First Red Hat Academy for High School 338
FrankBama writes "As a follow-up to the story of a few days ago, Red Hat has started a program in my old hometown. The story's at the News & Record. I love this part '...this training normally would cost more than $10,000. But Weaver students can get Red Hat certification free -- and use it get a job paying more than $30,000 a year right out of high school.'"
hehehe (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to leave IT and I have several years of experience. Thanks to bootcamps certifications are no more then peaces of paper. A paper is nice but its worthless without experience.
Thats too young! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know all the shit-hot teenage geeks out there are going to think I'm out of line for saying this (especially when they feel they are ready to take on the world). I'd recommend they go to University and expand their minds a bit even if they feel it is below them or that they wouldn't learn anything. Don't rush into being a wage-slave, kiddies, its not half as much fun as you think it is.
Reminds me of my time in High School! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I took that seriously, and made damn sure that I *knew* to enter the proper date when Appleworks was starting up, and that I *had* to make sure I had the right disks in the drives.
(Interesting note: Even in Word 2002, CONTROL-B and CONTROL-L are for bold and underlining, respectively)
Of course, we all learned how to use Apple DOS (both 3.3 and ProDOS) - we^H^Hthe rest of the class did this for a solid month, during which time I was permitted to play Choplifter, Cannonball Blitz, and Ultima V because I already knew how to use Dos... which *really* pissed the rest of the class off...
Anyway, to get to my point, I wonder how relavent the things that they learn now will be a few years after they graduate - and I hope it is *concepts* that they learn, instead of cookie cutter "type CATALOG to see a what's on your disk, insert your disk and type PR#6 to start AppleWorks" stuff...
-RickTheWizKid
(Open-Apple-S to save, Open-Apple-P to print)
But if Microsoft were to do such a thing..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, most of the H.S.-diploma-only folks I've ever dealt with in the professional world have chips on their shoulders. Ten times worse than those who went to Ivy League schools, in fact.
Nutrition and dirt... (Score:5, Insightful)
But Weaver students can get Red Hat certification free -- and use it get a job paying more than $30,000 a year right out of high school.'
Oh, sweet $DEITY. They could spend time taking college classes in high school, learning marketable skills that aren't tied to a particular manufacturer's contrivances of what a computer operating system should look and act like, learning to code, READING BOOKS, and end up far valuable "just out of high school" than a little RedHat, Cisco, or Microsoft drone. It seems a little premature (high school) to be focusing so heavily on something so specialized instead of gaining an appreciation and general understanding of computing.
The kids that come out of these programs (I've got a "Cisco Academy" at a high school close by that I work with, and know people who teach at another high school that's been doing CompTIA "A+" training, and I've gotten to be around some of these kids) are mostly useless drones. The kids that really have potential are the ones that hack around on their own, have a genuine interest, and make something of themselves on their own. I'd take one (1) of them to ten (10) of these "cookie cutter kids". The training is just too specialized-- they can't handle something that wasn't "in the book".
Don't get me wrong-- I think it's great that schools are expanding their technical training-- but don't expect these kids to be useful for much other than what they've been "trained" for when they get done.
Those Cisco kiddies can sure make the patch cables, though. Snip-snip, crimp-crimp!
Same stuff...different decade (Score:2, Insightful)
One big difference though is the lack of unions in IT. Even through crappy economic times and corporate changes my father and friends from high school have continued to do alright--not great, but alright.
Re:Thats too young! (Score:5, Insightful)
This applies especially to positions such as Systems Administration where experience, wisdom and maturity are an absolute necessity.
Ahh-- but the only true wisdom and experience comes from actually doing the work. Being a "junior" sysadmin or an intern under good people is the best training anybody can get. I try to take on at least one (1) intern every summer, and I encourage anybody who wants to see the median level of "suck" in our job field get lower to do the same...
That is, unless you are a sucky sysadmin to start with... *smirk*
Re:Presumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
Not nearly as bad though.
Great, but kids - please go to college (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope that the school is encouraging the kids to use this new knowlege as a jumpstart into college. Kids: $30,000 a year may sound like a lot when you're living with your parents but it's nothing once you have a mortgage and hungry mouths to feed! With a college degree you can command a much higher salary [1].
A college placement is much easier to come by if you can say you obtained Linux certs in school and it'll give you a huge advantage over the other students.
In writing this comment I have had one thought though. When are High Schools going to start teaching kids how to read, write and do arithmetic? I know plenty of people WITH high school dipolmas who can't spell, can barely read and need a calculator for basic arithmetic.
[1] I'm also hoping that by the time current high school students graduate college the economical climate will have improved and jobs will become available for them.
Re:$30,000 a year (Score:2, Insightful)
$30k per year with $0 direct education costs
$50k pery year with $bigint direct education cost.
Hrm. Doesn't sound that bad to me.
Re:$30,000 a year Can I have what you are smoking (Score:3, Insightful)
There are very few jobs that you get right out of college paying 50k a year, I don't care what your GPA was, if you were student body pres, or blew the dean of men.
I have 13 years tech experience, plus an IS degree, and two years doing tech work in Latin America(speak fluent spanish) I just got a job pulling 42 grand a year with full benefits. AND I AM DAMN GLAD OF IT. The job is in Louisiana where the cost of living is dirt ass cheap, so it is like 55 any where else.
My friends who become engineers all, got jobs making 25-30k when they started out, and these are guys with GPAS from great school.
A college degree does not guarantee you a 50k job, nor does a masters.
And I hate to say it, but all my jobs looked at past projects and years on the job. Though the degree does open a lotta doors.
A college graduate with a good 8 years under his built might make 50.
You need a reality check.
Puto
Re:But if Microsoft were to do such a thing..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is a molopolist, it used or attempted to use its molopoly in operating systems to gain additional monopolies and destroy competitors.
Redhat didn't.
Think of it like a prison record: would you trust high schoolers with a convicted (and largely unrepentant) criminal?
-dameron
high school programs are bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
the instructor was the auto teacher who went through a 6 week course to teach a 2 year program. Any time a student had a question, the teacher didn't have a clue. After 2 years, not a single student was able to pass the certification test, or even think it was worth it to try.
I got a part time job working the help desk at a local ISP/website development/network administration company my senior year. after working there for 4 months i knew more about router configurations than any of my friends in the 'holy' Cisco program. You can see why i feel highschool programs are bullshit now.
Applying this to the Red Hat situation, Unless red hat hired and is paying the instructor, its going to be some math teacher, or shop teacher who got a book and a boot camp and he/she will be lost and the kids' time would be better spent reading stuff off of the internet durning a study hall.
Re:Nice that it's free for the students... (Score:3, Insightful)
You probably could. If you had a good understanding of systems administration in general. They wont. They'll have a bunch of general knowledge about how linux works and what some of the config files are for. If they're lucky they'll get to sit at a help desk. If they stick with the high school education alone and put in enough years, the annual cost of living increase might get them to 30k.
This is a good learning base to move on to college, but nothing short of going to work for your dad is going to get you 30k as a 'redhad administrator' out of high school.
Sounds like the Vegas Effect (Score:3, Insightful)
Why, when you get out of H.S. and work 4 years starting at $30K you still make more than your college counterpart in the long run?
Re:Thats too young! (Score:2, Insightful)
I know lots of adults that don't have the intellectual maturity to function in a corporate world, so there goes that idea...
I will admit I wasn't the most mature person right out of high school, but I had a full time sys admin job. If I could have gotten training in high school like this, I would have jumped right on it.
Believe it or not, spending 4-5 years in college isn't an option for everyone. Public high school is free (other than paying your taxes...) If we can help students be more productive right out of high school, I'm all for it!
Not to mention, you might turn on a few students to a field they had never thought of. The exposure in high school is a great idea.
Am I wildly jaded (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$30,000 a year Can I have what you are smoking (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it does not guarantee anything. On the other hand, should you find a job in some engineering fields on graduation, the average starting salary IS $50K. For example, the AICHE reports that the 2002 average starting salary for various engineering professions was:
* Chemical Engineering: $51,254
* Electrical Engineering: $50,387
* Mechanical Engineering: $48,654
A college graduate with a good 8 years under his built might make 50.
After 8 years of experience most engineers have been promoted twice and would expect a 30% increment at least over a fresh out of college employee. That would put such a person the the range of $65-70K.
Re:Thats too young! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd have to agree with this. I work with the sysadmin at my school. A fair portion of the class time I work with him is spent fixing all the various problems pertaining to school computers / printers / network. That period is probably where I learn the most each day, much more than in Calc 3. Odd how the highest level math offered in the school seems less useful than those menial computer-fixing jobs.
Re:Reminds me of my time in High School! (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I took that seriously, and made damn sure that I *knew* to enter the proper date when Appleworks was starting up, and that I *had* to make sure I had the right disks in the drives.
---snip
---snip
Anyway, to get to my point, I wonder how relavent the things that they learn now will be a few years after they graduate - and I hope it is *concepts* that they learn, instead of cookie cutter "type CATALOG to see a what's on your disk, insert your disk and type PR#6 to start AppleWorks" stuff...
---snip
I'm totally with you, the way things are "taught" is a big pet peeve of mine.
My school had a similar class to the one you describe, but for various reasons I never found my way into it. I was fortunate enough to have an Apple IIe of my own at home, with a few random reference books for various things. Instead of the rote class learning, I was teaching myself 6502 assembly (because I had a reference to 6502 opcodes and had found a way to get myself into the miniassember that came with Integer Basic), and learning the various subroutines that could be called in DOS 3.3. When I got my hands on 3.3E by begging and stealing from our nazi computer "teacher" at my elementary school, I remember the joy of decompiling 20 instructions at a time to get glimmer of what the minor differences were in the code. As time went on, I taught myself how to automate writing much of my assembly by using WPL, a very under-appreciated scripting language internal to AppleWriter II (well, Don Lancaster knew how good it is). Later, (once I had gotten my hands on the reference books) I taught myself the in's and outs of high level languages like Integer Basic and Applesoft; when I managed to sneak off with a copy of Apple Logo, I learned everything I could about that, because "it's fun to learn what makes things tick!"....meanwhile, the class learned the syntax of various DOS 3.3 commands.
Anyway, I took nothing very seriously, at that formative age (10 years old) I had found a toy that had limitless possibilities, that could be reprogrammed to perform any task you could conceive. The class was being taught how to operate a tool within narrow confines of specific pre-decided tasks.
Now, almost 15 years later, what I learned then on that Apple IIe was invaluable; what I learned that was truly valuable was not how to interface with a disk ii controller and count clock cycles for timing in my ML loops, it was that I learned something about learning. The class had learned how to be told what to do.
The most valuable thing that IIe taught me is that you are fooling yourself if you tell yourself you "know" everything about a subject. When people say they "knew" DOS 3.3 because typing "catalog
The next most valuable thing I discovered was how to pull something apart and learn how it works, without a master plan in front of you. Too many people have been taught to "learn" by being shown an example, and then emulating. It's faster, it get's the grade school concert band able to push out a few notes in time for their parents to be proud during the winter concert, but rote knowledge is a poor subsititue for actual understanding. Type "pr#6" to boot off the floppy in drive 1, slot 6...does that actually teach you anything about what is going on, or are you just mechanically following directions? When all you learn is to follow directions, inovating when given an unexpected problem is very difficult. When you understand what is happening, you give yourself many more choices, and much more control.
Anyhow, I learned many of the same subjects that the computer class at my grade school set out to learn. But I suspect that over time I got much more out of my learning experience than those students did, simply because of the way they were forced to learn.
To make this slightly on-topic, does anyone know how the Redhat classes are taught? Do the teach you think unix, or do they teach you the syntax of commands?
case study (Score:3, Insightful)
At age 9 I mowed 3-4 lawns a day for a summer and bought my first computer for $400. I hacked on it 24/7. It has been to my benefit, IMO, that I have never been big on games, because boy are they a waste of time. I did a lot of QBASIC.
I got my first job at a small (10 person) startup IT consulting firm at age 15, broke all child labor laws working 60-80 hrs a week (by choice mind you), and made $8/hr. My 1 year raise was $.25/hr. A few months later, I got knocked up to $9/hr. During this time I did mainly VB programming. At this point, the company fired their router guy, so I jumped right in and filled the gap. I soon obtained my CCNA and soon after ask for, and recieved, a salary of $32,000, before my 17th birthday.
I then obtained my MCP because we were a Windows shop. I was still at this point 50/50 programmer/tech. I couldn't decide what my pasion was for. IT company started going downhill, a few days before my 19th bday I baled and got a job at a financial institution - titled 'network technician' on a team of about 4 techs, however I am the network administrator by any definition, I have the responsibility (but not the title) of the security administrator, as well as Exchange administrator (to my agony). I just obtained my MCSA as part of my job objectives for the last 6 month period. At this point I am making $42,000.
I took 12 credit hours at a community college back when I was 16, and am realizing now that especially in the field of network security a degree is important not just for the piece of paper to show the suits, but anyone really does benefit from the well-rounded education you get along the way. I intend to continue attending university part time for as long as it takes. I love my job, my hobby. I am now purchasing a house, enjoying being married, and looking forward to every day I get to go to work, and excited that I have the oppourtunity continue my college education...
Re:Thats too young! (Score:2, Insightful)
Unix takes time and experience to learn it effectively. I was in high school not too long ago (almost 4 years) and I know they won't teach Unix. The cirriculum will consist of exactly what is needed to know to pass the test.
I have met folks who have CCNA's from High School Tech-prep programs...and I wouldn't trust them with two WinXP systems, a hub and two network cables. To stump them, I would ask them what "sh ru" did or what the difference was between a Router and a Layer 3 Switch.
I wouldn't take it (Score:1, Insightful)
Script Kiddy H.S. (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, however, nobody is going to pay an 18 year old $30k/yr. It wasnt until recently that I have been able to make good money, because most corporate people dont promote or pay well "youngsters" (unless they are bullshitters with an MBA). Lucky for me the men in my family get grey hair early.
Re:Shop/Trades (Score:4, Insightful)
Banished to the domain? Hardly.. Have you any idea what a master plumber or carpenter makes? You're a fool for looking down your nose at people who work with their hands for a living.
You can get a job in IT with HS education. But chances are that 30k job will pay 30k for the rest of your life.
If you want a future out of high school, you're better off as a tradesman.
Besides, people will always need carpenters, contractors, plumbers and electricians. The wont always need a RHCE
Re:Too young? (Score:2, Insightful)
I really resent your comments. Certainly I do not know what every part of my system is doing 100% of the time, nor should I have to know. The idea is to know about one area, or one set of areas and have a good understanding of that component. I know enough about how my system works to use it in the ways I want to and if I don't I go lean more about it so I can make it happen. However, are script kiddies module owners for open-source software projects? Do script kiddies spend the weekend building tools to assist with the development of perl6 (not a language war flame)? I think not.
You seem to be making baseless accusiations with absolutely no proof. Personally, I find technical theater to be facinating and do not see how that reflects on my social skills or my ability to use technology.
Please try not to post flames just for the sake of attacking random innocent people. Get to know someone, then determine what skills they may or may not have.
Re:hehehe (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not quite true for one reason.
Money.
Kids right out of highschool are willing to work for less than an employer would have to pay someone with a degree or someone with years of experience, or both. Different markets are different and some hungry professional might take a job for $23k a year but a 18 year old is a lot more likely to take that job, expecially when it's offered at $11 an hour or so... Tons more than flipping burgers.
A piece of paper? (Score:5, Insightful)
$30k??? (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like a good way for a lot of promising young kids to get absolutely screwed (and not in the good way that most of them wouldn't mind).
Re:Presumptions (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people, if you're an experienced systems administrator who's willing to work for $30,000 a year...
So just how good is this? (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, does the Red Hat certification training provide reasonably bias-free instruction in regards to different *NIXen?
The second is far more relevant then the first, but I'm curious about both.
Re:At my high school (Score:5, Insightful)
The teachers are telling the kids how they can make $40k right out of high school. I got my CCNA thru their school program as a senior
let me tell you, it is total BULLSHIT. 90% of the people who actually passed the cert (which was only ~50% of the class, me included) will never touch a router at least not for another 5 years. and they WONT find a $40k job out of high school working on cisco equipment, especially with the current IT economy
I was lucky and landed a job out of high school in 2000 when the economy was still decent, I work as a mainframe computer and high-end 64-bit unix machine operator in a large computer datacenter (also the webmaster for our datacenter). I was the last person they hired without a degree, now they wont even consider u unless you have a degree AND working IT experience. CCNA's are now worthless thanks to cisco flooding the market with no-knowledge high school punks who think they are the shit because they vaguely know what "config t" is
Re:Nice that it's free for the students... (Score:2, Insightful)