Training & game courses

I was talking to a games journalist friend of mine the other day and he dropped an astounding set of statistics on me.

The UK produces 1500 games design graduates every year.
There are currently 7500 students in tuition.
The games industry in the uk has about 150 new positions a year.

Now I’m not sure how accurate these figures are but they certainly put this whole debate in a new light if accurate.

In each case is that games design specifically or games development in general.

And are those new jobs or entry level positions he’s putting at 150 a year? 150 seems like quite a low figure unless you’re talking specifically about design only when it would seem a little high.

Or indeed entry level games design for which 150 seems to be a massive number compared to what I would have expected.

sounds like a kinda small number considering the vastly larger games industry in the UK (scotland esp) to Ireland and considering the jobs that pop up even on this site. It doesn’t stack up.

150 top profile positions, in ireland.. sounds more plausable

Those are all game design positions apparently. And the 150 new positions a year would be the growth number of design positions a year if I understood him correctly.

I’ll send him a mail and see if I can get some clarification on that.

Ok so those figures were slightly out. And they are rough figures according to the report.

1585 games related graduates in 08/09 mostly programming and design related.
7145 still studying on these courses.
130-230 new graduates required by the industry in 08/09 (down from an expected number of 450 for 2010)

Average employment rates for graduates is 12.2%. Design suffers quite a bit with only 8.8% of graduates finding work within 6 months of graduation.

30% of design students said the assessment standards on their course were too low. 42% said their game design course lacked industry relevant skills.

So currently academic institutions are supplying 300% of the industries needs in GRADUATES. So that’s people who successfully complete the course.

Sadly the main thrust of the report is saying that despite the huge number of graduates, studios have difficulty finding graduates with the necessary skills.

Here’s the report it came from:
http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/NextGenv32.pdf
jump to page 49 for the above figures.

This report is UK specific. It would be interesting to see a similar Irish one conducted.