Staff Reporter·
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SA digital industry needs to rethink education

There is not a technology business or digital services business in South Africa at the moment not looking for developers. It’s been this way for a couple of years, it’s getting worse and it’s a problem that will choke the industry in the next couple of years.
The problem seems to be emanating from tertiary institutions not capable of dealing with the demand of our growing industry. Businesses generally rely on tertiary institutions to deal with educating, testing and accrediting the workforce so that we essentially do not have to. Unfortunately these institutions do not have the capacity to produce developers at the rate at which the industry are demanding them, and they also seem to be teaching developers dated languages and techniques that we have long moved on from.
Tertiary institutions are essentially bottle-necking our industry and we are sitting by the sidelines waiting for something to happen, but it will not. In a country like South Africa most students capable of attending University do not have the financial resources to do so. This coupled with Universities’ inability to scale their businesses to meet the demands of both industry and prospective students I believe we are sitting with a problem only entrepreneurs can solve.
I think this is a problem we can solve ourselves without breaking the bank. I think more businesses firstly need to start teaching their craft to the public free of charge, I think we need to stop relying so much on official accreditation and testing and take over this process ourselves. I think every year we need to teach a couple of eager kids how to code on the spare PC in the office and later offer them internships and maybe even jobs.
I refuse to believe that we cannot solve this issue ourselves. Let’s do what entrepreneurs do, and start solving this problem so that it doesn’t end up killing our other businesses in the future.

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9 Comments

  1. You’re right, we can at least start to get children / students interested in programming, even if we can’t fix the education system ourselves.  We’ve been talking along similar lines at our company the last few weeks:  Think of how easy it would be to host a coding challenge of some sort at the local high schools in your area.  Even a small prize of R1k or R2k would get kids excited.  You can have a few tutorial sessions over Saturdays to get them started.  Then you give the best one or 2 an internship or even bursary.  Just the PR exposure you’ll get from this would be worth it.  

    1. Agreed, if more companies took responsibility for education we would be much better off. Businesses need to be actively part of the process and in a couple of years we will reap the rewards.

  2. There is some education happening – although I agree with you. Lots more needs to be done! 
    Local - http://www.quirk.biz/emarketingtextbook/
    On the coding front these guys seem to be doing well (the interest is there!) http://www.codecademy.com/

  3. There is definitely space for some alternative approaches to education. This is especially true given that the gap that has always existed between a university approach and a practical industry approach is made far larger in industries that rely on a world of digital. Digital also makes distance learning possible, which dramatically changes what is available to and what is demanded from a student. So yes, there are a few of us making changes and I suspect far more models are going to be springing up.
    Even at a high school level there are organisations that provide alternative learning materials – working outside of traditional structures. Have a look at Africa Meets Africa (www.africameetsafrica.co.za/) (disclaimer: my mother runs that project). It’s great that you are drawing attention to this issue – and from our perspective I can say that there is great possibility in the industry stepping up – but that it is ESSENTIAL that we maintain the standards and requirements that make an education on any topic valuable and worthwhile. With us gaining and maintaining a student’s trust is paramount – anyone’s choice to invest in education is a big one. But yes – check out our textbook (downloadable for free). http://www.quirk.biz/emarketingtextbook/

    1. Quirk has done awesome things with the textbook, I think other companies can learn from your example. I do on the other hand believe there is still room for other ideas in this space.

  4. Firstly we need students to want to be programmers. Many young bright students will want to study a BCom (or Law) as those professions give you more bang for your buck as a young black student. Nothing wrong with that, if you’re going to have your parents or bank pay for three years at Uni, best you make it pay.
    Secondly, those who study ‘IT’ can either get a BCom in Information Systems or can go the BSc in Computer Science. My experience, having studied in part both is that the BCom is seen as a more corporate friendly degree and also easier to study in university as it doesn’t require high maths and science marks in matric.
    From experience I can tell you you’ll have many many more students studying a BCom in Information Systems. The results (again in my experience) is that students become trained more as  Business Analysts and Info Tech Managers. Even though most of these students will study programming it will be relatively basic compared to the stuff the BSc students study. The BSc students in my eyes will be much better programmers as they would have coded more, coded more complex stuff  and have a head for engineering solutions. 
    Also, given that Universities have only a short time to teach students to program (as students typically have another 4-8 subjects to also study for), the talented programers coming out of university are the students who like many of us, programmed in our spare time and actually learned more from ‘on the side’ programming than the guys who only programmed in class.
    Another thing that effects the digital services industry is the fact that any newly minted BCom, BSc and masters students will typically want to go work for a corporate, bank, big body-shop IT consulting house where as a junior they’ll earn more than working for a ‘digital agency’, startup or smaller code shop. 
    I think companies need to do more to built talent. It’s easy for everyone wanting a ‘guru’ programmer but if your company doesn’t offer internships during holidays or part-time jobs then you’re missing a huge opportunity. 
    The bigger problem in my eyes is that you don’t have students who are passionate and want to become great programmers and tech professionals. I was blown away when I was in India to see how many opportunity hungry and talented young people there were. Those indian guys put the western world to shame. These young people are driven, passionate and more importantly word bloody hard.
    These days a young talented programmer have so much on the internet that can help them learn and help them be great coders. Most of us in the local digital space learnt 90% of what we know by teaching ourselves.  The added benefit of teaching yourself is that you can stay up to date with tech that universities can’t keep up with – ie Ruby on Rails, NoSQL, web frameworks and such. I think universities should keep teaching Java and other more traditional and ‘structured’ languages than PHP as it’s easier to be a bad programmer using PHP than it is Java. A good Java (or C++) programmer can become a great PHP programmers than it is for a PHP to become a good Java programmer. We want great programmers not ‘30% PHP exam pass mark’ programmers.
    That’s my 2c.

    1. Loved your feedback Phil. I agree with your position that not too many people are interested in getting into tech, but I think access to education is a bigger barrier to entry at this point. An ideal solution would be to have high school kids learn this stuff at school level of course and then businesses can take it further. I think Universities train highly technical developers with great problem solving skills, but at the end of the day most of the industry just need people who are competent with some basic php to be honest.

      1. just came across this link on the brightest young minds fb site… i live in durban and iv been teaching sociology in the kwamashu vicinity for a few years….  i know for sure that there are plenty of young people (aged 10-35) that would readily take on the challenge of becoming programmers. theres a fascinating curiosity… and if the physical infrastructure where in place (with no access limitations like electricity/ bandwidth/ space etc) many of kids would possibly find a way to teach themselves this stuff. 
         iv taught at ukzn, taught at a private college, as well as a SETA learnership programme… the only thing that gets in the way of education is the hero-syndrome/ the need to be special/ dont want to do it if theres no brand/personal valorisation.
         In the spirit of creative protest and agency, i started The Inkubator for Social Entrepreneurship – INK as in Inanda, Ntuzuma, KwaMashu. 
         Its a proposed community college that operates to remove the boundaries between public and private education, encourage cross-generational learning and capacitate for a more digitally literate society. 
        So i have a supply of young people that are curious and ready… we have plenty of learning spaces in the community…. we need people/ programmers who can facilitate this specialised knowledge transfer and the relevant apparatus for practice to become embedded… i have a few considerations for how such a human capital loan could be repayed … but for now such an investment will have to be considered as an act of nobility and creativity. 
         would be exciting to talk further about how link need to resource … shabashnim@gmail.com

    2. Phill, you sum it up so succinctly. For me the phrase that stood out is “they also seem to be teaching developers dated languages and techniques that we have long moved on from.”
      Why are Unis and Techs not offering a diploma in web development? By now, that is a legitimate and stand alone job description. From what I understand the stuff they teach in the multimedia courses
      are more art related than understanding the various technologies; they’re teaching designers to code. If I could tailor a course, it would entail the following: xHTML, HTML5, CSS, Information Architecture and UX, Some project Management basics, System’s Engineering, Java, C++, PHP/Perl/Javascript, Linux/Microsoft server tech, SQL/MySQL, some basic business management and a proper communications class. I would even venture that a class in “internet” could be beneficial: How to really use Google, The browser wars, Social Media, Good/Bad practices, Great resources shared and discussed, getting involved in open source – tell the students what’s WRONG with the internet so they can start thinking about how to fix it instead of falling in and fighting the same fight we do on a daily basis.
      I’ve been in the internet industry for 10+ years now and those are the things I use and deal with on a daily basis. I don’t see myself moving away from it. I sure as heck would hire a new guy if he came to me with a pass on all the above. Perhaps my view is simplistic and it may be because I consider myself a bit of a jack of all trades, but small business cannot afford to employ a specialist for each position, as we have to keep costs down to stay afloat.

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