Our Uni is great!
Refuting last week's claims that UK computing degrees aren't worth the inkjet paper they're squirted on.
A leading academic has rejected recent claims from campaign group "Games Up?" that British universities are failing to equip graduates with the right skills for the games industry.
Professor Lachlan MacKinnon, Head of School for Computing and Creative Technologies at Abertay University said:
“The argument that British universities are failing to equip graduates with the rights skills for industry cannot be applied across the board because there are universities that are getting it right.
“What we need is better collaboration between industry and universities.
“The model that exists at Abertay University is one of very strong industry involvement, focussed on producing graduates that can work and have the requisite skills to do so, but are still broadly educated to university graduate level.
“The need is not to generally castigate universities for failing to meet industry needs, but for industries to work with the universities to identify appropriate graduate outcomes that reflect these industry needs.
“The danger if we don’t follow this route is that industry demands that we train personnel to ‘fit the mould’ rather than educating graduates who can perform in a range of roles.
“The evidence of success of working together with industry is the Skillset accreditation and the proof of the pudding is that Abertay has two of the four accreditations in the UK.
Professor MacKinnon was recently commissioned by Bill Rammell to complete a study on the IT labour market in the UK to assess the widening gap between the growing IT job market demand and falling IT labour pool in the UK.
Ends
For further information please contact Victoria White on 01382 308935 or mobile 07837 250284, or e-mail v.white@abertay.ac.uk