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How Computer Science Education Got Practical (Again)
jfruh writes: In the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of young people who had grown up tinkering with PCs hit college and dove into curricula designed around the vague notion that they might want to "do something with computers." Today, computer science education is a lot more practical — though in many ways that's just going back to the discipline's roots. As Christopher Mims put it in the Wall Street Journal, "we've entered an age in which demanding that every programmer has a degree is like asking every bricklayer to have a background in architectural engineering."
We have hired, and let go, 3 "computer science" majors who didn't know how to calculate a range of IPs given a single IP and a netmask.
CS != IT. This makes as much sense as complaining that your car mechanic knows nothing about plumbing. If you want a sysadmin, then hire a sysadmin. But that is not what a CS grad is, or should be.
You should also change your hiring practices. If there are basic skills that you require, you should test for that during the interview process. By failing to do that, you are wasting your time and theirs. Letting one slip through may be excusable, but three in a row is a sign of serious dysfunction.