What nerve!

How dare the White House point the finger at universities. Students coming into college already have taken a look at what career sectors are paying, expanding and having upward mobility paths.

Thanks to the greedy short-sightedness of corporate America, a lot of bright talent is going into other fields. The students hear what's going in companies and are running away in droves.

If corporate America and our government don't change their core attitude about technology and expanding the national pool of IT talent, we're going to be heading toward second rate status in a hurry (oh wait! we're nearly there)!

There used to be a time when companies would scour thier entry-level ranks for potential talent and expand their training and put them together with a mentor The Japanese knew this from the get-go (i.e. the Sempi and Kohi relationship)

It pisses me off when I see captains of industry like Bill Gates (whoI otherwise admire) sit before Congress and whine about the number of H-1B visas and shoveling that crap about how they need more to be competitive and attract the best and brightest. What hogwash!

Corporate America! You broke it! You fix it!

Corporate America certainly shares part of the blame. But the major problem is at the universities that are educating technicians rather than professionals. Professors have tenure no matter how bad they are. It's easier for incompetent professors to teach "rote technology" that they also do badly than to guide students to be professional, and acknowledge how IT fits into an overall organization objectives. They haven't a clue how to motivate IT students.

There are many degreed U.S. engineers and IT people who have been laid off and are unemployed. Before granting H1B visas, they should be given jobs.

I have a BSCS from the engineering department of a state university, but am over 50. I went through the Microsoft courses, and took, and paid (and passed) for the 5 exams for Microsoft certification in software development. What happens is that first companies look for experience developing software in their field (ex. medical claims), then (with some justification) they want several years in using the Microsoft stuff, so just having the certifications is of no help. 30-plus years as a software developer, programmer, manager, doesn't help either.

I bet the H-1B people don't get the same scrutiny that other laid off engineers and I get.

Also, seeing that I couldn't avoid the draft, like Clinton, Bush, Cheney, etc., I think the H-1Bapplicants should serve 2 years in the military first. Hey, it's all volunteer now - and we can't get enough bodies!

I forgot to mention that I was teaching a evening JAVA programming class at the local community college. That ended due to lack of student interest. It takes smart people to go into IT or engineering, and they can see that there's no money or jobs there. It's easier and less academically demanding to go into law or nursing, (there must be others I'm missing?).

Whenever a product design is finished, the engineering design team is disbanded and the engineers are laid off. (You don't need the engineers for manufacturing the product!)

In sofware, programmers tend to be sensitive and hard to manage, so CIO's take the easy way out, and choose canned apps over in-house development. PeopleSoft HR is a good example. Very costly, very hard to implement, and very hard to find the programmers and analysts to tweak and maintain it.

Surprise, you still need them even for this canned apps and, of course, you now have the recurring yearly license and support fees. And when you need a change made, you're at the mercy of Oracle/PeopleSoft. But hey, you don't have to manage those programmers. Hardware is much easier to see and understand.

I've done HR/payroll systems from the ground up, including taxes, W-2s, checks, direct deposit. When I admit to not having PeopleSoft experience, well, no interview for me!

I'd like to fully agree with Kelly about the way IT managers have created their own shortage of workers, but I can't.

Kelly, nursing is as difficult to master as IT. IT needs puzzle solving skills and syntactic accuracy. Nursing is far more than skills and hand holding. It requires highly developed critical thinking skills, and the ability to navigate through and prioritize conflicting outcomes.

I'd give odds to a good nurse for passing a certification exam in IT cold, simply because they can recognize incompatible objectives. It's what they do. Conversely, an IT person looks for "right answers."

I was in IT over 20 years before I went into nursing. I'm out of IT for the same reasons that all the contributors have listed: everything from imperfect skill-set match to being "too experienced," and the ever popular in the DC-area "inactive clearance."

I've put all that behind me; I don't even want to consider nursing informatics (nurse IT). As an end user of medical IT, I get to just shake my head with a knowing smile when the the tech geeks try to shovel.

As long as IT management is risk-averse and unable to articulate anything resembling a vision, there's a good chance that the IT workers of tomorrow have come from today's cookie cutter, and will become decreasingly likely to be able to handle the changes that the next wave of tech evolution will bring.

Have you ever wondered what happened to most of the electronics techs that were working in the '80s? Most of them became irrelevant when microcircuits and cheap manufacturing methods eliminated the need to analyze failures and fixes. Software will get to the level where design translates to standard modules and there won't be a need for someone to tie it all together. The food chain will drop a few links.

Maybe it doesn't really matter. The IT shortage will go away on its own.