Our Education System Is Failing IT

Nemo the Magnificent (2786867) writes "In this guy's opinion most IT workers can't think critically. They are incapable of diagnosing a problem, developing a possible solution, and implementing it. They also have little fundamental understanding of the businesses their employers are in, which is starting to get limiting as silos are collapsing within some corporations and IT workers are being called upon to participate in broader aspects of the business. Is that what you see where you are?"

Comments

Re:It is just so horrible

[AK Marc]

It's not about the Americans being not "qualified" but that a E/CE/CS degree is irrelevant to IT. IT is, in the most general sense, best served by a logic and philosophy/psychology degree. Every problem is solved by a binary decision tree.

"The computer isn't working." Well, that's hardware or software. If hardware, it's an internal or external fault. If internal, it's a part failure or install failure. If part, replace part. If install, re-seat hardware. Most any problem is a set of questions, each one narrowing down the choices, until the answer is found. The ability to break down problems like that is logic. Knowing what to ask and how to respond is generaly from experience. Dealing with the people that are experiencing the problem, or designing something for them to use is a "soft" skill that a psychology or other "soft" degree might help best with.

There isn't a good education for IT. It's never been addressed. The few places that teach "IT" generally teach to some specific certification tests, and nothing about how to apply it.

Outsourcing kills experience

[slayer991]

It isn't education, it's the lack of experience. We've outsourced so many of the entry level jobs, where are the young people supposed to learn? That's the real cost of outsourcing...without an entry-level position and ability to learn how to troubleshoot, there's no place for kids to learn how to do their jobs. Most of the really good systems engineers I know started on the help desk, worked desk-side support and then did infrastructure support (servers/network/storage/security). They understand that their jobs still come down to delivery of solutions to the end-user. They understand that the end-user doesn't care what backend BS broke, it's just that they can't do their job. We're missing that at the mid-level...and most of the really great infrastructure people are in their 40's now.

Re:Heck yes...

[gweihir]

Indeed. There are rare islands of skill and competence, and you always find that in them, people care and actually like working with technology. But most people that go into IT today do not have what it takes and should have stayed away.