Abstract:
Higher educational institutions are the factory for producing skilled human resources in all
knowledge areas and disciplines over the globe. Ethiopian Higher Education Institutions,
particularly public universities in Ethiopia are in charge of creating skilled human power to all
disciplines across the country with the standard baseline for minimum skills required in the
market for all kind of disciplines. Graduating proficiency are serious and need to be achieved
effectively to sustain the development of the country especially Information Technology
department graduated human resources with their expected skill in the market and industry.
Major aim of this research is thus to design a curriculum framework that helps curriculum
implementation to analyze the skills required to bridge the gap between the skills needed by the
industries and market of Information Technology graduated students and the actual students’
academic program (Curriculum) at higher educational institutions to cope with the Information
Technology graduates to qualify the countries information technology careers. To come across
those phenomena, the proposed research uses survey- based research design to explore the gap
by investigating the banking and telecom industries’ skills requirements, knowledge needs and
the existing curriculum of Information Technology at three selected Ethiopian Ethiopian Higher
Education Institutions specifically Jimma University, Wolayta Soda and Wochamo Universities
and design a framework that mitigates the skill gaps. The study finding(72.7% of respondents)
showed that various challenges, factors that regulated and related to learning-system, learner
factors, lecturer factors and technological factors, for Information Technology department
graduates skills and industries’ Information Technology skill requirement play a role in
Information Technology department graduate skill. Information Technology department
graduates’ skill and the hiring companies’ skill requirements have a direct relationship in a
working environment. Further studies should be conducted on other computing faculty
departments for both graduated and undergraduate and other hiring companies’ skill
requirement
