The illiterate workforce: an effort to bridge the skills gap in Europe

Science|Business editor Richard L. Hudson.

34 – the average percentage of European residents who have never used a computer, according to Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency. (In Denmark, it’s 8 per cent. In Greece, it’s 65 per cent.)

72 – the average percentage of European women who say they don’t think they are good at using technological equipment, according to Eurobarometer, the EU’s pollster. (For men, the number is 47 per cent.)

100,000 – the annual shortfall, compared to industry demand, in the number of European graduates in computers and telecoms, according to Eurostat.

The picture that emerges: a preponderance of Europeans don’t know, don’t like and certainly don’t want to have a career in the ICT industry.

Given that sector employs only 3 per cent of the workforce, you might be tempted to shrug it off. But computers control much of life today, and so the multiplier effect is huge: The skills shortage risks cutting economic growth in some EU countries by about 1 per cent a year, estimates the European Information Technology Observatory, an industry research body. And it isn’t just computers that Europeans don’t like: for the past few years, educators in most countries have been wringing their hands over a decline in graduates in other technical fields, including math and physics.

On the agenda, again

So what is to be done about it? It’s an old complaint – and a cyclical one: in the late 90s, during the dot-com boom, the computer industry worldwide was moaning over labour shortages – only to lay off many new graduates during the slump of 2003. Now that growth is back, the issue is also back on the political agenda. Hopefully, it will stay there long enough to get something done about it.

In Brussels, the European Commission has been tackling the problem with some new programmes – and the industry has been mobilising to do something about it, itself. Earlier this month, a standing committee of the ICT industry was formed to coordinate industry action. The group, called the e-Skills Industry Leadership Board, has 14 members, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Siemens. The group plan a series of measures aimed at training engineers, measuring the extent of the problem, launching a new Web portal and other programmes – and trying to do something about the problem where it starts: Europe’s schools.

For it’s in the schools that all these problems of technical literacy begin, according to a report last October by an EU-organised committee, the ICT Task-Force.

For starters, the group reported, not enough teachers routinely incorporate computers into their curricula – along with spelling, penmanship and other basic skills. Partly to blame: National governments that “retain traditional standards and tests so teachers feel constrained to ‘play it safe.’” Attitude is another problem. Despite many kids’ addiction to mobile phones and Internet chat, they aren’t encouraged to think of computing, engineering or the other technical professions that create those gadgets as “cool” jobs for them. “ICT is often presented and perceived in schools as a specific (narrow) career path,” the report said. Moreover, even when training does happen in schools, it’s often divorced from the reality of what a student really needs in order to rise in a technical profession.

And, as any economist can relate, education matters. One additional year of schooling adds between 6.5 per cent and 9 per cent to a person’s average salary, according to the group’s report to the Commission.