Tech sector faces "serious and pervasive'' skills shortage

It's not just the U.S. that is suffering from a lack of people with skills in the IT sector. Canada also is suffering.

We need to see students returning to pursuing IT degrees with a rate that matches the rate they ran away during the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s. Currently, the derivative is going in the right direction, but the rate of increased enrollments in our programs will do little to fill the ever-increasing career opportunities for good computer science majors. We have a dire need for not only more CS majors, but more math and science majors in general, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think. Our need for more majors is not so much for the survival of our programs in academia anymore. More importantly, our need for majors is for the survival of the prominence of the IT sector in this country. I fear that the position of the U.S. as a major technological player will continue its decline against many other countries. Many countries saw the opportunity and substantial importance of STEM education needed for our students today, right from K-12 and certainly well through higher education. Did the U.S.? Have we learned from our mistakes? What are we doing today to increase awareness and improve the education of these important skills?