Oracle joins with college to nurture tech talent

TECHNOLOGY giant Oracle today unveiled a collaboration with New College Lanarkshire (NCL) aimed at creating the next generation of IT professionals.

Oracle has joined forces with New College Lanarkshire. Picture: John Devlin

The two have worked with Royal Bank of Scotland to design a Higher National Diploma in IT that will give students “real world” job exposure through a summer placement scheme with the state-backed lender.

Jane Richardson, the Edinburgh-based director of Oracle Academy covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said: “NCL came to us because they wanted to make the diploma relevant to local employers, one of which is RBS. We’ve also worked with the bank to embed some ‘softer’ skills such as communications and collaboration that an employer likes to see from a student coming into the world of work.”

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The two-year diploma will include technical coursework in Java programming and SQL, the industry standard database language, and Richardson said all of Scotland’s regional colleges have been encouraged to look at ways of adapting the course to suit their needs.

A recent report from recruitment firm Eden Scott showed average starting salaries of £25,000 for computing science graduates.

The study, which said Java skills were “particularly desirable”, predicted wages were set to rise as demand for software engineers outstrips supply.