Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students
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Soft skills are very important. The ability to present information to users, to management - so many people working in IT can't do that or do that very poorly. Classes in presentation skills, sales, marketing and so forth would be valuable.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
The biggest focus should be business and liberal arts. I want to see students with accounting, psychology, economics, general business, writing, public speaking and similar training. I can teach the tech that I need, I have to no matter what.
Time to drop my 2 cents, haha. I can say from current personal experience, my degree is more like this. Although since I am an online student I don't see how they would effectively do hands on tech anyways. It may also be the fact that I am pursuing IT management which focuses more on the business side of things. I luckily had a bunch of prior credits from a previous degree that covered most of that and the liberal arts, which is saving me a bunch of money, but that's besides the point. I always saw a degree/education as a way to get a general knowledge base and the specifics for the job/career are learned by doing them in personal time or on the job training and such.
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@biglittle said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Although since I am an online student I don't see how they would effectively do hands on tech anyways.
There is essentially nothing in IT that requires or benefits from physical hands. While real IT people in the field often do use their hands, it's to do non-IT tasks for a moment in between real IT tasks simply because there isn't enough scale to warrant a bench or electrical resource. For example, physically setting up a desktop, plugging in cables, racking a server or adding a graphics card to a desktop. IT might be called on to do those things, but none are IT tasks and absolutely none of that should be in an IT education.
Everything in IT, even networking stuff, can be done virtually. And all the big vendors provide virtual lab environments of their own for you to learn on. And building your own or having a university provide them is trivial and they need to do this for their in person labs, too. So really, for IT, even online classes can be 100% as hands on as in person ones. Moreso when you consider the lack of need for wasting time commuting or whatever, more time for hands on.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
We talk a lot about the problems with university education today, especially how it related to the IT field. But in a more constructive vein, now that we have identified an issue, how do we actually begin to solve this? What should university be doing and offering for IT students to increase its value in real, tangible ways?
I didn't read any of the replies yet, but my first thought on this is it depends on what you want to expect to get out of a university IT degree. I think it should be universal things that help you form a solid base across all IT aspects, that will help you with any real IT role (not bench).
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
I think moving IT programs from CS/SE schools into being under a business school makes a lot of sense. IT is 80% business, 20% tech. Of course you need both, but universities are experts at teaching business and liberal arts, this is what they've done for hundreds and years and done well. Teaching tech is not in their traditional mandate and is something they have no historical track record for and little current capacity. Not only is the non-tech stuff dramatically more important, it's where universities have the most skill. Teaching too much tech makes universities almost certainly set up to fail while teaching something that isn't even very useful.
This was where my thoughts were leading as well, and what would have helped me the most.
I've self-educated myself (through labs/books/videos/work-experience) with all the tech (MCSEs, Linux certs, Vendor Tech, etc). I can do without that in college, and I think it is best to do it yourself anyways. As Scott said in another post somewhere, it shows dedication and real self-interest.
The real value is learning what to use, how to apply it to a business, and where it makes the most sense to use it... you know, business stuff.
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@travisdh1 said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
I think moving IT programs from CS/SE schools into being under a business school makes a lot of sense. IT is 80% business, 20% tech. Of course you need both, but universities are experts at teaching business and liberal arts, this is what they've done for hundreds and years and done well. Teaching tech is not in their traditional mandate and is something they have no historical track record for and little current capacity. Not only is the non-tech stuff dramatically more important, it's where universities have the most skill. Teaching too much tech makes universities almost certainly set up to fail while teaching something that isn't even very useful.
I completely agree. The business side of my education is what is really valuable today, while any tech things they taught me back then are so far out of date it's a bad joke.
Yup, 97.2% of the stuff I learned in tech school, I don't even use today.
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As others have mentioned, more IT-based math would be very beneficial. You can't go wrong there. Math is used everywhere, even if you're not dealing with numbers, the logic is needed.
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@tim_g said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
As others have mentioned, more IT-based math would be very beneficial. You can't go wrong there. Math is used everywhere, even if you're not dealing with numbers, the logic is needed.
I specifically use algebra, calc and stats in every day IT (and other) life.
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@tim_g said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
The real value is learning what to use, how to apply it to a business, and where it makes the most sense to use it... you know, business stuff.
Stuff you can easily learn outside of college too, but stuff that college is well positioned and experienced to teach. They've been teaching that stuff for a very long time and know how it works.
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@tim_g said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@travisdh1 said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
I think moving IT programs from CS/SE schools into being under a business school makes a lot of sense. IT is 80% business, 20% tech. Of course you need both, but universities are experts at teaching business and liberal arts, this is what they've done for hundreds and years and done well. Teaching tech is not in their traditional mandate and is something they have no historical track record for and little current capacity. Not only is the non-tech stuff dramatically more important, it's where universities have the most skill. Teaching too much tech makes universities almost certainly set up to fail while teaching something that isn't even very useful.
I completely agree. The business side of my education is what is really valuable today, while any tech things they taught me back then are so far out of date it's a bad joke.
Yup, 97.2% of the stuff I learned in tech school, I don't even use today.
That's how I feel every time.
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@scottalanmiller I get what your trying to say but at the same time I think your so far removed from this type of thing that you are not considering everything. I disagree that some of that physical stuff you mentioned is not IT. The reason being is that both level of my IT management are not very good at that and make poor business decisions in buying equipment because they also are so far removed from anything hands on they don't know how it works anymore. It may be fundamental yes but when its knowledge is critical for making IT decisions with vendors I think you also have to consider that IT too. For example, we continually spend massive amounts of money(at least for us) on keeping the latest and greatest processors in machines in our heavy users laptops and computers. They will not even consider using an SSD even though it is cheaper and users store everything on a netweork share anyway. If the SSd failed it is 25 min or less to reload their image and 5 min to walk there and map their network share again. Thats how I am told to do it. SSd would be a great speed increase over our 5400 and 7200 drives we have used for the past several years.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
The reason being is that both level of my IT management are not very good at that and make poor business decisions in buying equipment because they also are so far removed from anything hands on they don't know how it works anymore.
I think you are confusing my intention. When I say it is "not IT", I mean - it is simply not an IT function. In no way do I mean to imply that it is "below" IT. It's not fundamental or not-fundamental, it's simply "not an IT function." All kinds of things are not IT, it doesn't make them good or bad, just different job roles.
That there is poor decision making here is bad management, plain and simple. Having more technical knowledge does not improve business decision processes, that's a totally different thing. This is where univerisites should shine, in teaching better thinking and approaches to problem solving. Sadly, in the real world, it's where they tend to fail pretty hard often encouraging the worst thinking and decision making.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
For example, we continually spend massive amounts of money(at least for us) on keeping the latest and greatest processors in machines in our heavy users laptops and computers. They will not even consider using an SSD even though it is cheaper and users store everything on a netweork share anyway. If the SSd failed it is 25 min or less to reload their image and 5 min to walk there and map their network share again. Thats how I am told to do it. SSd would be a great speed increase over our 5400 and 7200 drives we have used for the past several years.
I appreciate the example, but am unclear why you feel it provides a counter argument to something that I said or implied. Maybe I'm just not clear which thing that I said that you are referencing.
To me, DELPOYING hard drives is bench work. Deciding which machines to buy is IT. Imaging them and managing the systems is IT. Keeping the hardware clean is bench.
I actually did my "What is IT" and "What is Bench" video today, but it is at the editors.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller I get what your trying to say but at the same time I think your so far removed from this type of thing ....
I've never understood this bit. No matter what topic I talk about, someone says I'm so far removed. For example, I spend too much time in the SMB that people in the enterprise often say I don't understand anything past twenty users. But people in the SMB often say that I spend so much time in the enterprise that I don't understand anything without a billion dollar budget.
What sort of thing do you feel that I'm removed from? I deal directly with decision making around system purchases, designing systems, purchasing systems, teaching companies how to purchases systems, managing systems, etc. daily. To me, this feels like stuff I'm deeply into all the time. But I'm sure there are many others that do it more, but "far removed" seems unlikely. And having done this since the 1980s, even when I'm not doing it in the last few days, things don't change really decade to decade. Things are pretty slow moving in IT, even though sometimes they feel hectic.
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
The reason being is that both level of my IT management are not very good at that and make poor business decisions in buying equipment because they also are so far removed from anything hands on they don't know how it works anymore. It may be fundamental yes but when its knowledge is critical for making IT decisions with vendors I think you also have to consider that IT too.
What I think the issue is here....
Is that I'm saying that working on these components physically is bench work. That's wearing static guard wrist straps, carefully seating chips, applying silver grease, assmebly the case, blowing the dust out with canned air, adding new memory cards and so forth. The work is bench.
Understanding the components and how they work is both bench and IT, it's shared, core knowledge. It's also essentially static, the knowledge as to "how it works" hasn't changed in decades (really, watch the 1983 middle school shows and they cover everything needed) and the decision making processes have not changed since the 1990s - how to look up the current prices vs. performance, evaluate needs, etc. have not changed.
Knowing the latest and greatest is useful to IT, but cannot be taught by classes. So university training or A+ certs are useless here, both teach historical but not useful current data. Knowing how to look up what is needed is just general adulting and not specific to any field. Knowing how this applies to business decision making is certainly IT. But knowledge for decision making around specing hardware is worlds different from learning how to assemble cases and seat chips. Compare an automotive engineer (designs cars) to an automotive tech (changes your oil.) Both work on cars, but the roles are totally discrete. IT and bench are like this.
Having bench knowledge does nothing for IT decision making. No amount of bench work or experience would fix the issues of not being up to date on IT info, not knowing how to look it up or when to look it up or how to capacity plan for the users' needs.
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@scottalanmiller Ok sorry for the delay. Why do you not consider bench work as IT?
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@jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
@scottalanmiller Ok sorry for the delay. Why do you not consider bench work as IT?
Well the video goes into it, but they are fundamentally different disciplines. One is a business discipline, IT delivers business solutions and only exists in the context of a business. Without business, there is no IT. IT is not about tech, but generally uses tech to provide business infrastructure.
Bench is pure tech, no business. It delivers technology as its deliverable and can function (and does) with no business at all.
Different skills, different thought processes, different training, different career options, different deliverables. They both interact a lot, they are both real careers, they are just different from each other is very core ways.
And bench knowledge doesn't help IT. No amount of knowing bench would, in your example, fix the problem that you mention. A bench tech would know which chip goes in which socket, how to install it, how much grease to use, etc.
I've been a bench tech, I'm certainly not knocking anyone. But I also know that working in bench didn't relate to my IT career and the skills did not cross over.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
Having more technical knowledge does not improve business decision processes, that's a totally different thing.
I am confused about what thing this is then because if the people who made the decisions had more technical knowledge then they would not make the decisions they do. Business decisions in IT need this technical knowledge to make good decisions for the business.
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No different than any two other "different" disciplines. Being an electrician and being in IT are totally different things, which I think most people understand. IT has no need to understand voltages, impedence, building codes and regulations, cable terminations, etc. None of that is IT, at all, not even close. But outsides often confuse them, just as some places confuse IT with plumbers (in the literal sense, I know people who have had this problem and the IT manager ended up plumbing sprinkler systems!)
One is not better or worse, it's just two different careers that do different things. If any of these fields were unionized, it would be a lot more apparent because there would be contractual separation that you couldn't casually cross. This often happens with electricians. If you do IT in a hospital, for example, that building CAT6 cables isn't IT in any way because really, really obvious.
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@scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:
To me, DELPOYING hard drives is bench work. Deciding which machines to buy is IT. Imaging them and managing the systems is IT. Keeping the hardware clean is bench.
I guess I should point out that you are the first person I have ever talked with that does not consider these things IT. To my friends who admins of some type, 1 director, and 1 vp from other places....if it affects IT directly , like bench work, then it is IT. So everyone is not on the same page as far as terms go I believe.
