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") ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html