Tech Training Schools Going Bust 651
superflippy writes "The Associated Press reports that many tech training schools which opened during the last few years are now shutting their doors. During the dot-com boom, there was the perception that a few months of computer training could lead to a fabulous job. Now, it seems all these schools have produced are unemployed people with student loans and dubious certifications."
Too many of them (Score:5, Informative)
Outsourcing to India
Cheap College Grads (Although there are too many here also)
Experienced (more expensive) College Grads
And *maybe* a few scraps left over grads of these half ass tech schools
There is still definitely a place for a few of these schools for people wanting to add a skill or become more advanced in a skill, but the days of taking an 8 week course and then finding a tech job are over. I actually know a couple of people that went to these type schools 5 years ago and now have great tech jobs.
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Insightful)
certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but certs mean little nowadays. People on the NANOG list, SF lists, IPSlists they all argue this. Companies who hire strictly on certs should be ashamed of themselves. Now I'm not saying all cert holders are stupid, hell many know their stuff inside out, but studying for an exam is not equivalent to knowing your stuff.
How many people have come across someone on a mailing list asking for help for typical stuff all the while their attachment has their proudly pimped status written on it... CCNA, CCDP, CISSP. I've seen them all, and I've seen one too many times big corporations with clueless rejects administrating their networks:
I don't mean to pick on this one person, I know too many times I see the same stuff over and over, and wonder how the hell could companies hire clueless people. I remember I worked for a company who if you sent a resume in with your newly acquired MSCE cert staus you met Mr. Shredder. I also remember meeting three people who supposedly had CCNA's only to find out they were forgeries and the company I was working for never checked them. So again, from my perspective certs mean you have the capability to read and grasp something, but admining something at 4:00am is a different story altogether.Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell,more than half the MSCEs I've worked with don't know HTML from Cobol. And these guys were "educated" here in the US. So what's your point?
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
When I finally managed to extricate myself from the nightmarish (EVIL coworker) government job, I couldn't find ANYTHING outside of a couple weeks here & there. I finally decided to just say screw it and retire from the field when a recruiter told me that they are taking resumes with MCSE cert & no CS degree and shredding them.
I experimentally tried out my pre-MCSE resume on a couple of employers, and got near-immediate hits.
I'm not saying this is the case now, and might not have been anything but a fluke then, but I still think it's weird.
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:3, Interesting)
when i was 20 years old, studying informatics at a university, i have found my first real job
i have got a chance to work on real things, and see my algorithms being used by real people, not just producing some useless results to satisfy a lector
i have decided to follow this chance, quit university and i was working for cca one year with a lower salary then i could get if i would finish university (3 years later
after one year, i have been known
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Univerities are not traditional trade schools, and decent trade schools aren't anymore either. They don't take the approach of showing you how to hold the tool and how to twist it to produce part #637. When the design changes your knowlege is now worth very little. Universities try to teach understanding, how to apply your knowlege on slight variations, where to go to get more knowlege, and the shocking fact that precisely what you are trying to do may not have been done by anyone before, so you can't look it up and need to find distantly related information.
As an example, some time back I used to run lab sessions in materials science for engineering students, and every few weeks there would be an electrical engineering student who would ask why he had to learn all this boring strength of materials stuff. An answer I frequently gave is that people sit on mobile phones, so the designer has to consider that. You can't always afford to go running off to someone else for little things like that. You have to have some sort of clue if you want to look up the information on how to design the case and internals of the phone to cope with that, which means knowing a lot of boring little details about how things break, many of which will never be on the exam but may ultimately be useful. You won't have time in ten years time to read that textbook from cover to cover, but some vague half remebered details may be enough so that you'll know what to look up.
The object of the course/certification is not to get a pretty peice of paper, or even just to be able to pass the exam, but to get some understanding that you can apply. The pretty piece of paper is just a symbol of that knowlege, and the last time I had to actually show somone the degree was five jobs ago. Even in a fairly widely removed field that knowlege still applies for me, I still need to know about sound propagation through complex solids, heat transfer, and some material science, even though I just keep the computers running for a bunch of geophysicists . It's a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff, but it's surprising what sort of things are relevant. Knowing all sorts of spurious facts makes it a lot easier to put the brushwork into that "big picture", knowing where to go in the menu is not going to help if the user interface changes radically.
Sometimes we don't have the luxury of the time to learn new skills, which is why the exams try to find what skills/knowlege you have. Whether it does it well or not is another story. We all know office people who need hours of retraining every time a new version of Word or Microsoft OS comes out since they are too lazy to consider things from any other perspective other than getting the current task done - it's worth considering an extreme like that, and considering how much furthur you want to go (technically) than those people.Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
You're turning this into a black and white issue.
The first part of your statement is that certs are essentially useless. The second part of the statement is that the consensus is that people who hire based ONLY on certs are foolish. The second statement does NOT support the first!
It supports the statement "Certs are not, on their own, a good measure of someone's capabilities" which seems a fair statement to me. But to jump from their to "Certs are toiletpaper" seems pretty silly.
Note that this is coming from someone with a degree and no certs, with no real personal interest in defending them.
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Oops....
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
What gave you the impression that the guy you singled out was misrepresenting himself as some sort of uber-geek, as you make yourself out to be?
From what I can tell the only things you can ascertain from his email are that he works at a company (ok), and doesn't understand how some aspects of the system he's using work.
So? Shredding someone's resume because they got an MCSE is pretty ignorant I might add anyway. Why not shred it if they have a Mexican sounding name, after all.. are Mexicans known for their outstanding tech skills? It would be equally asinine. I know plenty of people who have MCSE's and countless other certs who did it just based on the thinking that "Hey, it's probably better than not having them."
This elitist attitude is pretty sickening. And it usually comes from people who themselves don't have any experience working in a large tech company. Sort of like the armchair quarterbacks shouting things like "Oh man, I could do that! Geez, this guy doesn't know anything." But not stepping up to do it themselves.
And by the way, I don't have an MCSE, or any real certifications for that matter. I don't even have a high school diploma, and that's never kept me out of work.
Re:certifications mean nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
Count me among the MCSE-shredders.
I have observed a strong correlation between trumpeting MCSE and being a totally ignorant useless waste of skin, at least at the keyboard.
I have not observed that same correlation with Mexican last names (e.g., de Icaza).
YMMV. There is no need to remind me that there are exceptions; I believe you. When I have 1000 resumes to sift through, a quick filter like that is helpful. No way all 1000 are going to get a full read.
sunmanagers.. beh (Score:5, Funny)
Being out of work, I am very tempted to start isolating these morons, and sending off some mail to their company explaining how they have a moron working for them (and I would be a better choice). Hmm.. I have some time on my hands right now...
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Funny)
~Berj
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Funny)
had an intern once, getting his mcse (Score:5, Funny)
Deer in headlights.
Ok. Hit the start button and go to control panel.
More bambi.
O.k....lower left corner. Left-click...
I am not making this up. It's possible the guy went into cranial vapor lock under pressure, but even in brainlock you should be able to find the control panel. Or at least the start button.
Nice guy, good attitude, might be some aptitude, but the thought that he was going to get hired as an admin somewhere after his internship was weird.
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the some of therequirements [microsoft.com]. it says things like "Create and Manage user accounts."
It doesn't say "be super-duper geek computer god with 133t slashdot powers"
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Informative)
He wasn't a Comp Sci. major because he liked coding, that's for sure.
I call bullshit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I call bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
I just defined AC
Re:I call bullshit (Score:5, Funny)
There's nothing worse than being partially killed.
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Insightful)
Its usually a horrible situation with tech grads that do not have a firm background in computers... You usually have to break them and completely retrain them and show them how to utilize their knowledge they obtained in school...
But there are many many different shades of bad techs out there.. and as of late more of them are becoming fluent in linux and can get by alot of questions in that area and still be dangerous... But the "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" approach is allways a sure sign of a tech you shouldn't hire unless you have time and resources to retrain them if their personality isn't resistant to it.
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Informative)
I've been teaching at one of them schools for almost 4 years; and you wouldn't believe how hard it is to fail anyone (or to suggest they should seek another major, or [as I usually like to tell students] to switch schools - I also teach in a real college).
On one occation, the `director' actually changed my final grades! (yep, plainly edited the final roster).
I've heard stories of instructors being fired for what amounts to IMHO `telling the truth' to the students.
These schools are evil money sucking machines that pray on the mistery of others and screw up the lives of just about every student they come across (recruit already messed up folks [many not even high school grads], promise lots of stuff, leave them with TONS of loans). I really hate that school (on moral grounds), but hey, work is work, and I'd rather be employed than not.
Oh, yeah, and I wish they'd go under! I've been wishing for that since the first few weeks of me working there.
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Insightful)
Opening up a machine is not part of Computer Science. You might as well criticize Political Science majors for not holding public office.
Amen.
Re:Too many of them (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll also never have much of a job in IT. I have a rudimentary ATM155 network at home, not to mention all sorts of other L1's. Hell, I'm even building my own internet of sorts. I can do everything from the chip level up to relational databases...
And I'll never be more than a grunt. It's painful being a loser. Some days more than others.
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too many of them (Score:5, Insightful)
You had to say that didn't you? Can't be just out- sourcing in general. Do you know how many "tech" centrers and "universities" and "institutes" were started in India? probably more that it was started here in the US. and after the dot-com bubble burst probably 60 to 70 % of them went belly up. US in not alone in this situation.
well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
seems downright enviable from my position with four years worth of loans.
Re:well.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The problem for students like Milla Muller, 25, is that they sign legal contracts to pay back loans, no matter how bad a school turns out to be. Muller's efforts to get her $7,500 loan from Sallie Mae Financial forgiven have been unsuccessful.
Muller was one of about 150 students enrolled at Xintra Institute of Technology in Quincy, Mass. The school was stripped of its license in April for failure to comply with state regulations. It filed for bankruptcy in August, without giving students any notice.
"Sallie Mae has absolutely no recourse for this at all," said Muller, who now pays $189 a month for classes she didn't take."
I'm guessing a lot of people don't have the cash reserves to simply pay off the outstanding balance when it became clear that the school wouldn't be around for four years. So they are paying a four-year loan.
Re:well.... (Score:4, Informative)
Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Must be willing to relocate to Bangalore.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
"40,000 new IT jobs are opening up every year!* Train now for a rewarding career!"
.
.
*worldwide
Re:Good! (Score:5, Insightful)
So true. Here in the Washington DC area there's a radio ad to the effect of "Sign up for Cisco and Microsoft training! Get the pay and respect you deserve!"
I'm not sure which is more implausible - the idea that the world owes me more money or the idea that Cisco and Microsoft are more or less the same company.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
the idea that Cisco and Microsoft are more or less the same company.
Its all planned out. In 2009 we take over Cisco so that we can embrace and expand the internet better. By 2017, we will have assim^H^H^H^H^Hembraced every company in America. In 2023 all the Armed forces
automated, Windows-enhanced will automatically hunt down anything with a Penguin* on it. Finally in 2029 we get tired of paying off policians cutting into profits, so we buy the US Government.
- Bill Gates
* We also initially planned to destroy stuff with a Demon on it, but Bush is going to declare BSD-hackers evil-doers in 2006.
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
From what I've seen, most people with Microsoft Certifications (who are un^H^Hemployed) *are* getting the pay and respect they deserve!
Re:Good! (Score:5, Funny)
Serves them right. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serves them right. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like Graduate School. I'd receive a "B" just for showing up.
Re:Serves them right. (Score:4, Informative)
Perception? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perception? How soon we forget - that actually happened. It happened all over silicon valley.
We'll have another unsustainable tech boom as soon as everyone forgets those mistakes entirely.
Re:Perception? (Score:5, Funny)
No?
Well, how about this brand spanking new religious philosophy channeled to me by a wise, old Atlantean that I found in the library?
Hmmmmmmmm, tough customer.
One word. Plastics.
I think Santayana had something to say about this. Wish I could remember what it was.
KFG
Re:Perception? (Score:5, Insightful)
2004: We're going to replace your position with someone in Bangalore who dropped out of tech school...
The job outlook for high-tech professionals is bad (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The job outlook for high-tech professionals is (Score:5, Funny)
We're a start up anticipating developing a product and being bought out by Cisco, Microsoft, HP or someone else with deep pockets. We offer your choice of stock options by the roll: White Cloud or Charmin.
Re:The job outlook for high-tech professionals is (Score:4, Funny)
The post talking about knowing frontpage and wanting an 80k a year salary, or the totally serious reply wanting to help.
Sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)
So, kind of like Microsoft?
[rimshot!]
Thanks, I'm here all week!
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)
Why is divorce so expensive? Because it's worth it.
What's the difference between a Harley and a Hoover? The position of the dirt bag.
What do you call a smart blond? A Golden Retriever.
What's the fastest way to a man's heart? Through his chest with a sharp knife.
Why is it so hard to for women to find men that are caring, sensitive and good-looking? Because those men already have boyfriends.
What's the difference between a porcupine and BMW? A porcupine has the pricks on the outside.
Why does Mike Tyson cry during sex? Mace will do that to you.
What does it mean when the flag at the Post Office is flying at half-mast? They're hiring.
What's the difference between a northern fairytale and a southern fairytale? A northern fairytale begins "Once upon a time..."; A southern fairytale begins "Y'All ain't gunna believe this shit..."
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:5, Funny)
Classic example: (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Kid does well, but doesn't really learn
3. Kid gets job $63,000/year
4. Kid has no idea what to do, but was able to talk his shit up.
5. Kid goes to teacher and begs him to help
6. Company pays teacher to do kids job $15,000
Cost to company $75,000
I know of this personally. Pretty annoying if you ask me. The kid actually still has his job too.
Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would never want to work anywhere around such people but there seems to be an abundance of those.
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:4, Insightful)
School: It's opposite day. (Score:4, Insightful)
And that is exactly why these schools are as successful as they are.
Or, is today opposite day?
Re:School: It's opposite day. (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee thats what I did wrong I gave 3 years of results to a company that not only made the company sucsessfull but very profitable. and I got nothing not even a paycheck. But then again I was fucking the owner.
Moral: Don't get involed with the owner
Re:School: It's opposite day. (Score:3, Informative)
Good thing....good thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good thing....good thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes me think of something a co-worker once talked about. This man, a native of India who is a highly skilled and extremely competent consultant, talked about how great the schools in India were. He insinuated that the tech schools in India focused on "real" tech education and didn't waste their time on courses like Philosophy, Religion, Sociology, etc.
I disagree with that. The best tech workers I know, don't just program, they know how to "think". Personally, I believe someone from a reputable college, where they were forced to take a few Russian History courses, is worth much, much more than someone that has only learned how to code C++.
As silly as my European Film course was in Undergrad, I think it helped me think beyond Java.
Re:Good thing....good thing.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And a lot of the coolest jobs (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now there is quite a bit of research being done on computers and language. We want to make them speak it, listen to it, but above all, to understand it. This is a difficult problem, more difficult than most people think. I'll ignore the speaking and hearing part and just talk about the understanding:
To understand a language, a computer must not just have a bunch of symbols in memory that make up the words, it needs to be able to perform operations on those such as to derive what it meant. Well that invloved three fields right there, CS, linguistics and philsohpy. The CS of course is the actual implementation of the algorithms. But what algorithms to implement?
Well that's where linguistics come in. You need to analyze natural language and figure out how it actually works. Try and write rules that dictate what is and is not a correct utterence, how different parts of speech are usedm etc. Also you need to produce a database of words, meanings, parts of speech and so on. A lot of this has been done.
So what about the philosophy? Well the thing is, current popular linguistic theory doesn't work right for language as humans use it. It describes literal, direct speech only. Well humans aren't like that, most of our meanings are at least aprtially context dependant and not entirely direct and literal. So language philosophers are working on trying to develop empirically testable theories for how humans actually communicate, and how the process the different kinds of communication with ease. The field is called Pragmatics.
But this adds yet another part to the study. It's all well and good that we come up with a nice theory that everything fits in, but does that have anything to do with reality? Do humans ACTUALLY process language in such a way and does it really adiquately describe communications? So we turn to psychological tests to try and verify or falsify theories of language. Only through emperical testing of actual humans can we figure out how this works.
Those theories then need to be studied in the context of the actual spoken language and have rules developed, and those rules then need to be implemented as algorithms in a computer.
And that's just the beginning.
Thing is, this ISN'T an insignificant field. All the big computer companies like MS and IBM would LOVE to be able to produce a computer that people could speak to naturally and it would do what they wanted. Then there are people like the NSA that are highly interested in have a computer that can analyze the content of intercepted communication and do a real good translation and breakdown of it.
It's a field where there is quite a bit of money to be made, and a whole lot of work that needs to be done. However, what it really needs is people that aren't just one trick dogs, that have studied some in ALL of those fields (and others) to be able to work on designing and coordinating experiements and statical analysis of language to try and actually get a working system off the ground. Not just someone who knows code and nothing but code.
As a side note, I'm not studying this to go in it, just because I think it's a neat interdiciplinary degree to get. I'm a computer support guy by profession.
Rightly So! These Schools are Crap! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rightly So! These Schools are Crap! (Score:5, Interesting)
What somebody needs to do is design a course that will actually teach you all you need to know. I wonder if a CS degree program at an actual acredited university does?.... anybody know?
Re:Rightly So! These Schools are Crap! (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not. If you are going into academia or scientific research or some similar field, then MAYBE a CS degree will teach you what you need to know.
But where do most techies end up? Programmer or network admin at a BUSINESS. Precisely where they are most destined to fail. Why does this happen, well, if you listen to the posts on slashdot, then you might infer that CS grads are unusually predispositioned to develop:
1. Arrogance about their chosen fields that causes them to think that the
Re:Rightly So! These Schools are Crap! (Score:5, Insightful)
A friend of a friend asked me to help him with a final project for one of his classes at ITT Tech. This was a project in ASP for an online bookstore. He was nearing completion of his associates degree in Web Design, and when I got there to show him things, he knew nothing at all. Not even HTML...
Amen. I work at a consulting company that does web hosting for some clients on the side. Every 2 months I get someone calling me up asking me to move their site over to the frontpage server at the request of their new web designer.
The "web designer" always has a go at making things work on the unix server, but they get stuck trying to do something trivial like a no-frills form mailer. On the phone I mention to them that they could do this with Javascript or a simple CGI program on the server end that I'd even set up for them. They then go on and describe to me in a very roundabout manner (so as to avoid embarrasing themselves at all costs) that they've never even heard of these things before, and they don't understand anything but frontpage. So I move their site over, at greater monthly expense to the client.
I thought the dot-com bust would have shaken these people out of the IT industry and into mcdonald's and walmart where they belong. I really hoped it would, but it hasn't. It seems that the people who are good at lying, bullshit and buzzwords and wear a nice suit are lasting longer than the people who can tell a div tag from their ass hole.
Shocking! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, no, I'm not really shocked :)
Disclaimer: several bachelor's and master's degrees work for me, as well as several no-degree people with strong skills, but as far as I know, no "certificates", which is the way I like it.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
CTO, Immunix Inc. [immunix.com]
Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a 'letterless' software engineer I find this to be pretty uncommon. This is incredibly frustrating to me because during the 6 months I was unemployed (Im pleased to say this is no longer the case) I was passed over by many-a-position that suited my skills perfected purely on the basis of my lack of a university education.
YMMV, judging by your sig you are obviously an educated man but when I think about the truely outstanding technical people I have worked with during my relatively short career so far I find that that majority were those without the education.
Im not sure exactly why this is, but my theory is that it is too easy to coast through a degree by 'going through the motions' and then use it to mean more than it is. Usually those without the degree had to demostrate a higher technical skill level before being considered.
I do however, take slight issue with your point about certificates. I have found some of these to be very worthwhile. I have certificates from Sun in their Java programmer, Java developer and Java web component developer qualifications and found them (particually the programmer) to be an excellent base-line skill test.
I have recommended to my current employer that all developers working on our software should either have the programmer certificate or be working towards it.
I dont attempt to leverage these certs too much on my CV but they are far from useless.
I dont think you should tar them all with the same brush.
Re:Shocking! (Score:4, Interesting)
Technologies come and go, and picking up a new one is just a matter of reading the manual. Concepts require hard-core education, and someone trained only in technologies often falls flat as soon as the technology falls out of vogue. Consider: how would you value someone with a resume that said they were familiar with Borland, DBase IV, and HTML?
Caveat: I am not saying that people who don't have degrees don't understand concepts. Rather, that the certificates focus on technology trivia, and thereofre you cannot tell whether the candidate knows the concepts or not.
Crispin
Re:You have degrees working for you. WOW! (Score:5, Informative)
As it should be. The mistake was hiring scientists when engineers were wanted.
A doctorate is a research degree. By definition.
You don't hire an architect to hammer nails, and if he applies you have to realize he's going to need training as a carpenter.
KFG
Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. These schools blow. (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, we spent 1 week learning Redhat where we installed the OS, Installed Samba, and FTP.
Then we spent 4 weeks (5 hours a day 5 days a week) learning how to write resumes and interview.
Somehow I feel like Linux is more important then what color my suit is for the interview. (blue vs. grey)
Lastly, they promised "Job Placement" - however, the only calls that the Graduating Security Class received were helpdesk positions.
My question is... if the Network Security class... the most esteemed program at the Chubb Institute is getting calls for Helpdesk positions... what positions are the helpdesk classes getting?
Janitorial?
Re:Amen. These schools blow. (Score:4, Interesting)
Lesson? You can't start at the top. Especially if you went to a trade school. Don't think you'll get hired right off the bat into a junior position. You have to work your way up. But the knowledge, and more specifically people networking you gather becomes priceless.
Re:Amen. These schools blow. (Score:5, Funny)
Brush up on your history, son.
Did anyone in IT mgmt WANT these grads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the smallest amount of real-world experience was far more useful than several months of training at these schools. Sure, they learned a few rote solutions, but I can teach those to a new recruit who shows a bit of intelligence in a short time.
In fact, for an entry-level position, give me a liberal arts grad with a bit of tech knowledge learned on their home computer, and I've got the makings of an excellent eomployee. People who can read, write and converse are better candiates than many of the "tech school" grads I ran into.
Frankly, I never felt these schools were worth anything, and if they are now closing, all the better.
Yep. (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, they were told by their rehab people that our three-month class would get them a nice 40K a year job, and they usually got really pissed when they found out otherwise.
8-year old MCSE (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:8-year old MCSE (Score:3, Funny)
Re:8-year old MCSE (Score:4, Informative)
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Education: Poorly Documented Return on Investment (Score:3, Interesting)
What are students paying for when they get degree X from school Y? And what are they really getting?
Tech Schools (Score:5, Insightful)
The military is based around taking people who know very little and teaching via tech schools. We do quite well. We can take someone with virtually no computer knowledge and turn them into a basic sysadmin in about 6 months. Within 2 years, the cream will rise and those are quite impressive. Of the rest, some will transfer to administrative (paperwork) jobs and be promoted. Others will get out and become a burden to AT&T or WorldCom. But the system DOES work.
The main difference between the military and the commercial world is that we actually care about our people. Where your company provides very little in the way of mentorship, I will nurture my people till they find their sweet spot. Some will learn from books I reccomend, others from college I allow them to attend during working hours. More still will need me to hold their hands and walk them through tasks until they catch on.
Most civilians see coworkers (you call them cow-orkers) as competition. That's why a lot of good sysadmins will never develop after their civilian tech schools.
You and your company may see on-the-job training as a waste. Well, you are missing out on a lot of good people. Instead of a college grad demanding $50k+, you could look to the sub-$20k market of tech-school grads. Give them some training. Promote those who deserve it, fire those who screw up.
Re:Tech Schools (Score:3, Insightful)
All this pompous "I have a degree. Nanna, nanna, booboo." stuff makes me sick. One of the best guys I ever worked with was a high-school dropout with 20 years of experience. *HE* knew where the bodies were buried.
Re:Tech Schools (Score:5, Informative)
There are some good tech schools and some bad ones. I went through AF programmer tech school in '89, and it was, IMHO, pretty much a waste of time. IIRC the 12 week course consisted of: 2 weeks intro to basic computing concepts (basically the OSI network model), 3 weeks of pseudocode, 4 weeks of Cobol, 2 weeks of assembly, and 1 week of ADA. As far as I can tell, the purpose of this "training" was to weed out the people who couldn't understand the basics like looping and control structures. My real training happened once I got to my permanent duty station, where I was fortunate enough to work with some *brilliant* people who taught me how to develop good software. (Thanks Capt. Block!)
In general I'd say you are right, there are probably more good tech schools than bad ones. Mine happened to suck. My cousin went through Navy nuclear power school and got a great hands-on education in basic electronics and applied physics. I had some friends who were F-15 crew chiefs who got a great education in aircraft mechanics, and dated a girl who was trained as an air traffic controller a year out of high school.
It's about Darn Time!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not Surprised (Score:3, Informative)
Tech Schools vs Geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the schools (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't teach talent (Score:5, Informative)
It should come as no surprise that the people who went for these courses are now getting burned. The schools were unscrupulous but then again so were the majority of their students. Both parties were trying to sell sows ears as silk purses.
Re:You can't teach talent (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but it stands to reason that someone who was willing to go through four years of college and get a degree in something technology-related had some passion for what they're studying.
Many if not most of the people going through these MCSE mills are only interested in making a lot of money, and don't care how.
~Philly
Self-Employed / Self-Taught (Score:5, Insightful)
When I managed a computer store and someone came in who was A+ certified, it was almost a strike against them. I found repeatedly that the technicians that were self-taught were far better at maintaining their skills in a rapidly changing environment.
I place zero value in any of these certifications.
Re:Self-Employed / Self-Taught (Score:3, Interesting)
Looks trollish, but I'll bite...
I am a GURU on the I.T. certification game. Certification and degrees have a place, just as experience has a place. Which do I consider the most important after 8 years of working in I.T.? I rank them 1- Experience, 2- Degrees, 3- Certifications. During the boom, one or two of these three was usually sufficient to get a job, sounds like you had EXPERIENCE, the most valuable of the three. Congratulations on your timing. Hell, I lucked out too with some well-timed moves
Ten years. (Score:5, Informative)
It also has very good advice for becoming an accomplished programmer.
Tech Skilz Mills not a good idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is anyone surprised that companies that advertise get rich quick schemes like this are going under? Dear trial lawyers - better sue quick because the IT certificate industry is going to die.
Glut of IT courses means market saturation (Score:5, Interesting)
It was interesting to watch as other post secondary institutes and even other departments at our institute jumped on the IT bandwagon. When I left the program in 2001, our institute was graduating close to 500 IT grads/year, not to mention the local University and College graduating an equal amount. Then there were the private schools were pumping out MSCEs and CNEs and now Cisco engineers.
The fact is that the market is saturated and the gravy train is over. Our school is hurting because we receive funding from the provincial government based on graduate's employment placement rate (for example: 93% employed after 6 months in their field of study). For the first time in 10 years, I've noticed that the placement rate description has changed from 6 months to 1 year and they've dropped the reference to "field of study" from the statistics. The IT programs are really hurting for enrollment also. People are wising up to the fact that it is difficult to get a job in IT with just a piece of paper.
corporate welfare (Score:4, Insightful)
These firms are run by people that have already made thier money, at significant taxpayer expense, and are now looking for another path to mooch of the corporate welfare system. The actual closing of the schools is insignificant, as the damage is already done.
Community Colleges (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow... all these posts and nobody mentions the many fine public community colleges!
Quality of courses and instructors varies widely--and with open admissions, I suppose many students may lack aptitude. But you have reasonable tuition rates, stability, and accountability. Not to mention accreditation.
I just started teaching Visual Basic programming (yeah, I know, I know...) at Cuyahoga Community College [cc.oh.us] in Cleveland. I feel a place like CCC is a pretty good alternative to for-profit private tech schools, although as a liberal-arts snob myself I am glad I attended a very competitive four-year private college [grinnell.edu].
As with anything else, there are good and bad community colleges. But I'm surprised nobody mentioned them as an option.
Re:Even the fancy certifications.... (Score:4, Interesting)
You said it yourself. The certifications are usually anything but fancy. Most of these courses depend on your ability to memorize things and take a test. I have read a couple of the certification books and it doesn't even get close to teaching you any basics regarding the subject. I gave up pretty quickly.
The sad part is that the acronyms are deemed very important. My company actually sent out an email a little while ago urging everyone to put their 'acronyms' (MCSE, CISSP etc.) in their signatures because it creates a very good impression and I am talking about a reputed company.
I have a couple of friends who did take these certification courses, managed to get through and are doing good. WHY? The certification gave them a foot in the door and it was their persistence and hard work after that. Anybody with the idea of going through these certifications assuming that its going to get them a steady job for their life without any more effort is probably misled.
My 0.02$
Re:Private vs. state institutions (Score:3, Insightful)