Educational needs and expectations of students, related to work as an IT specialist in Poland

The main objective of this article is to present the preferences and expectations of students related to taking up a job of an IT specialist in the future. At the beginning of this paper, the authors presented a brief review of Polish labour market pertaining to the area of business information systems. Next, the authors analysed the students’ perception of the current situation and market conditions in which IT specialists operate as well as development trends in the context of challenges, hopes and concerns connected with performing an IT-related job. Additionally, barriers and conditions affecting the decision to choose this particular profession were considered. The authors have also discussed the shortcomings of higher education in this regard and the ways to overcome them in helping students successfully work in the position of IT specialists in the future. The study has been conducted with the application of a CAWI method among the students of selected, leading economic universities in Poland. A survey questionnaire was made available to the respondents at the servers of the Faculty of Management at the University of Warsaw. The authors discussed the obtained findings and have drawn synthetic conclusions which concerned particular aspects of the conducted research. They formulated recommendations regarding the educational offer for the students of selected economic universities interested in working as IT specialists. The limitations of the study as well as the directions for future work in this field are also described.