Equating college and systems programming is not really logical. I'm not aware of any colleges that "teach" how to be a systems programmer. I think some may have tried, but I doubt it would be a big draw.
I have a PhD, but I didn't learn to write assembler in college, at least not any that would be usable as a systems programmer. I don't think everyone needs to learn how to read dumps or write assembler to be a systems administrator, but to be a systems programmer is seems very practical. I can't imagine working with an operating system for a large number of years without being able to read or write the code it's generated with. But that's just my opinion, I'm sure there are people who consider themselves to be systems programmers that don't have any knowledge of assembler or know how to read a dump, or know how to use SMP/e very well or understand ACS coding or writing REXX or understanding the ins and outs of WLM. My personal opinion is that it would give me an ulcer to not know what I was doing. Brian ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN