In a recent survey, 83 percent of employers reported having difficulty finding qualified candidates to hire, and about 75 percent tied it to a skills shortage. Current trends point to a widening skills gap and fewer companies requiring formal degrees, accepting nontraditional credentials instead. Why?
In a skills-based economy employers place the highest value on the specific needs of a job, and they aren't waiting around for traditional institutions to catch up. Companies like Google and Amazon are building in-house certifications and last-mile trainings to meet their own demands for skills that colleges and universities can't supply.
Institutions of higher learning can stay relevant by tapping into their graduate outcomes analytics to learn how their alumni impact the workforce — down to the supply and demand of skills by employer and degree program. With this evidence, institutions can adjust curriculum to create a more marketable, confident workforce.
When skills are in short supply, and demand for tech talent is growing, employers are willing to pay for the most experienced candidates. Here are the highest paying skills for recent Computer Science grads.
Technologies can vary greatly from company to company, which means the skills they require can vary, too. If you isolate the same population of recent Computer Science grads who gave us the highest paying skills by company, you'll notice a difference in the resulting analytics.
Highest paying skill: Algorithms
Average Salary: $85,147
Highest paying skill: Apache Spark
Average Salary: $85,283
Highest paying skill: Machine Learning
Average Salary: $87,653
Click here to get a free data snapshot of your university outcomes. Steppingblocks will analyze your institutional alumni from our database of over 100 million real people in the workforce. Understand your impact to prove (and improve) the value of a degree from your university.