Call for more relevant training as IT graduates struggle to find work

One in 10 computer science graduates is still unemployed several months after graduation - the highest rate for any subject.

The figures point to the brutal reality behind technology companies' complaints that universities are not tailoring their computer science degrees sufficiently to meet business needs.

The 10 per cent unemployment rate for what is commonly viewed by the public as a highly practical course is even higher than the 8 per cent rate for creative arts and design degrees - a classic bugbear of business leaders who lament that many degrees are not relevant to the economy.

Kevin Bishop, a senior IBM executive who sits on an international committee of businesses and universities trying to make science degrees more relevant to business, said universities needed to evolve computer science into "service science" - a broader degree that would include a wide range of subjects such as psychology and anthropology, as well as computer skills.

Mr Bishop pointed to the example of Stockholm's charging system for road use, run by IBM. He said IBM employees on the project needed to understand economics and politics, as well as computing.

A few UK universities, including Exeter and Westminster, offer masters courses in service science, but neither IBM nor Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said they knew of any UK undergraduate degrees in the subject. IBM was instrumental in developing computer science as a separate academic discipline 50 years ago.

Richard Brown, chief executive of the business-funded Council for Industry and Higher Education, said there was still "strong demand" for computer science graduates in Britain, but there was a "mismatch" between "the skills mix universities are supplying and the changing skills mix that businesses increasingly seek".

A spokesman for Universities UK said all faculties, including computer science, were "addressing the bigger picture", teaching students presentational as well as narrow IT skills.

Unemployment rates for full-time first-degree students graduating in 2006-07 in computer science, creative arts and design were higher than Britain's current overall unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent - although a difference in definitions makes exact comparison difficult. The average unemployment rate for full-time first-degree graduates as a whole is 6 per cent - the same as the previous year, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

The lowest rate of worklessness for recent graduates was in medicine, with only 10 people unemployed out of 5,785 whose circumstances were known.