New IBM Program To Woo Appalachian Students Into Tech JobsNew IBM Program To Woo Appalachian Students Into Tech Jobs

Appalachia is one of the poorest and most undereducated regions in the United States. But IBM and the Appalachian College Association are hoping that a new alliance will spur innovation and encourage more young people in the region to pursue careers in technology.

"Appalachia is on the wrong end of the curve" in economics and education, says Martin Ramsay, chief institutional technologist at the Appalachian College Association, a nonprofit consortium of 35 two- and four-year private and public colleges and universities in the five-state mountain region that includes Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. About 39,000 students attend those schools, which have a combined faculty of about 3,250.

The poverty rate in Appalachia is 27%, more than double the national average of 13%. The high-school graduation rate in Appalachia lags 10% behind the U.S. average, and college graduations in the region lag 35% behind the national average, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.

Meanwhile, not all Appalachian colleges and universities have computer science or related programs, and many of those that do are in jeopardy of shutting those programs down due to falling enrollment in tech-related studies, says Ramsay. Many individuals in the region are being dissuaded from pursuing possible careers in technology because parents hear so much about "jobs going to India," he says. But the colleges are hoping to dispel those "misconceptions" and show that there are many opportunities for developing solid careers in technology, he says.

The primary goal of the program right now in Appalachia is not to introduce new tech programs into the schools that lack them, but rather to try to help keep current programs going, he says. Already, Bryan College in Dayton, Tenn., the region's pilot school in the IBM program, has seen an increase in its computer science enrollment, Ramsay says. Approximately 350 to 500 students in the region are expected to benefit from the new program when it officially kicks off in the fall.

The new alliance between the association and IBM is part of IBM's larger Academic Initiative, a program in which the vendor offers free access to IBM open-source software, discounted hardware, course material, training, and curriculum development. IBM staff also provides training to educators to help them learn how to teach students skills related to open-source and standards-based technologies such as Java and Linux, as well as security and networking.

Another goal of the Appalachian program is to provide students in the region with an opportunity to learn vital tech skills even if they're not planning to pursue jobs in what are thought of as typical IT career paths, says Mark Hanny, IBM VP of alliances. "IT is pervasive in business. There are a lot of jobs that require knowledge of technology that aren't traditional IT jobs," he says, including business analysis, business intelligence, and data-mining work.

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates the United States will need 1.5 million more IT professionals this year, and that one-in-four jobs in the United States will be in IT within the decade. However, with falling enrollment in computer science and related majors in U.S. colleges and universities, the Labor Department estimates schools will need to quadruple the number of graduates in those programs by 2008 in order to meet the forecasted demand.

"We're not seeing as many kids going into computer science and engineering when the demand is there," says Hanny. As a society, the United States is "too locked up," focusing on the "lower-level" jobs in programming and call centers that are most likely to be outsourced rather than focusing on the demand for higher-level skills needed to fuel innovation, he says.

There's also a need to focus more on assisting older workers to make midcareer transitions, he says. In the future, "I don't think people will work in only one career. You'll see the retraining of America," he says.

In fact, IBM has a program in which the company picks up the tuition tab for its own workers making the transition out of IBM to start new careers as math and science teachers, for which there is a nationwide shortage, Hanny says.