And that attitude is why so many people are put off teaching. How are we supposed to get really good developers, analysts, technical leads and so on if there is this attitude towards teaching?

In a similar vein - and I know this will be like a dagger to the heart - what about considering retraining as management; if the problem you have faced is that management are "technically illiterate", surely you can see there is a need for more technically-able staff (if they are capable of the leap) to move into management?

Obviously, there are risks that:
        - you will quickly lose sight of the technical issues (and become "one of 'them'")
        - that you'll stink at management; it's easy to be a bad manager, but it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to be competent let alone good
        - (worst of all) you'll be a bad manager /and/ you'll lose your technical understanding

If nothing else, it would give you an appreciation of a different aspect of the industry.

I speak from experience. I took the leap a few years ago after a similar amount of time working my way up the technical ladder. It's been very hard work and it requires a lot of commitment. While I won't say I regret the move, I will say that I miss some of the things I've given up, not least the camaraderie that exists within development teams, but which you tend to see turned against management whenever issues arise.

I'd like to think, however, that my teams appreciate the fact that I actually understand the issues - not least because I have kept reasonably up to date with the technology in my own time (another sacrifice). Of course, what they appreciate less is the fact that they find it much harder to blind me with technobabble than they would a parachuted-in MBA. ;-)

Having taught CS (and non-CS) Undergraduates I have to say that you should teach Fortran...or Python. They should be taught some data representation, basic algorithmic design and how that might be used to develop programs. If you teach them a language, you're almost always starting from the wrong point. At least, that's my experience.

Because being (a type of) plumber or electrician is a well-defined job which is relatively easily judged in an objective manner. At the end of your apprenticeship, you're either a good plumber or a bad plumber. You know your skills, the ordinances and regulations for your area or you don't. IT is a totally different situation.

IT is immature and continually changing. I have worked in IT for 15 years having graduated with a Computer Science degree. I started as an analyst programmer, did almost every IT/IS related job and now am a middle-ranking IT Manager (though I still get my hands dirty daily, thankfully).

A good apprenticeship should be good enough in theory, but it's very dependent on area and the quality of the person who supervised. Choose too narrow an area and the "apprenticeship" is valueless within a year or two. And that's what I've seen more than anything - particularly with people who commit to a small area and can't seem to move on. Whole companies who are stuck with one OS/technology/language/whatever because their sysadmins or other technical staff have apprenticed in one environment and have no interest in retraining. And it's not only the staff's fault - IT Managers often don't see their own obligations in keeping their staff training. Whether you're using Windows or Linux or something more exotic, very little hasn't changed in the last 5 let alone 10 years, yet I know of IT staff who have barely picked up a book in that sort of timeframe.

Not that having a degree guarantees they'll fare any better, but choosing someone with a good degree and the right attitude hopefully gives you someone with transferable skills and the ability to move from one job requirement to the next.

That said, I have (and will) employ staff without a degree. Right now, my staff is made up of a mix where (at one extreme) I have someone with four degrees (B.A., M.A., M.Sc., Ph.D.) and at the other several staff who left school at 16 and worked their way up. Degrees tell you relatively little about what the candidate knows (Universities have totally different syllabi), but should tell you that they are capable of learning. Frankly, it comes down to what you can prove (whether from references/experience or from the interview/testing).

As others have said, though: when you're competing with applicants that have all the same references, experience and so on, who come across the same way in an interview (and there are a lot of IT workers looking for work right now), the degree(s) might be the deciding factor.