The university CIO spoke during the inaugural Texas Higher Education IT Leadership Summit from the Center for Digital Education.*
The compensation, benefits and bonuses cannot compete with corporate work, he continued, joking that he’d tried to get free parking for his staff but was quickly deterred.
“There are two things that we're doing to try to help. One is we’re focusing on career ladders because we believe that, hey, at least I can get folks in and train them on the things that are the most valuable and give them opportunity to do leadership track when it comes to managing people, or a technical track ... to be able to go back and forth,” Feagans said. “I want people, when they leave me for more money, to feel really sad because they know they’re going to miss that culture — it’s a great place to work. But absolutely, it’s a huge challenge.”
Leveraging flexible work, remote work and other perks that are allowable have been implemented in order to create interest in IT jobs.
“This idea that where IT is just going to come to higher ed because it’s special is just a myth, and I think it’s been going on for a long time, and I don’t see it changing still,” Feagans said. “And it really worries me.”
There are lots of projects on university departments’ wish lists, said Carlos Balam Kuk Solís, associate vice president of technology innovation at Texas State University.
“Part of what’s been driving me for quite a while is this thought of why do we necessarily have to rely on outside internship opportunities to our students? Why don't we do internal internships where they are IT interns who develop real-world projects, get paid to learn and solve university problems?” he said. “When we talk about gaps in resources, one of the things that is probably true for all of you … . At Texas State, certainly a big deal is our development team. Just the .NET team has a backlog of years, two years. If you want something for your team, it's time to get in line, maybe three years later … . How many people don't go to your developer team knowing that they're going to be two years out before they get something?”
Tips for growing this workforce, gleaned from the summit:
- Start with one area, then scale opportunities; UTD has started in digital transformation.
- Allow the workforce time to train and learn new skills — soft skills and technical.
- Give employees opportunities to lead a team.
- Balance hybrid work and social connections.
- Give student workers a chance and train them with skills for working AI or low code/no code, which will translate to the corporate workforce.
- Use students from different areas of study to support projects requiring writing, engineering or outreach.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate.
In the end, it’s important to fill in the gaps so backlogged projects get done. If there is a backlog, constituents won’t ask for things they need because they believe there isn’t capacity for them.
*The summit is put on by the Center for Digital Education, which is owned by e.Republic, Industry Insider — Texas’ parent company.
