Computer geeks beware: your days are over. A “charm academy” is being created for IT students in response to employer complaints that too many lack basic social and business skills.

Backers of the initiative say that it is no longer acceptable for universities to churn out students with great software skills but no social ability. What companies need now, they say, are technicians who can talk directly to clients and realise that IT operating systems contribute to the bottom line of the business.

The socially backward computer nerds made fun of in the Channel 4 comedy The IT Crowd are the kind of workers who managers believe can stunt business growth.

Margaret Sambell, of e-skills, a government-funded skills organisation for the IT sector, said that, unless British universities adapted, businesses would turn to China and India for recruitment. “Previously, the role of technology was about automating stuff that used to be done manually. But the focus of IT systems now is on business change and how technology can be used to help companies address new markets and attract new clients. To do this, students need to understand about business and dealing with customers,” she said. “Our research tells us that more than 30 per cent of employers say there are problems recruiting IT graduates with business skills and 40 per cent say there is a shortage of interpersonal skills. Only 3 per cent say there is a shortage of recruits with the right technical skills.”

E-skills has joined forces with a number of universities and the software company Micro Focus to create the new business-savvy course — Information Technology Management in Business. Bob Champion, who is pioneering the course at Oxford Brookes University, said: “IT courses have always attracted a proportion of males who fit the standard stereotype of the computer nerd or geek. IT is a subject that you can get very high marks in without needing to interact with others. Our new course will change this because it will focus on softer skills as well.”

The course, which is being taken up by 13 universities has been developed with employers, who will provide mentors for individual students. It will combine pure IT with classes in business, management, accounting and teamwork.

Mr Champion believes that the new course will help to redress the gender balance in the industry, which has long been dominated by men. “The new course plays to the strengths of female students. They contribute equally well on the technical side, once they have overcome the perception of IT as a male-dominated area, and quite often they do better than the men with the softer skills,” he said.

The course also aims to boost the numbers of IT graduates. Ms Sambell said that in recent years there had been a massive decline in undergraduate applications for the subject. “In 2001, there were more than 27,000 applicants to IT degree courses, now there are half that number. The importance of reversing this is only just dawning on an industry which recruits to 150,000 new jobs a year,” she said.

Stuart McGill, of Micro Focus, said that the new course would help to address the problem of legacy skills. About 70 per cent of IT infrastructures in global companies run on systems such as COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), which have have been in place for decades but have not always been taught in universities. As many of the developers who run these systems are approaching retirement age, companies now desperately need graduates who can replace them.

Mr McGill said: “Companies want to modernise their systems to take the business forward, but they can only do this with staff that understand how they work and who understand how they apply to the business in question. That’s why it is crucial we have graduates who know about business systems.”

This year Microsoft bewailed the shortage of women working in the technology industry. It said that pregnancy was a particularly acute problem. The speed of technological advances meant that by the time a woman had returned from maternity leave the technology had moved on, leaving them familiar only with obsolete practices and products.

Studies conducted during the past two years have also recorded a rise in the number of women “gadget-buyers”. Manufacturers attribute this to the triumph of aesthetic over substance which has resulted in more stylish and sociable objects, such as digital cameras, which enhance social life in bars and nightclubs: not a geek’s natural habitat.

Do you need to get out more?

Are your CDs arranged in order of record label?
Do you make notes in more than one colour?
When you finally got a girlfriend, did you start looking for her mouse?
Do most of your friends’ names include @?
Are your socks embroidered with the day of the week?
Would you be surprised to hear this also comes in a paper-only format?
Are you in a chess club?
Do you alternate between Pizza Hut and Dominos so that you can have a balanced diet?
Is your only item of sportswear bicycle clips?
Did you ask for your money back because Trainspotting was only about drugs and sex?

If you said “yes” 8-10 times :(
If you said “yes” 4-7 times :/
If you said “yes” 1-3 times :)
If you said “yes” no times, it may be of interest for you to know that the signs above are called emoticons and look a bit like faces if you tilt your head sideways

Decline in graduates for a growing market – and not enough women

— Only 20 per cent of computing degree students are female

— In 2002, the first job for 8,300 new graduates was in IT. Almost half had degrees in computer science disciplines

— Numbers of students on IT courses in higher education have steadily declined from a peak in 2000

— But demand for IT professionals has steadily increased since 2004

— In 2003, 416,000 students completed IT user courses and 46,000 students completed IT professional qualifications

— In Britain, 48 per cent of adults learnt their computer skills as they went along, 45 per cent learnt informally from colleagues, friends or relatives, and a third had obtained IT skills on a formal course

— By the end of 2004, 961,000 people were employed as IT professionals. This was a slight fall from 2001, when nearly 1 million people worked in such roles

Source: Office for National Statistics

Explore Career

• Graduate

• Senior Executive

• Recruiter Forum

• Top 100 Graduate Employers

• Top 50 Women

• Best 100 Companies

• Careers in

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO