The software development and cybersecurity industries have a talent shortage of crisis proportions and the nation’s educational institutions are struggling to fill the gap.
In software development, the next decade will see the creation of more than a million new developer jobs across the US, but only 400,000 of those jobs will be filled by actual computer science graduates.
In cybersecurity the situation is similarly dire. In Oregon there are 2,911 unfilled job openings and 313,735 total openings across the country. To make matters worse, companies complain that graduates coming out of colleges and university programs are not prepared to tackle the day-to-day work of managing complex cybersecurity tools and require many months of on the job training before they become useful and productive.