Businesses and the public sector are on the hunt for ITS Academy graduates

Businesses and the public sector are literally ‘hungry’ for ITS Academy graduates. Between now and 2035 – that is, in 10 years’ time – demand will rise to 143,000 ‘senior technicians’ a year. Supply, although boosted by the new 4+2 training programme, will remain at around 17,500 graduates a year. The result: there are more than 11 job opportunities for every ITS Academy graduate.

The issue is not the quality of the higher technical education system: the average employment rate 12 months after graduation is 80 per cent, with figures exceeding 90 per cent in many regions, and a 93 per cent match between employment and the training received (source: Indire). There is a problem of scale and geography. For this reason, the challenge for the coming decade – setting aside post-PNRR funding (an issue to be decided in the budget, ed.) – ‘will be to direct the growth of the ITS system towards sectors and regions where the demand for qualified technical professionals will be greatest’. This is the message conveyed by the study ‘Training the technicians of the future. The training provision of the ITS system and labour demand’, produced by the EY Foundation and EY, in collaboration with the ITS Italy Network (chaired by Guido Torrielli), which is being presented today in Rome to Minister Giuseppe Valditara, alongside institutions and businesses (including Riccardo Di Stefano, Confindustria’s Vice-President for Education and Open Innovation), who have always been key partners of the ITS Academies. As demonstrated by the innovative pilot programme ‘Microsoft AI Architect & Agentic Developer’, developed with ITS Academy Lazio Digital, together with the EY Foundation and Microsoft; a concrete example of training design focused on emerging technologies and new professional requirements.

“The current output of the ITS system has a well-known limitation in terms of scale, but also a limitation in terms of alignment with the demand from different sectors and production locations. The expansion of ITS provision should focus first and foremost on areas that are currently underserved and on skill profiles that are not yet sufficiently represented in training programmes,” emphasised Carlo Chiattelli, People Consulting Leader at EY Italia. This does not only concern clusters of the most advanced technological skills, in sectors such as ICT: content relating to cyber security is included in the programmes attended by 31 per cent of students; those on artificial intelligence by 24 per cent (a further 37 per cent in programmes covering related skills in data and automation), and those on digital twins and predictive maintenance by 17 per cent. Coverage is much more limited in sectors that account for a large part of future labour demand: Smart Homes, Mechatronics and Energy. There is also a need for future planning that is more closely aligned with regional needs, given that many supply chains span multiple regions and can be supported by a network of coordinated foundations.”

The study, which has mapped 74 foundations spread across 15 regions, offers a number of insights. Firstly, the growth in demand for ITS graduates: the most significant increases will be seen among ICT professionals (+27.9 per cent) and those in economics and administration (+21.7 per cent), followed by scientific and engineering professionals (+13.0 per cent) and scientific and engineering technicians (+10.0 per cent).

The real driving force behind this upward trend will be generational renewal. Between 2026 and 2030, in fact, 91–93 per cent of vacancies will result from replacing those leaving the workforce; by 2035, this figure will remain above 88 per cent. No ITS course should therefore be closed simply because the sector is not growing. Rather, there is an issue of alignment with regional needs. The study refers to an alignment index between training provision and the productive structure, which stands at 78 per cent nationally. However, this percentage falls to 62.9 per cent when analysed on a region-by-region basis. A significant proportion of training capacity is not located in the regions where the industrial sectors are strongest. We must therefore aim for greater collaboration between regions. Where inter-regional catchment areas are considered, the alignment index rises to 70.4 per cent.