Students with technology degrees are not finding as many jobs as they did a few years ago.

Rodney Angotti, chair of NIU’s computer science department, said the recent decline has been overplayed by the media.

“There has been a violent change. It has been drastic; there is no question about that,” Angotti said. “The opportunities were awesome, but it’s starting to level out now.”

In 2002, the U.S. high-tech industry lost 8 percent of its workforce – more than 500,000 jobs, according to the American Electronics Association. The association also said the expected number of tech jobs lost in 2003 should be about 234,000, though an official report has not been released yet.

The number of tech jobs in the United States is expected to decrease over the next 15 years, with as many as 3.3 million jobs going overseas, according to a Forrester Research Report.

Angotti said two or three years ago, he had students graduating with several jobs already offered to them. It does not happen anymore, he said.

However, Angotti said the state of high-tech jobs still is comparable to that of other fields.

“Unemployment for computer science graduates is at about 5.9 percent, which is still fairly low,” Angotti said. “There just is not the same number of jobs available. We had about 900 students two or three years ago. We are down to about 600 now.”

Most students coming out of NIU’s computer science program seem to be faring well, Angotti said. He said NIU has a unique technical software development program, which uses all the major computing platforms in business.

“Most computer science departments do not do education on IBM mainframes,” he said. “The universities abandoned it, and there is still a market for it. Companies have come in from California to talk with our students.”