We’ve all seen the ads. “Start training for a better career now”, “lots of opportunities in this growing field”, “Preparing you for the IT world”. Sounds exciting doesn’t it? And with some fields being fairly young, it’s hard to tell if they are really up or down.

Having been to IT school, and taken an fasttrack course at a Technology Institute in Southern Alberta, I’ve seen first hand just how much they are not doing to get us over the first leg of the battle field. Our Tech College was the ‘leader in higher learning’; a provincial funded and govt. regulated school. They boasted the highest success rate over all other Tech schools in the province; 98% of students get jobs in the first 6 months from these courses.

Before the ‘IT crash’, and having done some research into it, I attended in early 2000. The title of the course Internet/Network Administrator was great. Neither the teachers, nor the time managed for these courses made it possible to achieve this goal.

Hardware Service Support was lacking. None of us got the chance to take apart and rebuild a PC.

Oracle was a disaster from start to finish. We spent 8 days on it. (Usually a 6 month course) The teacher was poor and we never learned how to install Oracle, manage the security features, integrate the Oracle server into a networked environment.

Unix being the server market leader, (without this, you cannot call yourself a network admin.) We had just 5 days of Unix, which included 2 days of Perl programming. By the time students could download a flavor of Unix and get a dual boot working, the course was over.

Computer Networking Concepts: this was a total joke. The only hardware we got to see was in a brief trip to the server room. We all got a peek and left.

TCP/IP - This was a great class on “How to read a big book in a short time.”

There were a dozen other IT areas we touched on inside of 6 months: NT, Server, LAN solutions, HTML, Web Page Design, Java and Javascript, Flash 4, Photoshop, Novell, Object Orient & Analysis, Apache, Samba, etc.…

We didn't get the practice software we needed until the course was over and then we were just given a rebate for 3 night classes in similar training. We also had to hunt down and secure our own practicum. Not an easy thing to do when you have to spend all your time studying.

 

A picture of the books I had for a 6 month course. There still is a couple of books missing from this pile. On the top left of the pile you can see Windows NT 4 Workstation software. It was only an upgrade. All of the students had nothing to upgrade from. (I had tried to upgrade from Win 95 but you can't, it's a different filing system) so the software was useless.

They took back the NT upgrade from all of us and told the entire class they would give us the proper software.

That never happened. We never got the replacement software. Not ever.

The software you see pictured at the bottom of the books is the stuff from the back of the books. Tempware, shareware, Tryware, whatever. Mostly useless trial crap.

 

OK, I could go on forever here.

From a class of 27 and 7 months later: Three ended up driving cab, a few others were doing construction and labor type work, and some had just improved on their office skills. Five from class, got jobs in the IT world. These ‘lucky five’ were already doing IT type work for years before they came to class.

I’ve done some searching and I have found that these tech schools will give diplomas, but a lot of times these diplomas are not recognized in the work world. (The example of my class ‘INET’ is unknown to everyone except people from my school)

Now I see ads for other IT schools, or even better, courses from places like Westwood College in Aircraft Maintenance Technology. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there tens of thousands of workers laid off in the avionics field (Bombardier and Lockheed) as a result of 9-11? They are claiming there is going to be a huge shortage in the field because of retirements. I feel any positions that become available, will be taken by folks that were laid off and have years of experience.

You still interested in taking these IT courses? First off, be realistic in your goals. Have you never owned or even used a PC your whole life and now you want to be an admin? Or have you worked around PC’s for years and now you want to know how to network the two computers you have at home?

Best thing that was recommended to me was to build your own PC and install an OS (Operating System), or buy an old PC and upgrade it. A good OS to start with? Windows 95. Windows 95 is the basic OS to all the other Windows (Not DOS) OS you will use (NT, 98, ME, 2000, XP.). You can find licensed copies everywhere for cheap (yard sales, flea markets, used stores) and win 95, it’s not that demanding. You can use a cheap older PC to run it. Hook up printers, install drivers, upgrade the components, then when you get better: Learn to network 2 or 3 PC’s in your home, flash the BIOS, hack the registry, learn to write batch files in DOS. If you want to further your knowledge, install a ‘flavor’ of Unix/Linux and learn to run and network it.

Talk to the students in the course and the ones that have graduated. (We asked for names of last year’s Grad class for reference, but got no info.) Call companies and ask them you already had this course, would they hire you. What kind of experience and how much are they looking for? ( Depending on the course, it can be anywhere from 3 to 20 years.) See if the course credit is a recognized credit or ticket. Like A+, N+, MCSE, etc. Also shy away from ‘Fasttrack’ courses, or courses that offer more then 3 to 4 subjects in 6 months or less. Better yet, choose one area (like Unix/linux, or web design, or networking) and stick with it.

Lastly, you want to get into a really high paying field? Open a College for higher learning or an IT School. You don’t have to keep promises (You only will get out what you put in…) and you will make tons of money.