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.'"

Comments

At my high school

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:At my high school

[NTworks]

I had this same thing.. Cisco has been setting up similar things to give CCNA's to high school students across the country.

The teachers are telling the kids how they can make $40k right out of high school. I got my CCNA thru their school program as a senior

let me tell you, it is total BULLSHIT. 90% of the people who actually passed the cert (which was only ~50% of the class, me included) will never touch a router at least not for another 5 years. and they WONT find a $40k job out of high school working on cisco equipment, especially with the current IT economy

I was lucky and landed a job out of high school in 2000 when the economy was still decent, I work as a mainframe computer and high-end 64-bit unix machine operator in a large computer datacenter (also the webmaster for our datacenter). I was the last person they hired without a degree, now they wont even consider u unless you have a degree AND working IT experience. CCNA's are now worthless thanks to cisco flooding the market with no-knowledge high school punks who think they are the shit because they vaguely know what "config t" is

Good on many fronts

[jgennick]

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.

Thats too young!

[Snosty]

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.

Re:Thats too young!

[adjuster]

This applies especially to positions such as Systems Administration where experience, wisdom and maturity are an absolute necessity.

Ahh-- but the only true wisdom and experience comes from actually doing the work. Being a "junior" sysadmin or an intern under good people is the best training anybody can get. I try to take on at least one (1) intern every summer, and I encourage anybody who wants to see the median level of "suck" in our job field get lower to do the same...

That is, unless you are a sucky sysadmin to start with... *smirk*

Nutrition and dirt...

[adjuster]

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!

Great, but kids - please go to college

[Zerbey]

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.

Too true, my MCSE did wonders

[alexhmit01]

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

A piece of paper?

[Daanji]

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.

$30k???

[sean23007]

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).