Demand for information technology graduates is soaring across Australia with many students securing job offers before they even finish their course.
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Federation University has seen application numbers for IT degrees jump from 1101 students in 2017 to almost 3800 in 2018.
"IT lost its charm a bit but has now resurfaced quite strongly as IT now penetrates so many different aspects of life," said Prof Syed Islam, dean of Fed Uni's School of Science Engineering and Information Technology.
He is seeing particularly strong growth in two sectors of IT - computer systems and networking, and software development.
The energy industry, both traditional and renewable, is also emerging as a large consumer of local IT graduates and Fed Uni is looking to offer a new, unique engineering degree next year.
The bachelor degree will combine electrical and information engineering together in what Prof Islam said is the first degree of its kind in Australia.
"As we see how the industry is changing we are hoping to offer the new bachelor degree. There is so much penetration of IT in the industry with capacity, data science, electrical power, renewables that it's almost impossible to dissociate them and you have to learn these combined skills."
The other strong area is networking and cyber security, thanks to the NBN rollout and increasing numbers of businesses operating in the online world.
Demand for experts in apps and software development is also strong.
Fed Uni has strong links to IBM, some of the big banks and other IT-dependent businesses who offer internships and experience to students, many of whom are looking to employ graduates.
"There's strong interest among many in the industry ... and our students are all getting jobs and what I'm told is Fed Uni IT graduates are second in terms of employability among graduates in Australia," Prof Islam said.
We notice huge demand and we are seeing students getting jobs and good pay.
- Proffesor Syed Islam
Cathy Wu is in the second year of her Bachelor of Information Technology (Professional Practice) at Fed Uni, while also working at the university.
"I have a lot of friends working in IT jobs and the job appeared very interesting to me," she said.
"And I realise how efficient it can be if you can get the best from technology."
Ms Wu said she was excited at the opportunities for a career in IT, but hoped to continue working at the university because of the wide range of IT needs across different fields.
