobs in the unemployment-stricken nation. Foreign
and mostly U.S. companies in computer software development and other
IT-related activities have been the main driving force behind the
growth. At least a dozen of them have branches in Armenia.
The existence of relatively cheap and skilled workforce in country that
was once dubbed the Silicon Valley of the Soviet Union has been
principal factor behind the foreign investments. But According to the
director of the Armenian Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF), a World
Bank-funded agency promoting the sector's development, Armenia will risk
losing this trump card unless it embarks on a sweeping overhaul of its
system of higher education.
`There are now IT companies that are looking for 50 to 100 specialists,'
Bagrat Yengibarian told RFE/RL. `There is a great need in specialists.
Our task is to create conditions in the university system that will
enable companies to hire qualified specialists. We can not make Armenia
attractive by saying that the private sector itself should prepare
specialists.'
`Big Western firms like Lycos and Synopsis can enter our universities
and train their future cadres. But smaller companies interested in
Armenia cannot do that,' Yengibarian added.
The main sources of IT-related knowledge in Armenia are the computer
science departments of Yerevan State University and the Armenian State
Engineering University. The number of applicants seeking to study there
has risen dramatically in recent years, with high school graduates
attracted by the prospect of finding a job in a sector where the average
monthly wage is currently worth $500. Experienced Armenian programmers
may well earn $1,000 or more these days.
However, the post-Soviet decline in overall educational standards in
Armenia coupled with a lack of government funding for universities has
clearly taken its toll on the quality of IT learning in Armenia.
`Our universities are only now beginning to teach modern technology,'
said Arman Valesian, chairman of the organizing committee of an annual
computer programming contest sponsored by the EIF and other IT
associations. `Kids mainly learn it on their own or through private
courses. If they could do that in university it would be much easier for
the industry to hire staff. But companies now spend at least three
months to retrain university graduates [before hiring them].'
The latest programming contest began this week, featuring about 200
participants below the age of 30. Thirty best-performing programmers
will be short-listed for a special training course to be taught by
specialists from Armenian and foreign IT firms.
`The younger they are, the more flexible is their mind,' Valesian
observed. `For example, we have a 16-year-old boy who solved five
problems in 75 minutes.'
Analysts say another problem is that despite declaring the sector's
development a top priority of its economic policy, the Armenian
government has yet to embark on a radical re-orientation of the
education sector toward IT or at least to expand its existing computer
science programs. Armenia's state-run technical colleges, which were
primarily designed to serve the now defunct Soviet-era heavy industry,
continue to release every year hundreds of mechanical and other non-IT
engineers whose chances of finding a job are slim.
Yengibarian, the EIF director, believes that the government should come
up with an IT development plan tied to a broader strategy for the
country's economic development. That strategy, he said, should provide
answers to the following questions: `In which direction will Armenia
move in the next ten years? Are we going to prioritize cheap or
qualified labor? What steps are we going to take to ensure that the
university system does not lag behind development?'
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