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Tech Training Schools Going Bust
superflippy writes "The Associated Press reports that many tech training schools which opened during the last few years are now shutting their doors. During the dot-com boom, there was the perception that a few months of computer training could lead to a fabulous job. Now, it seems all these schools have produced are unemployed people with student loans and dubious certifications."
1. Kid goes through course
2. Kid does well, but doesn't really learn
3. Kid gets job $63,000/year
4. Kid has no idea what to do, but was able to talk his shit up.
5. Kid goes to teacher and begs him to help
6. Company pays teacher to do kids job $15,000
Cost to company $75,000
I know of this personally. Pretty annoying if you ask me. The kid actually still has his job too.
A friend of a friend asked me to help him with a final project for one of his classes at ITT Tech. This was a project in ASP for an online bookstore. He was nearing completion of his associates degree in Web Design, and when I got there to show him things, he knew nothing at all. Not even HTML... When I asked him about that, he said he "sorta learned it a while ago". Last I checked, HTML was the staple of Web Development, no? All of his pages that he had made so far were all autogenerated by FrontPage. Goes to show you what good a $30,000 2-year associates degree at ITT Tech is worth.....or rather worthless.
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
I spent 10 months at "The Chubb Institute" gaining a certificate in Network and System Security. During the 10 months, we started with basic A+ cert type information, and worked our way up through Linux and MS ISA Server... none of each in enough detail to actually get a job done.
In fact, we spent 1 week learning Redhat where we installed the OS, Installed Samba, and FTP.
Then we spent 4 weeks (5 hours a day 5 days a week) learning how to write resumes and interview.
Somehow I feel like Linux is more important then what color my suit is for the interview. (blue vs. grey)
Lastly, they promised "Job Placement" - however, the only calls that the Graduating Security Class received were helpdesk positions.
My question is... if the Network Security class... the most esteemed program at the Chubb Institute is getting calls for Helpdesk positions... what positions are the helpdesk classes getting?
Janitorial?
I used to work for a small computer training center. I got to teach people on worker's comp how to repair computers (fun when they were just there to collect the check and didn't care about the class).
Basically, they were told by their rehab people that our three-month class would get them a nice 40K a year job, and they usually got really pissed when they found out otherwise.
Speaking of the original dubious certification, a 8-year old just got certified as an MCSE.
I was required to attend one of these for Sun certification. The total cost was ~$30,000 (they used to call it a SunKey). Do you think anyone who has only a few hundred bucks at the end of the month after rent/food/etc will sign up for that? No.
These places depended on companies to send their people.
Now a days, it looks like most places get a backend rebate from the vendor of the products they send their people to get certified under. After all, if company XXX needs two SE's to sell a product from vendor YYY, vendor YYY will usually give a boatload of cash to cover the costs in sending their two SE's to training, since in the long term, company XXX will sell enough of the product to where vendor YYY will recoop all their money.
As much as I personally value education, the organizations in the education arena (from K to PhD) do a very poor job of justifying their existence (and high tuitions or high taxpayer subsidies). Common sense and aggregate data does certainly suggest that salary correlates with education, but nobody seems to be able to routinely show that a particular school leads to a particular boost in success (except for some highly debatable test score schemes in K-12 education).
What are students paying for when they get degree X from school Y? And what are they really getting?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Finally I'm starting to see some justice! I have 18 years experience but have been out of work due to all the outsourcing and dumping of jobs overseas for the last 10 months. Nothing has ticked me off more than seeing so called private schools like ECPI and others advertising in the paper for IT and Cert courses. They advertise like there is a shortage for jobs, that they cant fill them fast enough... when all they have done is dumped untrained memorizers on the market and created a glut of available personnel. And if a business or HR department doesn't know better, the fancy paper gets these really untrained workers the jobs at cheap salaries (because they have to pay those 30K college course fees) I wish they all would shut down and go back to just being Testing centers like back in the Drake days... or am I showing my age again.
This is because RESULTS DO NOT MATTER. What matters is that you show up to work on time and work for eight hours
Gee thats what I did wrong I gave 3 years of results to a company that not only made the company sucsessfull but very profitable. and I got nothing not even a paycheck. But then again I was fucking the owner.
Moral: Don't get involed with the owner
http://Lenny.com
The downward spiral of recent years, beyond anyone's direct control: 1) The economy going to hell 2) The resulting layoffs 3) People with years of experience competing for entry level jobs 4) A lack of entry level jobs (why hire someone fresh out of school when you can hire a former sysadmin for Dell tech support?) 5) Companies not paying nearly enough as they used to for tech positions This is not the schools' fault. A previous poster used the term 'dubious certs,' and this is completely accurate. The problem however is not the curriculum, it is the way the students study. When I attended a comp training school a couple years ago, I cannot tell you how many students used mcsebraindumps.com and other sites where they can get test questions. The percentage was huge. As a result, these people just memorized answers and did not know how to apply anything they learned (if they did at all) to real world situations. When they got out into the real world, they broke more than they fixed. As a result, companies now view these certifications with a skeptical eye. Sure, you passed the test - but what do you really know? Prove to me you can make it - but how do you get the shot if a sysadmin with ten years of experience wants that tech support job too? Answer: you don't. These schools have tried to hide this and have been largely successful, but the truth is finally coming out.
even the fancy certifications were not enough
You said it yourself. The certifications are usually anything but fancy. Most of these courses depend on your ability to memorize things and take a test. I have read a couple of the certification books and it doesn't even get close to teaching you any basics regarding the subject. I gave up pretty quickly.
The sad part is that the acronyms are deemed very important. My company actually sent out an email a little while ago urging everyone to put their 'acronyms' (MCSE, CISSP etc.) in their signatures because it creates a very good impression and I am talking about a reputed company.
I have a couple of friends who did take these certification courses, managed to get through and are doing good. WHY? The certification gave them a foot in the door and it was their persistence and hard work after that. Anybody with the idea of going through these certifications assuming that its going to get them a steady job for their life without any more effort is probably misled.
My 0.02$
Free XBox, PS2
I think it is great that you are an employer that is willing to consider applicant that do not have a university degree.
As a 'letterless' software engineer I find this to be pretty uncommon. This is incredibly frustrating to me because during the 6 months I was unemployed (Im pleased to say this is no longer the case) I was passed over by many-a-position that suited my skills perfected purely on the basis of my lack of a university education.
YMMV, judging by your sig you are obviously an educated man but when I think about the truely outstanding technical people I have worked with during my relatively short career so far I find that that majority were those without the education.
Im not sure exactly why this is, but my theory is that it is too easy to coast through a degree by 'going through the motions' and then use it to mean more than it is. Usually those without the degree had to demostrate a higher technical skill level before being considered.
I do however, take slight issue with your point about certificates. I have found some of these to be very worthwhile. I have certificates from Sun in their Java programmer, Java developer and Java web component developer qualifications and found them (particually the programmer) to be an excellent base-line skill test.
I have recommended to my current employer that all developers working on our software should either have the programmer certificate or be working towards it.
I dont attempt to leverage these certs too much on my CV but they are far from useless.
I dont think you should tar them all with the same brush.
"Are you happy with your job? Think there's better? THERE IS (cue music). Become a certified network engineer or software developer at MADSKILLZ. Technology jobs are still paying well - our graduates make as much as $100,000 per year! Student loans available, call now and we'll throw in a comlimentary scale model Porsche - just like the one you'll be driving after you become a certified network engineer or software developer at MADSKILLZ!"
Why is anyone surprised that companies that advertise get rich quick schemes like this are going under? Dear trial lawyers - better sue quick because the IT certificate industry is going to die.
-- $G
It was interesting to watch as other post secondary institutes and even other departments at our institute jumped on the IT bandwagon. When I left the program in 2001, our institute was graduating close to 500 IT grads/year, not to mention the local University and College graduating an equal amount. Then there were the private schools were pumping out MSCEs and CNEs and now Cisco engineers.
The fact is that the market is saturated and the gravy train is over. Our school is hurting because we receive funding from the provincial government based on graduate's employment placement rate (for example: 93% employed after 6 months in their field of study). For the first time in 10 years, I've noticed that the placement rate description has changed from 6 months to 1 year and they've dropped the reference to "field of study" from the statistics. The IT programs are really hurting for enrollment also. People are wising up to the fact that it is difficult to get a job in IT with just a piece of paper.
I find the idea of private tech schools to be abhorant and I find it equally abhorant that our federal (Canadian) government so willingly supports them. Federal job creation schemes will pay up to 2/3 of a $20,000.00 tuition plan for a student to attend a private school, because their programs are typically only nine months long. The bean counter feds see this as meaning the students will get into the job force quickly, but they fail to see that the student does NOT get a job. The same federal department will not pay one cent for a person to attend a 3 year program at an accredited institution (where the tuition is typically less than for a private school, for the full 3 year program!), where the student takes longer to get into the job force, but is pretty well guaranteed a job. This makes me want to scream.
I have a 3 year technology diploma, but a few years ago I was unemployed for several months, and entered a private school for some "upgrading". What a farce. Basically these schools guarantee that if you pay the tuition, and attend the correct number of classes, you WILL get a "technology" diploma. They DO NOT guarantee certification, etc. If you are smart enough, and can hold enough useless data in your brain for long enough, they can even forcefeed some students enough facts to pass those hilarious "certification" multiple choice "exams" private industry uses. Not meaning to belittle them, but I was in class with people who, just a few weeks ago, were hair dressers, taxi/truck drivers, waiters, secretarties, etc. These people were assured (and they beleived), that in just 9 short months they would magically become computer "specialists", and they could compete with me for jobs. That's pretty amazing, when you realize that I had a 3 year technology program, 2 years of university, and over 20 years of work experience under my belt. Because of these outright lies and misrepresentations, I for one am happy to see most of the private "technical" schools disappear.
Heh, funny I'm in the Air Force as well.
"The military is based around taking people who know very little and teaching via tech schools. We do quite well. We can take someone with virtually no computer knowledge and turn them into a basic sysadmin in about 6 months."
Heh, I have yet to meet a competent Sys admin in the Air Force thats been through that course. It's common to pull someone from their AFSC and put them into your 3C0 job to fix all the problems you guys create. The Sys Admin tech school is worse than ITT tech, especially after the combining of the admin (secretary...) and computer operator career fields. Heh, 6 month course? Its only 6 weeks at Sheppard AFB in Texas (and Keesler AFB in Mississippi).
Sounds like Graduate School. I'd receive a "B" just for showing up.
Most of those scools were scams. My work paid for me to continue to stay on top of my certs. I would get stuck in these classrooms sometimes filled with truckdrivers, highschool dropouts, etc, all sold on the idea of getting rich quick with an mcse. Some didnt even have a home computer!!! But for $7,000 they could get a job making $70,000. Dumb people may deserve to lose their money, but these scamming training places also deserve to go bankrupt.
I know I'll get modded down, but this guy is probably a product of India's certification schools, that pump out people with degrees, certifications, etc. with the express purpose of getting US tech jobs. They get very real education. I've run into many, many people like this, and worked with them, and they're the same. They may have a degree or certification, but half the Indians I worked with wouldn't know HTML from Cobol.
Looks trollish, but I'll bite...
I am a GURU on the I.T. certification game. Certification and degrees have a place, just as experience has a place. Which do I consider the most important after 8 years of working in I.T.? I rank them 1- Experience, 2- Degrees, 3- Certifications. During the boom, one or two of these three was usually sufficient to get a job, sounds like you had EXPERIENCE, the most valuable of the three. Congratulations on your timing. Hell, I lucked out too with some well-timed moves during the boom, getting in over my head at times and letting my butt catch up later. For anyone else believing they too can succeed as you have, I would advise against it. The boom is over and I.T. is settling into being a normal business component that will have its' share of ups and downs in the coming decades. I don't expect it will ever get as "frothy" as 1998-2000 again in my lifetime.
If someone who wants an I.T. job can get all three of these tools into their kitbag, by all means they should. Even if they can jump NOW into a great gig if they will forego the degree, long-term that usually haunts you. Managers usually want degree-holders to move up. Additionally, your lightweight kitbag makes you more dependent on your current position and limits your future options.
The husband of a dear friend of mine has loads of experience; no degrees or certs. His gig dried up with the I.T. bust (in Austin, Texas) and he has been barely-working ever since. It's heartbreaking to get the doors slammed in your face, calls not returned over and over because you can't get a look when everyone else has the Big Three.
Not only that, some certs get "hot" now and then. e.g. The Security certs have been hot commodities since 9/11/01. On the other hand, don't jump in way over your head thinking your cert means you REALLY know the subject matter.
Experience is the best teacher, but necessity is a MOTHER.
In principio erat Verbum.
i have to confirm this; maybe from another point of view
...)
..)
when i was 20 years old, studying informatics at a university, i have found my first real job
i have got a chance to work on real things, and see my algorithms being used by real people, not just producing some useless results to satisfy a lector
i have decided to follow this chance, quit university and i was working for cca one year with a lower salary then i could get if i would finish university (3 years later
after one year, i have been known in the company; after two years, i have been respected in the company, and after three years i started becoming a key person in some projects
of course, one could say that i had an advantage, i started with programming when i was 15, i have participated at some international competitions on high school level and got some medals
but this fact was (maybe) considered only during the first meeting between myself and my first boss
i don't want to say that diploms and certifications are useless, i just think that they won't help you except for getting higher salary at the very beginning (unless you want to work in a public sector of course
company is not paying employees for the certificates they've got, but for their knowledge and ability to use it - and turn it into a profitable product
certificates can make your life easier from the very beginning but after couple of months, it all gets down to what you are really capable of
i am doing quite a lot of work with oracle; several months ago i was considering to get an oracle certificate
after some inquiries what do i need to know to get that, i have realized that i'm never going to make it
not because i'm stupid, but because i don't need to know all the things required -> i have the 'big picture' in my mind, i know how to read documentation, and i know how to use google
again; i don't want to say that the oracle certificate is a bad or useless thing
i have just realized that i don't need to keep all the things in my head, i only need to know where to look for them, and how to use them
it was the same at university; i was supposed to learn things of which i never use everything
if i would be supposed to learn how to use them, and where to find them if they are needed; that's a good thing
but if i should memorize them to satisfy some so-called exams -> what is it all good for ?
Just so you know, I work for one. We do more than just hand out certifications at random (although they do do that as well).
We teach Dental Assitants, LPNs, Nursing Assistants, Fluid Power, Electronics, Automotive, etc, etc, etc.
The school I work for has been around since the early 70's and seems to be doing quite well. In fact, these students (LPNs, Electricians, and Fluid Power students especialy) make twice as much as I do with a two year degree from a "closing tech school" than I did from a major four-year university...
Wow... all these posts and nobody mentions the many fine public community colleges!
Quality of courses and instructors varies widely--and with open admissions, I suppose many students may lack aptitude. But you have reasonable tuition rates, stability, and accountability. Not to mention accreditation.
I just started teaching Visual Basic programming (yeah, I know, I know...) at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. I feel a place like CCC is a pretty good alternative to for-profit private tech schools, although as a liberal-arts snob myself I am glad I attended a very competitive four-year private college.
As with anything else, there are good and bad community colleges. But I'm surprised nobody mentioned them as an option.
Crispin
Very true, I went to a tech school. Mine was for recording arts though, not computer networking or anything. But the same problems still applied. School was more interested in getting people through then actually teaching them something. I personally learned alot going there, but I applied myself. There were just as many, if not more, that went through and didn't learn a damn thing, and those people have the same degree I do, and they're all gonna be fucked. I've never once shown anyone my resume. I get jobs because when people talk to me about recording they can tell I know my shit, not because I have an associate degree.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
You are confusing 3a0 with 3c0. It's true that we do hire secretaries to do some low-level admin stuff, but they are suposed to be in contact with the REAL admins at every step. For simple stuff like resetting a password, secretaries do fine.
There are a LOT of competent 3c0s. Just walk around your NCC and look at config managment or network operations. The true talent will be behind the SAN or programming routers in a remote office. The crappy people will go to the Help-Desk or some other front-office job. Let the idiot 3c0s deal with the stupid problems while the smart people deal with EIGRP and SAN issues.
BTW, I'm a 3c2, not a 3c0. I went from high-school dropout to managing ATM switches with many OC-3s. It took me 8 years to get where I am. I'm good at what I do and so are most of my peers.
The ammount of talent to be found in a comm building is phenominal. Some of that talent is pissed at the latest LOR or BTZ passover, but it will shine when called upon.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Well, maybe I am a ray of hope. I teach college-level courses at night in programming (Java / C++) and Unix system administration. This term it looks like I will lose about half my class. A lot of people just try to slide by...except my school has backed every F I have given.
You're not freakin' kidding. Far too many people "get into computers" because they heard you can supposedly make a ton of money in it. A couple of examples for you--
I had a Intro to C++ professor who had horrendous handwriting, so what he wrote kinda looked like the following:
ofstream din;
din.open("ci\\data\\datafile.dat");
So of course, someone who shouldn't have been in the class raised his hand and asked, "Is that an "i" after the "c"?
It was all I could do not to turn around and scream "Hello!!! Have you never seen a command prompt before in your life? Is there any way it be an "i"? It's a colon . There's no way it could be anything but a colon. You need to drop the class."
Later, when we learned about user defined functions, here's what was on the board(more or less):
int myFunction(int x){
x +=5;
return x;
}
So (I'm pretty sure it was the same guy) raised his hand and asked, "Is this a void?" Hello!!! Is "void" spelled "int"? Do void functions return a value? AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!
It's kind of embarassing to confess to this, but I attended one of those technical colleges for a few weeks before I got sick with mononucleosis and had to drop after the first class finished. Sure, it set me back financially when I had to repay part of the student loans I had gotten (thankfully they were federal loans because the school was accredited), but I'm glad it happened. That, of course, was back before the whole dot com bubble burst, and had I stayed there, I most likely would have trouble finding a job today.
Instead, I'm about to graduate from a real college with two non-related degrees. I recently landed a job doing web design and system administration precisely because I have some real world experience with PHP and MYSQL. That, and I've been practically living on the computer since my family got a PC Jr. many years ago. Oh, the days of hacking my Bard's Tale character stats with a hex editor!
Anyway, the point I want to bring up here is this: I was up against graduates of that same technical school and my employer isn't impressed with them. Why? All their resumes look the same, they have no real-world experience, and almost without exception, the reason why they went to that school to get a computer "degree" was because they heard you could make a good living doing it.
Bottom line, there are decent-paying tech jobs for those who have it in their blood and know what they are doing. Also, because the stupid US government projected such unrealistic salary and job growth in the field that the market is saturated with idiots (and "schools" for them) whose credentials suck and are only in it for the money.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
I'm about ready to hire a full time tech to take over some of the day to day support work. What am I looking for? Simple. Absolute quality service to our clients, integrity, an ability to think quickly and come up with solutions to problems on the fly, experience in a broad range of technologies, dedication, and loyalty to my organization. There are still some of us out there with our priorities straight.
As a aside to this; I have been working on computers/electronics/ etc since the mid-80's; when the dot-com bubble was bursting, I was working as a network/security engineer for a medium large bank chain; I went on from that to running a 6000 computer WAN network. In the 6 weeks between those I decided, for the heck of it to get my MCSE.
When I finally managed to extricate myself from the nightmarish (EVIL coworker) government job, I couldn't find ANYTHING outside of a couple weeks here & there. I finally decided to just say screw it and retire from the field when a recruiter told me that they are taking resumes with MCSE cert & no CS degree and shredding them.
I experimentally tried out my pre-MCSE resume on a couple of employers, and got near-immediate hits.
I'm not saying this is the case now, and might not have been anything but a fluke then, but I still think it's weird.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
I'm of two minds about this matter. On the one hand, it's obvious that a lot of the "certification" courses hinge on rote recitation of lessons which may have little indeed to do with the real world -- and fail to test either the underlying principles of knowledge, or the experience, that are really needed to be certifiably skilled. It's clear, too, that a shallow knowledge of the technology that happened to be fashionable a few years ago is not going to help you much a few years from now.
However, I also firmly believe that the skills and knowledge -- and the deeper understanding -- needed to work with computers are not the exclusive province of those who seem like born hacker wizards. These are things that can be taught and learned, just as surely as people can learn a second language, or mathematics. The workings of computer electronics, or the algorithms that go into software, or the organization of a whole computer system are sometimes counterintuitive, but so is just about anything that's worth the effort of learning. What's more, most people are going to learn these things better with a teacher or guide who can point them in the right direction.
It takes time, and it takes effort -- and as with anything, expending effort in a "self-directed" fashion is no guarantee of success, when that direction is wrong. I used to work with one unfortunate case who had observed coworkers with more background than she had, and had come to the conclusion that printing out reams of PHP documentation and studying it like a monk would make her into a Web programmer. It did not work -- she could recite all sorts of things about specific functions, but had no idea how to put functions together to accomplish a task. She seemed to find it incredibly unjust that expending effort was not necessarily rewarding.
It's true that many of the present institutions for teaching IT skills and certifying technicians are abject failures for that purpose. Many are able to teach and to test only the shallowest of knowledge; first, because they categorically fear teaching "theory" (read: background knowledge), and second, because they wish to be salable to those with no experience. However, these are not necessary flaws, but signs of the desperation of the current market. It is very profitable to bullshit when there's a lot of bullshit flying around and people can't tell you're bullshitting -- this is as true now as it was in the days of snake-oil merchants.
But snake oil doesn't sell forever.
I've been annoyed by certs for years. I recall my last position, IT Director of a defense contractor.
.... shit I have no excuse. Ohh well.
A few resume buffs included:
9 years on the job experience, in senior management.
Master's in CS from the U of A, GPA 3.76 (too much beer?)
Primary languages: C/C++, VB (ick), Java, Cobol, ASM, Perl (LOVE Perl! *smooch*)... and, of course, every geek knows HTML/DHTML, JavaSCRIPT, Basic (ehhh), and a multitude of worthless languages that you learned because
4 total MRP/ERP conversions, blah blah. An impressive resume for the area I lived in, to say the least.
During my interview, they (CEO and COO) asked if I was MCSE certified. I flat out laughed. At the time I thought it would cost me the job. Though, it eventually came out that the CEO was MCSE certified.
To say the CEO was computer illiterate would be the understatement of the year. Yet, this man was MCSE certified -- I'm not specifically sure, even now, why he asked if I was.
Though, I would also like to point out that what we see today as certifications are _NOT_ what certifications were 15 years ago.
Microsoft (or so I primarily attribute) is greatly responsible for the influx of worthless certs in my opinion.
I suspect MS's intention was to flood the job market with "Windows only" workers - who only knew how to resolve the problems with Windows that Microsoft wanted them to. An example, is again, the MCSE - where you learn mostly how to resolve/workaround/[rarely]fix "_KNOWN_" problems with various versions of Windows.
Years and years ago, there were no Computer Science degree's available from any college - you went to tech school and got certified for the various skills that you felt would help advance your career.
An example would be my Father, whom has dozens of certifications related to technology -- all of which were not available at any college during his time. He, instead, obtained a degree in Physics.
On his way to N.A.S.A, the program was cancelled -- and so he sought to continue his way through technology. To do that, he could only get certified.
He then spent the next 30 years of his life working on Mainframes -- technology and information now in short demand - even in the IT field. And when they are available - companies want someone with a degree in CS -- something that was not available in his time. He has been out of work longer then any of you could imagine. 100% of the jobs he has applied for have been filled by H1-B visa workers from India. He started tracking them about 3 years ago - to see who was getting the jobs.
Though, I must admit -- he deserves no pitty. He makes roughly 8 times more then I, simply as an investor. He says he wants to work for the 'sense of accomplishment and comradory' that he once had. Some of the things he had done for IT in general are fascinating to hear about.
His fatal flaw, though, is he just doesn't 'get' personal computing. In his world -- there is no such thing as graphics. Something I can understand, greadly, as I feel that any GUI confuses a simple world. To work through the command line is a beautiful thing. It's a shame so many distort that by using a GUI in situations where it shouldn't.
Okay, just ranting here I suppose.
Regardless, certs now deserve to be recognized as trash. Most of them are. It's a shame, too. I think this was largely inflicted by the influx of morons armed with Microsoft certifications that are as ignorant to the inner-workings of the technology they supported as the users who sought them for advice and service. A far cry from what things were many years ago -- and certainly something that should be exposed for what it truly is.
Are those that cross fields, venturing into new areas. Since you mentioned Linguistics and Comptuers, and those are two of the areas I'm studing I figured I'd chime in:
Right now there is quite a bit of research being done on computers and language. We want to make them speak it, listen to it, but above all, to understand it. This is a difficult problem, more difficult than most people think. I'll ignore the speaking and hearing part and just talk about the understanding:
To understand a language, a computer must not just have a bunch of symbols in memory that make up the words, it needs to be able to perform operations on those such as to derive what it meant. Well that invloved three fields right there, CS, linguistics and philsohpy. The CS of course is the actual implementation of the algorithms. But what algorithms to implement?
Well that's where linguistics come in. You need to analyze natural language and figure out how it actually works. Try and write rules that dictate what is and is not a correct utterence, how different parts of speech are usedm etc. Also you need to produce a database of words, meanings, parts of speech and so on. A lot of this has been done.
So what about the philosophy? Well the thing is, current popular linguistic theory doesn't work right for language as humans use it. It describes literal, direct speech only. Well humans aren't like that, most of our meanings are at least aprtially context dependant and not entirely direct and literal. So language philosophers are working on trying to develop empirically testable theories for how humans actually communicate, and how the process the different kinds of communication with ease. The field is called Pragmatics.
But this adds yet another part to the study. It's all well and good that we come up with a nice theory that everything fits in, but does that have anything to do with reality? Do humans ACTUALLY process language in such a way and does it really adiquately describe communications? So we turn to psychological tests to try and verify or falsify theories of language. Only through emperical testing of actual humans can we figure out how this works.
Those theories then need to be studied in the context of the actual spoken language and have rules developed, and those rules then need to be implemented as algorithms in a computer.
And that's just the beginning.
Thing is, this ISN'T an insignificant field. All the big computer companies like MS and IBM would LOVE to be able to produce a computer that people could speak to naturally and it would do what they wanted. Then there are people like the NSA that are highly interested in have a computer that can analyze the content of intercepted communication and do a real good translation and breakdown of it.
It's a field where there is quite a bit of money to be made, and a whole lot of work that needs to be done. However, what it really needs is people that aren't just one trick dogs, that have studied some in ALL of those fields (and others) to be able to work on designing and coordinating experiements and statical analysis of language to try and actually get a working system off the ground. Not just someone who knows code and nothing but code.
As a side note, I'm not studying this to go in it, just because I think it's a neat interdiciplinary degree to get. I'm a computer support guy by profession.
Most people don't. I happen to love all things technical. I happen to be good at it.
I'll also never have much of a job in IT. I have a rudimentary ATM155 network at home, not to mention all sorts of other L1's. Hell, I'm even building my own internet of sorts. I can do everything from the chip level up to relational databases...
And I'll never be more than a grunt. It's painful being a loser. Some days more than others.
Happened in India after the dotcom bust too. A lot of fly by night "computer education institutes" mushroomed overnight during the boom. Was a time when you could land a decent paying job, armed with a java developer certificate handed out by these institutes. The courses lasted anywhere between 3 weeks to 2 years, and yes they also came with a "job guarantee". No prizes for guessing, over 90% of them disappeared faster than they had sprung up. With the job market witnessing a lot of traction of late, I wouldn't be surprised to see a repeat.
Oh, I get your point.
Personally, I have idolized a man called Herb Simon. Dr. Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his 1950's work on the subject of Satisficing (among other things). Carnegie-Mellon University realized the intelligence of this man, and, as a result, he ended up teaching courses as diverse as Economics, Philosophy and Computer Science.
Unfortunately for all of us, that man died in 2001. I would have loved to have even audited one of his classes. But, it didn't happen.
Anyway, he wins the fucking Nobel Prize in Economics. He ends up teaching Philosophy and Computer Science courses. Un-fucking-believable. That man was a stud. We should all bow down at the mere mention of his name.
If anybody ever asks me again about the value of their Econ 101 course when they are a Physics major, I'll ask them to check out Herb Simon.
The world is changing due to capitalism. Right now and in the future, I don't think anyone will care how diverse your knowledge is. Once upon a time, people had diverse knowledge. If you look at any great thinkers in the 1800's or even early 1900's, you would find that they studied many things. If you go even further back, you will find that those that were respected had a broad background. Many of the top scientists, mathematicians, etc were good at many things. Examples include Francis Bacon, Descartes, Benjamin Franklin, and so on. Nowadays that is not the case. Employers don't care about anything (for the most part). The only thing they look for is a particular skill set. No one asks if you have a good diverse background; they only ask if you have knowledge/experience in C++, drivers, memory management, and real-time design (I'm just making this up for a hypothetical job).
It is my view that as the world shifts towards (pure) capitalism (which it is), there will be a split in education. Educational institutions will be nothing more than a means to pump out workers. This essentially means that optional fields with low employer demand (eg. philosophy, social science, etc) will split (and "die off" in some sense). This is already happening, although on a smaller scale. There is battles going on between people (mostly capitalists) who only want to fund profit-generating education (eg. engineering, science, business) and cut funding to others (eg. social science, humanities, etc). Many universities have controversies over this. Who deserves funding: the philosophy department or the business department? Governments are also having this discussion (although it isn't a major issue yet). For instance, the former Premier of Ontario (Canada) essentially said that humanties and arts shouldn't be a priority (i.e. no funding for them) while science, business, and several others should be what schools concentrate on.
The issue I'm mentioning is nothing new. It has always been a question in philosophy of education: Should universities be enriching a student or should they be creating workers suited to get jobs? But this issue hasn't played out in the open yet. There are immense pressures on universities to downsize their "optional" studies (eg. arts, humanities, etc). When universities are privatizes, as capitalism calls for, these deparments will dissapear.
So to sum up, I think you are seeing the last of the diverse individual. In the future, I think people will be very shallow but focused. They will not be good at many things but they will be extremely good at one thing--the thing that will get them a job.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I worked at New Horizons selling MCSE's and CIW's, and everything else. The only people that learned anything already knew computers before they got there and just came to get some letters behind their name. They learned on their own. the only good teachers that I've seen were actually trained by Microsoft and only taught their courses. Otherwise, from what I've seen, the books will not teach you what you need without practical experience. We warned people about this.
I personally would never go to a Tech School like New Horizons. They will steal your money and you will not get the value for your education. I worked for them, I know what they are like. I competed against the others. They are all the same no matter what line of crap that they try to feed you.
Technologies come and go, and picking up a new one is just a matter of reading the manual. Concepts require hard-core education, and someone trained only in technologies often falls flat as soon as the technology falls out of vogue. Consider: how would you value someone with a resume that said they were familiar with Borland, DBase IV, and HTML?
Caveat: I am not saying that people who don't have degrees don't understand concepts. Rather, that the certificates focus on technology trivia, and thereofre you cannot tell whether the candidate knows the concepts or not.
Crispin
Count me among the MCSE-shredders.
I have observed a strong correlation between trumpeting MCSE and being a totally ignorant useless waste of skin, at least at the keyboard.
I have not observed that same correlation with Mexican last names (e.g., de Icaza).
YMMV. There is no need to remind me that there are exceptions; I believe you. When I have 1000 resumes to sift through, a quick filter like that is helpful. No way all 1000 are going to get a full read.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I never opened my first computer until 2 years after graduating, just out of natural curiosity, but I could have lived happily ever after without doing so.
By then I had improved algorithms to search hughe databases with data stored on magnetic tape, been working in a research Institute building their infrastructure, connecting them to the Internet, and had installed and configured full datacentres all around my country with cutting edge technology.
Your worldview seems pretty narrow to me, a view in which is you don't waste time opening computers you are not worthy of doing real computing work.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My story is an interesting one. Basically I have been using/breaking/fixing/learning and loving machines since I was 11. I took rudimentary computer logic classes at that age to(basic)(got thrown out for some reason or another...)Anyway, I was pretty much a fuk-up from 13 to 18 in regards to not taking school seriously(raves, skateboarding,girls,(ILLICIT_ACTIVITY_HERE),etc and not really learning or, rather, expanding my horizons academically. At 18, girlfriend gone, raves suck, still skating, life is bleek. Tried going to school for english, I did pretty well and decided to re-hash my interest in computers past Street Fighter 2. Start going to Katharine Gibbs School for programming. I got in with a GED I JUST GOT(gotta love me)and started classes. Turns out I LOVE PROGRAMMING and do pretty well(top 2 in my class) shit gets deeper... It came to the point(very quickly) that the work was watered down to suit the instructors lack of real teaching skill or initiative. There are at least 5-6 classes on the curriculum which I was made to buy books for and never took the course for. Teachers would not show up for class and randomly quit in between quarters(whoa)on some,"Yeah, well...do you guys know any SQL/JAVA/C++,etc.". Long story short. I was put in the position where I had to GO THE EXTRA MILE MYSELF because if you want to learn, you will. I studied C++ for 6 months before I even went to the class, any job I could(can) get even WORKING with a computer I will take. My resume probly sux, but I don't know many peeps who can physically install and configure a T1 line from start to finish and then do the SQL/ACCESS Admin thing all by themselves with an asshole boss clocking me... (but I still know those who can even do FAR more than that...;)If you love this isht, you will ALWAYS go far in some regard. I want to get paid to but somethings are more important than money/ or the next asshole boss/ to know how to learn is the most essential and priceless of the above mentioned.:D F**k EM ALL!