North Dakota's state CIO: Colleges and universities not graduating enough IT students to meet demand

Image by: WDAY news staff
Image by: WDAY news staff

(Fargo, ND) -- People who gathered for the Midwest Economic Outlook Summit in Fargo Thursday heard about a shortage of IT workers across the region.

"So when we look at the state of North Dakota, and we look at all of our universities, they're doing great work, but the number of [IT] students that they are graduating right now, my one department in the state of North Dakota, we could take all of them ourselves, one organization. We could take every single one of them and I would still not be able to completely fix my entire workforce problem," said North Dakota's Chief Information Officer Shawn Riley.

Riley was one of the featured speakers at the event. He says policy makers and educators have to continue fundamentally change computer science and cyber science access and education to be available at younger and younger ages. Riley says Kindergarten students through PhDs need IT knowledge. He told attendees it's nearly impossible to identify a career that doesn't require computers. 

Original Air Date: 
Thursday, March 24, 2022