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College Students: Want To Earn More? Take a COBOL Class

Posted by Soulskill on from the lords-of-COBOL-hear-our-prayers dept.

jfruh writes: With a lot of debate over the value of a college education, here's a data point students can use: at one Texas college, students who took an elective COBOL class earned on average $10,000 more a year upon graduation than classmates who hadn't. COBOL, dropped from many curricula years ago as an outdated language, is tenaciously holding on in the industry, as many universities are belatedly starting to realize.

2 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. The UK Cobol Climate Is Very Different by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 4, Informative

    I looked in to Cobol rolls as a potential career shift as I keep reading on Slashdot how amazing a Cobol job can be...

    After a quick scan of most UK job sites for Cobol in London (where all the banks are ..) e.g.

    http://www.indeed.co.uk/Cobol-...

    Pretty much all roles are £40l-£60k a year and require some kind of real world, commercial experience with Cobol/mainframes etc etc

    That's not that exciting, The salaries are lower than equivalent positions in other areas of development. You have to work for someone like Lloyds. Chances are you'll need to wear a suit to work. Have to work in London. By definition, you're going to be supporting ancient, systems which have undergone years of maintenance by probably dozens of different developers and it's going to be super enterprisey, loaded to the gills with change control and red tape, etc etc.

    I don't get it.. sounds awful..

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    The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
  2. You can't earn a lot while working for others by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Working for others may get you a decent living, but if you really, and I mean, REALLY want to earn a lot of money, working for others won't make you rich

    I started by working for high tech companies, some decades ago. Yes, I did earn really decent wages, much better than most of my peers at that time. But I didn't stop there

    When I was working, I noticed niche markets that were not being fulfilled. I got out and started my own companies (plural) to do just that

    Some of the companies I sold to others, some I kept. A lot of people are working with me right now, but I gotta tell you, no matter how much I pay them (and yes, I do pay my co-workers very handsomely) they still do not earn as much as I

    The moral is very simple --- if you really want to be wealthy, stop being a worker, and start being an entrepreneur

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