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Gates wants more Western educated IT specialists

In a speech at the 2006 Microsoft business forum held in Moscow Microsoft founder and Philanthropist Bill Gates highlighted the world wide lack of qualified IT workers and called out for the more developed countries to make more of an effort in teaching IT skills to students. Even though highly skilled students from second world countries are rising to the challenge and rushing in to fill the void, their number is by far not enough to satisfy the ever growing needs of the industry.

Especially western businesses have to suffer from the negative consequences of the skill shortage in the IT department. Companies actually had to delay releasing new products and services because of lack of qualified staff, and even if their would be enough foreign IT workers willing to sign up, visa restrictions would create extra hindrances for them to overcome. A big part of the problem is the constantly low rate of female IT students. Whereas in other more technical subjects the male to female ration is and has been improving, in the IT area it still remains at only 20 percent (UK data).

There is a big need to encourage female students to take up IT courses and the governments of Western countries certainly have a lot of space for improvement. During his speech, Bill Gates did his part in trying to attract more youngsters by stressing that there were countless good opportunities all over the world available to anyone specializing in this exiting field, and he also predicted huge technological breakthroughs in portable computers and the development of new learning systems for the future.