Government's immigration changes lead to IT skill shortages

The government's overhaul of the UK immigration system earlier this year has already led to skills shortages in the IT sector, according to reports from university course leaders and private sector organisations.

The government introduced changes to student and skilled migrant visas in a bid to lower the number of immigrants in the UK. While certain controls were introduced to try to protect sectors suffering from skills shortages, such as engineering and science, it seems that the IT industry was not given enough consideration.

Siavash Moshiri, an IT course leader and consultant at Sheffield Hallam university, said that he has witnessed a big change in the make-up of students taking courses, which span a range of IT subjects, including Information Systems, Strategic Operational Management and Advanced Business Process Management.

"Overseas students are less likely to come and study here because of the government visa changes, and this is exacerbating the skills gap," he said. "Before, the make-up of the majority of students and postgraduate skills came from abroad. We typically had lots of students from India and China. They came to study and then they would stay in the country.

"However, Moshiri said that students from places like India and China do not come to study in the UK at all, or leave as soon as they receive a qualification.

These students from India and China tended to have work experience before they started the university courses, which satisfied growing demands from UK businesses to recruit professionals with mixed skills. But now UK students taking the place of international immigrants are generally fresh out of school or university.

"We now have younger students taking the courses without important life skills," said Moshiri. He added that he had recently been speaking to KPMG which had found it hard to find graduates with the right skills.

"They want this mix of IT and business skills and they are spending ages looking through CVs but they can't find the right people," he said.