MANY OF THE STUDENTS who started four years of third level education at the Limerick Institute of Technology this month will land jobs that do not exist today.
Some of those will be positions that emerge as the economy rebounds but historical statistics suggest 10 per cent of the graduates will have job titles or specialisms that are not established in today's workplace. This means that our creative multimedia curriculum is training people for jobs that don't exist. In a quick graduate survey, we discovered that decisions we made in an accredited syllabus in 2004 has helped former students land work doing PHP web development, API calls, social media analytics, and wireframing for handheld screens. I remember defending the proposed curriculum to visiting industry experts and laying out the case for how the smart economy would evolve--all the way down to the kinds of programming languages and the terms of reference for specialist work far over the horizon. History has proven our planning correct through the two major revisions that we have set for our BSc in Creative Multimedia. And history should continue running its course in Ireland as manufacturing opportunities continue to decline and the SME sector grows its influence.
Fewer people relentlessly produce more and better stuff, whether it's barley for stout, stents for health care, or any other physical product. The trend will not reverse in manufacturing. We will educate for the jobs of the future, even though some of those jobs do not appear in any sort of appointments listing today.
