On Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:42:38 -0500, Imbriale, Don <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Schools are like businesses - they will offer products and services that
>their customers want. The customers in this case are students, not
>necessarily businesses. Students need to be aware that jobs are available
>which require the requisite skills and then these students need to pressure
>the educational institutions to offer the courses that will provide those
>skills. Businesses can indirectly influence the schools by assuring them
>that they, the businesses, will provide x number of tuition-paying
>students. Only when it is economically advantageous for schools to offer
>mainframe courses will they.
Precisely, Don - you are exactly right. And, those are the kinds of
scenarios where we've been most successful in recruiting educational
institutions to teach the new mainframe curriculum, including the "Intro"
class that spawned this thread. When we can connect customers who have
skill issues to the universities from which they hire students, it's not too
difficult to convince those schools that they need to offer this kind of
class(es). And when a student realizes that they have a better chance of
getting hired by a big company if they have at least SOME exposure to
mainframe technology, it becomes a lot more attractive to have that
coursework on his/her resume.
To those of you who question whether "new blood" is coming into the
mainframe business - next week I am teaching this class ("Intro to the New
Mainframe") to the first of two large groups of newly-hired college grads,
all of who came to work on System z. I am thrilled to help educate these
extremely talented young people on a platform that is exciting, growing, and
more important than ever in an I/T world that is starting to realize that
hundreds of Cooper Minis are not necessarily better at solving a problem
than a big honkin' 18-wheeler (sorry, Tim).
----
Bill Seubert
System z Software I/T Architect
IBM Corporation
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(and co-author of "Introduction to the New Mainframe - z/OS Basics")
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