The number of voices commenting on the looming skills crisis in IT is growing – at last. As an educator, I have been acutely aware of this problem for some time, and warned IT Week readers about it in an article in early 2005.

For several years now, there has been a steady fall in the number of university students studying IT and other scientific subjects. Many theories have been expounded to explain this. Some suggest that modern students think that these subjects are too hard. I hope I’m not alone in thinking that this particular theory is nonsense. Others argue that the dumbing down of science, as evidenced by numerous moronic television science programmes, has caused technology generally to lose its appeal. I have some sympathy with this argument: when was the last time you saw technology and technologists portrayed as forces for good on TV?

Others again argue that the academic content is out of phase with the needs of society, and yet others feel that we don’t make IT and science interesting enough for youngsters, and propose all sorts of competitions and initiatives to make these subjects more appealing to kids. Such schemes are very laudable but I can’t see them working because they do not address the issue that I believe lies at the heart of our skills problem: salaries.

Throughout my career in the UK, scientists, engineers and IT people have often been underpaid compared with other professions. My first real job was as a scientific civil servant. I was 25 at the time, and a highly trained mathematician and programmer with a nice shiny PhD to prove it. In spite of this, I and my fellow scientific civil servants were one grade lower down the pay scale than administrative civil servants with equivalent academic qualifications. This inequality was official policy and impossible to fight, so I voted with my feet. Some years later, in idle conversation, the chairman of a well-known British company told me that his firm’s profits were created by “housing scientists in Nissen huts and paying them peanuts”. Quite.

Let’s consider three other factors. First, university fees may well double again in the near future, making the average debt on graduation in the UK around £30,000. Second, East Asia produces enormous numbers of science and IT graduates currently prepared to work for peanuts. Third, today’s youngsters are just as smart as my generation but I suspect more financially savvy. They are simply not going to work in an area that is undervalued and underpaid however “exciting” we make it.

If we are genuinely worried about the skills shortage, we are just going to have to pay IT workers more.