Ivory tower vs real world

Matthew Lee, associate dean, faculty of business at City University Hong Kong, agreed that local university curricula are conservative and research-focused. While tertiary education focuses on the technical aspect of IT, most employers are looking for IT graduates to support their businesses.

"Hong Kong is an application market, rather than a development market," he said. "Unfortunately, science and engineering graduates with business knowledge are rare."

But universities also have their concerns, said Lee. "Research remains a core part for any university," he said. "We are not a vocational training school and research projects are important to uphold our academic rankings."

Stagg said network administration also has lots of research opportunities. The potential lies particularly in the area for building high-end switches, firewalls or unified threat management devices.