Are you looking for cheap software developers and testers but you don't want to exacerbate the country's jobless recovery by sending more work to India or China? Then look no further than Minnesota. 

An IT consulting firm, Maverick Software Consulting, is working with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities to pair computer science students with U.S. corporations in need of software development and testing. The students work at offices on their campus or nearby, and they charge a lot less than their already-graduated counter-parts.

I haven't yet talked with anyone using the program, so I'm not endorsing it, but it appears to have good potential as an alternative to sending development and testing work overseas. The jobless recovery may not be hurting a lot of large enterprises right now (in fact, it's helping a few make their quarterly earnings look extremely good), but prolonged high unemployment will only result in unfortunate consequences for all aspects of society in the not-so-distant future. If turning to student programs like this one can result in affordable development and testing domestically, it's worth considering.   

Putting U.S.-based students to work may offer a solution to another, more specific IT problem linked to rampant offshoring: Succession planning. 

Many CIOs looking at the IT pros starting to come up through the ranks are beginning to worry: How are these individuals going to gain the training and experience needed to lead IT organizations down the road? Historically, you generally had to know something about programming and testing before moving on to IT management, but with so many services being done thousands of miles away, younger workers increasingly may end up with little hands-on experience.   

There could be downsides to this kind of program, I suppose. These are students, after all, so by definition they have relatively little experience and haven't had their professional skills tested. The flip side of that coin, though, is that they tend to have an excess of enthusiasm (not to mention energy).

The initiative is looking for more companies interested in employing low-cost student workers. If you look into it, let me know how it goes. - Caron