July 10, 2014
PRESS RELEASE
Contact: James B. Jones, Executive Director, Mid-Pacific
ICT Center (MPICT.org)
Office: 415.239.3600 / Cell: 415.867.6616
Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) Industries and Employment Booming in the San Francisco Bay
Area: California Community Colleges
Organizing to Meet Demand
SAN FRANCISCO, California – The Mid-Pacific ICT Center (MPICT)
and the San Francisco Bay Center of Excellence today announced final release of
the report, Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) Demand and Supply, Issues and Opportunities in the Greater
San Francisco Bay Area, which documents exceptional ICT industry and
employment performance and growth. The
report also documents exceptional capacity and opportunities to meet ICT
industry and employment cluster needs by Bay Area California community
colleges.
According to
MPICT Executive Director James Jones:
“Information and communication technologies are key drivers of 21st
century economic growth and livelihood.
Yet, many of our educational and workforce development systems have not
adjusted to meet the phenomenal growth in ICT workforce demand. Code.org publicizes a shortfall of a million
workers in software development between now and 2020. According to the Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM), Computing will represent half of all Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math (STEM) jobs by 2020 and 62% of STEM job openings between
now and then. We are not even close to
meeting that demand. We have a national
crisis in ICT workforce development.
Hopefully, reports like this will help people understand the scope of
this crisis and ways we might come together to address it.”
According to
the report, ICT industries, which create, market and deliver ICT related goods
and services, are among the largest and most important industry clusters in the
greater San Francisco Bay region. Relative
to all industries, in 2012, ICT industries accounted for:
•
1
in 11.5 firms
•
more
than 1 in 10 jobs
•
about
one in five dollars of sales revenue
•
more
than one in 4 dollars of taxable earnings
•
almost
one in six new jobs between 2012 and 2015.
Not all ICT industry
jobs are technical, though, and ICT workforce doesn’t just work for ICT
industry employers. ICT workforce is now
strategically important to most organizations, across all industries, because
that ICT workforce enables increasing productivity from all workforce and most
strategic efforts of all business functions.
ICT Workforce demand in the Bay Area is large and growing. In 2012, cross-sector ICT workforce in the
Bay Area accounted for:
•
about
1 in 12 jobs
•
median
annual salaries of about $90,000
•
about
1 in 12 job openings between 2012 and 2015
The report
calls for ICT industry support and improved ICT technical workforce development
as very high, ongoing economic development priorities in the San Francisco Bay
Area. ICT jobs each create an additional
4.3 jobs through multiplier effects, according to the Bay Area Council. ICT industries and workforce are major
economic development drivers in the 21st century.
The report
provides detailed data and findings for the Bay Region, and for five identified
Bay Area sub-regions, which should be valuable for economic planners, grant
funders and seekers, educators, workforce systems, community based
organizations and other stakeholders.
In addition,
the report documents the ICT education and workforce development capacity of the
28 Bay Area community colleges, which offered in 2010/11 related to ICT:
- 1,350 faculty in 82 programs
- 140K for-credit and 16K
non-credit enrollments
- 180 academic degrees and 405 certificates
- More than 7,000 sections of more
than 2,000 courses
- More than 17,000 full-time
equivalent students
- Strong Vendor Neutral and
Industry Academy Programs and Certification Preparation
- Service to all Bay Area
geographic areas
- Affinity to local K-12 and 4-year college and university systems and schools
The report points
to ICT related offerings of the 10 Bay Area public universities, nine of which offer
32 ICT related departments, with a variety of bachelor, master, doctoral and
research opportunities.
Finally, the
report includes many problems, issues and opportunities related to ICT
education and workforce development - and suggestions for how diverse
stakeholders in the Bay Area might come together to address them.
Information
and Communication Technologies (ICT) is an umbrella term, widely used outside
the U.S., and in the U.N, to encompass all rapidly emerging, evolving and
converging computer, software, networking, telecommunications, Internet,
programming, information systems and digital media technologies. ICT/Digital Media has been adopted as sector
nomenclature by the California community college system, California Department
of Education Career Technical Education, the California Employment Development
Department, and the California workforce system, including the State Workforce
Investment Board, the California Workforce Association and all 49 local
Workforce Investment Boards. ICT is a
much more effective search term than the more prevalent IT (Information
Technology), which, ironically, as an indefinite pronoun and returns at least everything
in the English language.
The Mid-Pacific
ICT Center (MPICT.org)
is funded in part by the National Science Foundation Advanced Technological
Education program to coordinate, improve and promote ICT education, with an
emphasis on 2-year colleges, in California, Nevada, Hawaii and the Pacific
Territories.
California
Community Colleges (californiacommunitycolleges.cccco.edu) form the largest system of
higher education in the nation, with 72 districts and 112 colleges serving 2.76
million students per year. Community colleges supply workforce and basic skills
training and prepare students for transfer to four-year colleges and
universities. One in four community
college students in the U.S. attends a California community college.
Centers
of Excellence (http://www.coeccc.org),
funded in part by the Chancellor’s Office, California Community Colleges,
Economic and Workforce Development Program, in partnership with business and
industry, deliver regional workforce research customized for community college
decision making and resource development.
California
Community College ICT/Digital Media Sector Navigators (ict-dm.net) are focused on developing
and delivering regional solutions to ICT education and workforce development
needs in every region of California.
No comments:
Post a Comment