@IRJ said in Self Taught vs. Bootcamp vs College Video from Joshua Fluke:

@EddieJennings said in Self Taught vs. Bootcamp vs College Video from Joshua Fluke:

@scottalanmiller Imagine an IT Generalist bootcamp 😛

IT generalist is the bootcamp 😉

More like the war.

@Obsolesce said in A Fundamental Shift in University Thinking Since 2008:

@scottalanmiller said in A Fundamental Shift in University Thinking Since 2008:

But fundamentally, it appears that students don't understand what college is for

So, then, what is your opinion of what college is for... or should be for?

It's always been, and colleges have long pushed this, that it was for exposure, broadening how you think... it was for those with enough money that they didn't have to work right away but could afford time off to explore things that interested them or make them more interesting. It was never for getting a job, or getting ahead in a job. That people think that it is for that is an extremely recent thing (like definitely since I was in college.) Even in the last fifteen years major colleges have made statements that they are not there for those purposes.

The idea that college is for getting a job is weird, people have started confusing trade schools (those that teach "a job") with universities (those that teach liberally) and in the last two decades, very quickly, people think that traditional colleges are actually trade schools and try to treat them that way. But while expectations have changed, the colleges have not (and should not.) But this leads to the huge amount of lower income, lifetimes of debt, dissatisfaction with college results, etc. that we see today.

Colleges have no system for preparing people for real world jobs. The entire tenure system guarantees that that is impossible - colleges simply can't have a staff capable of doing that kind of education. The design of the university system is for other purposes, and universities have generally been crystal clear about that, it's not hidden or secret or new... this is hundreds of years of this.

That's why the number of people going to university in the past was so small, it was really only for the elite because normal people needed to work and pay the bills.

@tim_g said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@irj said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 So this is one of those get certified while getting a degree schools like WGU?

Yes and no. I don't think my college is going to start employing "course facilitators" instead of professors, and simply point students to the material and expect them to grind through it. On the other hand, as a 2 year college we're not diving too deep into theory and abstracted concepts because of the time scale we're at. Does that clarify it? I do know one of our graduates is doing the WGU thing right now as part of a BS and is getting their MCSA as part of it. Personally, I think we use the certs as external validation that we're staying relevant, but when I see the A+ and other certs not keeping up (the latest A+ cert finally eliminated floppy drive questions!) I worry we're slipping behind as well.

Certs are not in any way a validation that you are relevant and certainly not ones that are not even in the right field. Certs have a place, a good one, but they are VENDOR TOOLS, not industry ones. It's not appropriate to be using them in an academic setting in any way unless, as you had originally stated, using them as a guide to the "level" of knowledge, but never as a guide to the actual knowledge.

How do you teach IT or Systems Administration without teaching students about any technologies they would be using on the job? You can't administer a System (which is from a vendor) if you don't know anything about it.

So if a course wants to teach Linux or Windows Server administration... Well surely covering many of the things the "vendor tool" covers is a great start... Competencies, measured skills, etc.

Well the first thing is that a course in college should not be teaching Linux or Windows administration, that's a trade school's job. They should be teaching concepts of administration. Now, that said, they need operating systems to use for that. But teaching concepts instead of specifics is the core concept of academic work and is very different than teaching to a vendor cert.

Remember collegiate academic work isn't for the purpose of teaching on the job skills, but to teach someone the fundamentals and concepts so that those specific skills will make sense. You aren't teaching them which button to push, but why a button like it needs to be pushed.

Example... you don't learn details of NTFS and ReFS, but you do learn file system concepts so that when someone tells you the details of NTFS and ReFS you can immediately understand them and understand other IT concepts when the market changes.

This is a problem I see with most college grads. Instead of learning IT concepts, they just memorize the motions to go through to accomplish a task. They are only trained to follow a script, they don't understand why they do things or what they do means.

@crustachio said in The Most Needed Skills in IT:

I enjoyed this section of the article:

The second big skill needed in IT departments today is an understanding of business – both business in general and the business referring to the specific business of their own organization. As I said at the beginning of this article, IT is a business enabler. If IT professionals do not understand how IT relates to their business they will be poorly positioned to valuate IT needs and make recommendations in the context of the business. Everything that IT does it does for the business, not for technology and not for its own purposes.

With that in mind, what are some recommendations to improve one's business acumen from an IT perspective?

Hypothetical scenario: Someone has worked at a small IT shop for years and is a comfortable sysadmin, but is considering an IT administrative position at a much more "corporate" environment. Their role will involve a lot more interfacing with other departments or agencies, as well as driving "big picture" projects and purchasing decisions.

What resources could they use to improve their understanding of how to fit in in the business realm, and to develop the proper understanding of IT in such an environment? Are there any particularly good books on this subject?

This is an area where university classes can be really beneficial, if you have access to the right ones. Classes on communications, business, accounting, psychology and such can be huge. There are three main areas that I can think of that really matter:

Understanding people Understanding communications Understanding business

And you might add on the more specific "understanding THE business" as well.

The more that you have any of these, the easier things get. Even if you are a great communicator, if you don't understand the business and its needs at all, you won't have much to communicate.

I don't know of any specific books around this. Maybe things like Open University or something would have resources.

Looks like Harvard has followed suit and is blindly following Stanford into moving their CS program closer and closer to just being relabeled software engineering.

@scottalanmiller said in Legitimate University Programs Are Not Certification Training:

@FiyaFly said in Legitimate University Programs Are Not Certification Training:

@Dashrender said in Legitimate University Programs Are Not Certification Training:

You don't think learning programming in college is possible/worthwhile?

Possible? Very. I got my start with Python from a college course. Worthwhile? Not so much. The amount of debt you accrue due to these courses is just not worth it to me. Yes, I got my start with Python from college. VB.NET? Javascript? C#? All of those, I developed on my own time. Free. When you're talking what you learn from the course compared to the price, I see no justification in it, and especially if you're talking about getting a degree.

You shoudl be able to learn an entire college course in 2-3 days on your own for free, or for the cost of a book.

A whole 2-3 days? You must be feeling generous today. I tried taking a single course about 10 years ago which finally polished off whatever trust I had ever had in "the system".

@Joy said in This Is Who Is Teaching College:

After i finished my BS, I'd like to become an IT Educator .

Often you need at least an MS for that, at least in the US.

Very helpful.
Thank you for sharing.

@thecreativeone91 said:

It's bigger than us if you count just the Subsidiary I work for at a big under 10k employees. But with our cooperate company, and the other subsidiaries we are way way bigger. Granted we are #2 in our industry.

You know someone isn't too big when you are comparing them to the subsidiaries of other companies 🙂