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First Red Hat Academy for High School
FrankBama writes "As a follow-up to the story of a few days ago, Red Hat has started a program in my old hometown. The story's at the News & Record. I love this part '...this training normally would cost more than $10,000. But Weaver students can get Red Hat certification free -- and use it get a job paying more than $30,000 a year right out of high school.'"
...but I beg to differ with the $10,000 amount. And I'd hope that even a high school graduate could make more than $30k a year with a good understanding of Linux systems administration.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
There was a very similar two year course at my high school that granted certification for Cisco Router Systems. What I remember is the teachers' endless grumbling over how a kid right outta high school can now go get a job that pays better than teaching.
Yeah, wait now -- who's hiring again?
I had to leave IT and I have several years of experience. Thanks to bootcamps certifications are no more then peaces of paper. A paper is nice but its worthless without experience.
http://saveie6.com/
This is good news from several fronts. One thing I like about it is that it gives high-school students a marketable skill. It's always been a pet peeve of mine that we can send kids to school for 12 years (grades 1-12) and when they come out the other side we still haven't imbued them with skills to make a living.
According to Google News, this isn't the only place such things are happening. Many schools are embracing linux, this program is just another great extension of such happenings.
Its nice and all that they are trying to help highschool kids have a future after school but I don't think this is an appropriate choice for training. I have yet to meet anyone "right out of highschool" who has the intellectual maturity (notice I didn't say capacity) to function in a corporate position. This applies especially to positions such as Systems Administration where experience, wisdom and maturity are an absolute necessity.
I know all the shit-hot teenage geeks out there are going to think I'm out of line for saying this (especially when they feel they are ready to take on the world). I'd recommend they go to University and expand their minds a bit even if they feel it is below them or that they wouldn't learn anything. Don't rush into being a wage-slave, kiddies, its not half as much fun as you think it is.
I like it.
When they are younger, it's easier to mold their minds.
Way to go for Linux world domination.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
... but back then, I was learning DOS 3.3 (for Apple II) and AppleWorks, becuase "everyone in the future will be using this stuff!"...
Anyway, I took that seriously, and made damn sure that I *knew* to enter the proper date when Appleworks was starting up, and that I *had* to make sure I had the right disks in the drives.
(Interesting note: Even in Word 2002, CONTROL-B and CONTROL-L are for bold and underlining, respectively)
Of course, we all learned how to use Apple DOS (both 3.3 and ProDOS) - we^H^Hthe rest of the class did this for a solid month, during which time I was permitted to play Choplifter, Cannonball Blitz, and Ultima V because I already knew how to use Dos... which *really* pissed the rest of the class off...
Anyway, to get to my point, I wonder how relavent the things that they learn now will be a few years after they graduate - and I hope it is *concepts* that they learn, instead of cookie cutter "type CATALOG to see a what's on your disk, insert your disk and type PR#6 to start AppleWorks" stuff...
-RickTheWizKid
(Open-Apple-S to save, Open-Apple-P to print)
We would all be complaining and kicking and screaming right now. What's the difference between Redhat and Microsoft? In business terms nothing, they both have share holders to please. Don't become gullible to Redhat, they need to make money too. The only good thing is that they help tow the open source line and are successful in socio-economic terms.
more people without college degrees working in the IT field. I mean, shucks... Who needs emotional intelligence, improved social skills, exposure to a broad range of topics, writing skills, and all of that other silly things you hopefully pick up in college?
Seriously, most of the H.S.-diploma-only folks I've ever dealt with in the professional world have chips on their shoulders. Ten times worse than those who went to Ivy League schools, in fact.
But Weaver students can get Red Hat certification free -- and use it get a job paying more than $30,000 a year right out of high school.'
Oh, sweet $DEITY. They could spend time taking college classes in high school, learning marketable skills that aren't tied to a particular manufacturer's contrivances of what a computer operating system should look and act like, learning to code, READING BOOKS, and end up far valuable "just out of high school" than a little RedHat, Cisco, or Microsoft drone. It seems a little premature (high school) to be focusing so heavily on something so specialized instead of gaining an appreciation and general understanding of computing.
The kids that come out of these programs (I've got a "Cisco Academy" at a high school close by that I work with, and know people who teach at another high school that's been doing CompTIA "A+" training, and I've gotten to be around some of these kids) are mostly useless drones. The kids that really have potential are the ones that hack around on their own, have a genuine interest, and make something of themselves on their own. I'd take one (1) of them to ten (10) of these "cookie cutter kids". The training is just too specialized-- they can't handle something that wasn't "in the book".
Don't get me wrong-- I think it's great that schools are expanding their technical training-- but don't expect these kids to be useful for much other than what they've been "trained" for when they get done.
Those Cisco kiddies can sure make the patch cables, though. Snip-snip, crimp-crimp!
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Vocational training in high school has always provided this type of opportunity. Right now we have IT certs like this one and the CISCO ones we have in my town (and they are grouped with the vocational classes). When I was in high school several of my friends leveraged their vocational training into 30K-40K jobs with various airlines as machinists. When my father was in high school, he leveraged his electronics vocational training into a good paying job (at the time) with the phone company (remember when all telcom was simply 'the phone company'?).
One big difference though is the lack of unions in IT. Even through crappy economic times and corporate changes my father and friends from high school have continued to do alright--not great, but alright.
I must applaud this school, and Red Hat for their efforts. I wish they did this 9 years ago when I was at school! I know of several schools in my area offering MCSE and Cisco certifications as well.
I hope that the school is encouraging the kids to use this new knowlege as a jumpstart into college. Kids: $30,000 a year may sound like a lot when you're living with your parents but it's nothing once you have a mortgage and hungry mouths to feed! With a college degree you can command a much higher salary [1].
A college placement is much easier to come by if you can say you obtained Linux certs in school and it'll give you a huge advantage over the other students.
In writing this comment I have had one thought though. When are High Schools going to start teaching kids how to read, write and do arithmetic? I know plenty of people WITH high school dipolmas who can't spell, can barely read and need a calculator for basic arithmetic.
[1] I'm also hoping that by the time current high school students graduate college the economical climate will have improved and jobs will become available for them.
Some quick math here....
$30k per year with $0 direct education costs
$50k pery year with $bigint direct education cost.
Hrm. Doesn't sound that bad to me.
An engineer? What kind? Mechanical? Electrical? Give me the type please.
There are very few jobs that you get right out of college paying 50k a year, I don't care what your GPA was, if you were student body pres, or blew the dean of men.
I have 13 years tech experience, plus an IS degree, and two years doing tech work in Latin America(speak fluent spanish) I just got a job pulling 42 grand a year with full benefits. AND I AM DAMN GLAD OF IT. The job is in Louisiana where the cost of living is dirt ass cheap, so it is like 55 any where else.
My friends who become engineers all, got jobs making 25-30k when they started out, and these are guys with GPAS from great school.
A college degree does not guarantee you a 50k job, nor does a masters.
And I hate to say it, but all my jobs looked at past projects and years on the job. Though the degree does open a lotta doors.
A college graduate with a good 8 years under his built might make 50.
You need a reality check.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
If they want to make a living, and dont plan on going to college/university, their better off learning a trade down in the shop wing.
They're much more likely to be brought on as a carpenters/plumbers/welders/machinists apprentice than get a job in an office. They put in their dues on the jobsite, and can wind up a very well paid craftsman.
A lot of companies are giving up on certifications like this. Many more are looking for people with actual skills with computers and administration. You should be able to hand your IT guy a manual and he should be able to figure out the nuances of the system.
These children are being done a disservice by this. It's no different than the 'get Microsoft certified and make $50,000 a year' ads blaring on the radio.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
my highschool had 2 year Cisco program that started my junior year. I wanted to take it but had a class conflict. In the end it worked out for the best that i didn't take it because it was a 2 year waste of time.
the instructor was the auto teacher who went through a 6 week course to teach a 2 year program. Any time a student had a question, the teacher didn't have a clue. After 2 years, not a single student was able to pass the certification test, or even think it was worth it to try.
I got a part time job working the help desk at a local ISP/website development/network administration company my senior year. after working there for 4 months i knew more about router configurations than any of my friends in the 'holy' Cisco program. You can see why i feel highschool programs are bullshit now.
Applying this to the Red Hat situation, Unless red hat hired and is paying the instructor, its going to be some math teacher, or shop teacher who got a book and a boot camp and he/she will be lost and the kids' time would be better spent reading stuff off of the internet durning a study hall.
I think this is good. The youth have had
Microsoft and Apple experience, why not
introduce a few of the next generation programmers
to what will be one of the competing desktops.
Hopefully an electronic ethics course comes
along with it all these computer classes
generally speaking.
With this type of scenario if it actually pans out we have the Las Vegas effect. Droves of people with decent paying jobs but little or no education (college wise), and a community demanding that people be educated and attend college.
Why, when you get out of H.S. and work 4 years starting at $30K you still make more than your college counterpart in the long run?
I was doing tech support at a local startup (this was in '96-'97), and started studying on my own for the MCSE. The first few tests I studied for were reading the NT 4 Server Resource kit. After graduation, I landed a summer internship at Citrix, and finished my MCSE (the last test was on break during freshman year).
:)
:)
I used that to leverage interviews and offers that made my friends at school jealous, and this was at MIT, they weren't slouches. One interviewer freshman year asked if I was graduating in the spring, and was quite disappointed when I explained that I was a freshman looking for an internship (then she saw the education line on my resume).
I pimped the MCSE and Citrix CCA (easy to pick up after working in Citrix's tech support department for 3 months) to get great jobs through the dot-com era. It was nice that when my friends were scrounging for money to buy shitty beer, the girls were impressed with my fully stocked liquor cabinet of premium stuff.
I turn 24 in a few weeks, run my own business, getting married this summer, and generally have my life together. The last of the credit card debts from starting a business are getting repaid, and things are going well. Take away the MCSE, and instead of getting good jobs as internships, I'm UROPing (undergrad research, most of which is just bitch work for $8/hr), and just getting my act together in the corporate world.
I dealt with clients, managed a team, and generally acquired a lot of experience while in school. Didn't cost me my "youth" either, I managed to be social chair of my fraternity among other experiences. Getting job skills in school is critical.
Hell, if I had stayed with Citrix like my HS drop-out friend that got me the job did, I'd also have a house and car from cashing in my stock options.
Skills are good, learn them. They don't replace a liberal arts education for personal growth and knowledge, but they can get you an opportunity to get rewarding summer jobs, instead of menial ones. Being a broke college student sucks, I was happier making $35/hr part time as a Citrix/MS geek than $8/hr cleaning test tubes in a lab.
Alex
or am I right when I think you could make 30K at Walmart?
This
First, I don't smoke anything. I have to pass drug tests for my jobs. Second, I am now graduating with a PhD in Electrical Engineering with a specialization in photonics. I have turned down 2 $70k+ job offers already. I am now trying to decide between jobs that are offering $80k-$100k. Getting good grades and putting in long hours does not necessarily correlate to how productive or successful someone will be. I know several graduate students who have a very high GPA, but when it comes to doing something real (i.e. not a homework problem), they flounder. Conversely, I know several people who do not have a great GPA, but they do have a desire to be as good as they can be. These are the people who don't have problems finding a job because they do 10 times more than what is asked of them. You say to get a reality check, but everybody I know is not having any problems getting a job now.
A college degree does not guarantee you a 50k job, nor does a masters.
No, it does not guarantee anything. On the other hand, should you find a job in some engineering fields on graduation, the average starting salary IS $50K. For example, the AICHE reports that the 2002 average starting salary for various engineering professions was:
* Chemical Engineering: $51,254
* Electrical Engineering: $50,387
* Mechanical Engineering: $48,654
A college graduate with a good 8 years under his built might make 50.
After 8 years of experience most engineers have been promoted twice and would expect a 30% increment at least over a fresh out of college employee. That would put such a person the the range of $65-70K.
A lot of posters have commented that they belive that it's "too young" to be learning this stuff and be "shipped off" to a job. As a high school student myself (14), I really disagree.
:(
Getting certification does not mean that one can need not go to college. However, gaining skills and then applying them, typically in a job-like setting, offers a huge set of advantages.
Internship opportunities allow you to actually _use_ these skills and do something productive with your time. Imagine if all the "14 year-old script kiddies" could put their hacking skills to use on something, whether it be Cisco routers or adding features to samba (just to name a random project). OSS gives great amounts of opportunities for students to apply their technology skills in a productive way, but this isn't enough.
Schools need to help students learn these skills and give them opportunities to use them. Would I have survived 8th grade had I not been running the lighting and sound for nearly all school productions and maintaining the school website? Probably not. Besides, it's clear that it is "fun" to crack into various systems, but what if that could be done in a productive way too? That's just what I did last week when I (at the request of the technology department) discovered that my school's security model resembles swiss cheese (I'm still trying to get them away from Windows...
Furthermore, there are some situations where just working on random hacking projects won't do. This is where an internship comes in handy: being able to apply your skills in some sort of useful way while learning. Here, there are no real expectations that you have to know how to do this or that, just lots of abilities to learn new things and try them out.
If anything, schools need to do more to encourage students to get involved in the field. Have students be working on something productive, whether it is building cgi scripts for the school website to working as an intern for the summer (or even for a two-week break), and you will see a group of students that are more prepared to face the world and have a thirst to learn more: exactly what is provided by a college education. You may even see a few less students smiling smugly when you discover that the school website was cracked yet again.
It's funny, some people think $30k isn't anything, others think there's no way a HS grad could pull in $30k right out of HS with a RH cert. I'm going to be 20 years old in a few days, and here is my life in a nutshell. Perhaps it will give someone else insight as to the paths they might take at this early stage in life.
At age 9 I mowed 3-4 lawns a day for a summer and bought my first computer for $400. I hacked on it 24/7. It has been to my benefit, IMO, that I have never been big on games, because boy are they a waste of time. I did a lot of QBASIC.
I got my first job at a small (10 person) startup IT consulting firm at age 15, broke all child labor laws working 60-80 hrs a week (by choice mind you), and made $8/hr. My 1 year raise was $.25/hr. A few months later, I got knocked up to $9/hr. During this time I did mainly VB programming. At this point, the company fired their router guy, so I jumped right in and filled the gap. I soon obtained my CCNA and soon after ask for, and recieved, a salary of $32,000, before my 17th birthday.
I then obtained my MCP because we were a Windows shop. I was still at this point 50/50 programmer/tech. I couldn't decide what my pasion was for. IT company started going downhill, a few days before my 19th bday I baled and got a job at a financial institution - titled 'network technician' on a team of about 4 techs, however I am the network administrator by any definition, I have the responsibility (but not the title) of the security administrator, as well as Exchange administrator (to my agony). I just obtained my MCSA as part of my job objectives for the last 6 month period. At this point I am making $42,000.
I took 12 credit hours at a community college back when I was 16, and am realizing now that especially in the field of network security a degree is important not just for the piece of paper to show the suits, but anyone really does benefit from the well-rounded education you get along the way. I intend to continue attending university part time for as long as it takes. I love my job, my hobby. I am now purchasing a house, enjoying being married, and looking forward to every day I get to go to work, and excited that I have the oppourtunity continue my college education...
Seriously, however, nobody is going to pay an 18 year old $30k/yr. It wasnt until recently that I have been able to make good money, because most corporate people dont promote or pay well "youngsters" (unless they are bullshitters with an MBA). Lucky for me the men in my family get grey hair early.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Yes, a degree is a piece of paper. A piece of paper that represents experience, technical fortitude, and problem solving. ( it depends of where you get the education ) I'm grossly tired of many slashdotters denotting ALL degrees/certifications as useless. That is not true in ALL cases. There are some programs or educational facilities that just want your money. However, most colleges or cerification programs that I have seen are worth taking. In certain situations it is not possible to teach your self how everything works because your can't afford the equipment, books, or understand the material. Colleges, for a modest fee (tuition) will let you play with VERY expensive equipment. Thus you gain experience. I agree experience it better than book knowledge. College is about both. The two interplay nicely to create a rounded employee, not some drone. Certifications are ok, degrees are good, and experience is best, but I believe all three are necessary. You can't rely on just one. Honestly, I have never seen any corporation that expects their employees to know everything and have experience in everything. Most of the corporate life is on the job training. In the end, the most imporant lesson is learn how to learn. Experience won't help in every situation, nor will a cert or a degree. But knowing how to learning will always be there to solve any problem.
God, I hope they don't advertise the $30000 salary right out of high school too much. Kids should want to take this class to learn the stuff, not to make $30k the next year. Because it just isn't that much, and there isn't that much potential for a higher salary for someone who takes a job straight out of high school.
This sounds like a good way for a lot of promising young kids to get absolutely screwed (and not in the good way that most of them wouldn't mind).
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
and sure, for the students it is free, but for the schools it is 35-40 thousand dollars. That is BIG bucks for a school district. (At least it is for mine.) Why not give the whole program to the schools for almost nothing (Like MS did with office 5-6 years ago) and then teh kids will want it when they get out of school. Then when they got those $30K/year jobs they can pay for their own personal liscence.
Bottom line: too damn expensive for schools.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
My high school was ahead of pretty much every school in the area in starting up a CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) program. In fact, we were the first high school in the world to use the new Cisco Curriculum or something last year. However, the program is only as good as the students. You can't take your typical pretty girl who only uses her computer for AIM, Word, and browsing to routing guru over the course of the program (and our program was four literal semesters, two years). It just doesn't happen. The students should have a good grasp of the concepts they're going over and most of all, want to learn. I'm probably one of the few who actually got something out of the program.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
First off, does Red Hat have any concrete advantages over other *NIXen for systems administration? Don't sell your personal favorite, just state the facts, please. :)
Second, does the Red Hat certification training provide reasonably bias-free instruction in regards to different *NIXen?
The second is far more relevant then the first, but I'm curious about both.
--
est modus in rebus
Before we start shouting about how kids should go to college, or how Redhat is indoctrinating their pliable minds, let's try to view the situation as it is. The kids are going to learn some things about network administration.. granted not as much as they would in the real world, but certainly more than I know. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but someone who's learned redhat admin should be able to use any linux system(such that you can learn from a class). It looks as though they will get some linux exposure. I agree with those who say that the promise of a certain salary should be thrown out the window. Kids should take the class to learn linux/networks, not to replace college, but there certainly are good things about this. When I was in school I had two options for computer classes. I could take business classes for the PC(Windows), or for the Mac. I chose the PC because I could fiddle with them more... but they wouldn't let me fiddle. They kicked me out several times for writing QBasic programs instead of doing my MS Works homework(even though I did enough to come out with an A). I started programming in C and got kicked out because they got a virus and I was the only one who knew how to write one. The only virus I ever wrote was really lame(it just copied to command.com and sent random junk to random ports) and I certainly never ran it on a school computer. We had a Novell network that they wouldn't let me mess with. I had to write a login patch to get the labtech password. I couldn't even use the library computer.. I had to bring a boot disk to get past their lame menu program so I could write my pathetic programs. All this trouble just because I wanted to make circles move around. If I had the oportunity to learn I might have been able to actually do something useful. The point I'm trying to make is that at least this will allow the kids to fiddle with something they normally wouldn't fiddle with.
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