Red Hat Certification Program For Education

Frank Caviggia writes "The Inquirer has a story up about Red Hat providing educational institutions with the ability to certify students as Red Hat Certified Technicians (RHCT) and Red Hat Certified Engineers (RCHE) how this will relate to Microsoft's MSCE program. You can find the story here. Red Hat has more information on the program here."

How practical though?

[jorupp]

They want to create a certification comparable to the MSCE? Gee... then we'll have have all these people with just a RHCT or RCHE admining linux boxes, and we'll have as many problems (DDOS zombies, etc.) as with the MCSEs admining windows boxes.

Certifications will help, but then people will think that that certification is _all_ that is needed to admin a linux box.

Will this be the same thing?

[MyPantsAreOnFire!]

Will this turn into the same repetetive cash cow that the MCSE is? Will certified engineers have to get a new certification on every new release of the kernel? what about major releases?

I hope they realize that one of the major flaws with microsoft's certification is the necessity to get re-certified when a poorly-done ripoff of the previous operating system is released.

Yay!

[stratjakt]

Now all the wagon jumping paper tigers that swamped the IT world can move to Linux.

A large part of the state of job opportunities in the tech sector are the 5000 absolutely unqualified applicants for every job.

Pointy haired bosses don't know a good coder from a hole in the ground, so they hire the janitor-cum-MCP with the $20,000 salary expectation.

There are a few places left that look for someone who can do the job, and do it well, and don't give a hoot about alphabet soup and buzzwords in the resume.. I'm fortunate enough to have found one of them.

I should probably get back to work, I've wasted too much time here today.

Re:Havent we learned??

[nightsweat]

You miss the point.

This is a brilliant move on the part of Red Hat.

Certification serves two main purposes.
First, it invests technical pros in your product. If a person has worked for weeks or months to learn the arcana necessary to support Red Hat, what arethey going to suggest when management comes to them asking for an OS recommendation? This invested loyalty is a good part of what keeps MS shops MS shops.
Second, certification is a warm fuzzy that lets potential corporate adopters know that there will be talent for them to draw on. IT might be expensive now, but the cost will drop as geeks get run through the Cert mill.

This will end up being a Martha Stewart sized Good Thing.

How it relates.

[FreeLinux]

It means that there will now be a flood of "Paper RHCEs" just as was the case with the MCSEs. But there will be a big difference.

The difference will be that few Slashdotters will ridicule the RHCEs as they have done the MCSEs. And, the Slashdotters that do ridicule them will be classified as jealous of the certification, since they do not have one. Then they will be modded down to minus one, much as I suspect this post will be.

Lets just HOPE

[alexborges]

That universities learn from the free software movement that knowledge is something that they can generate. I dont see whatsoever any value in giving any kind of certification to a student that is not involved in important admin tasks in a real datacenter. Come on, she'll go into the cert, finish it. Oh cool its friday! Go to a rave and kill most the synaptic connections given by the cert in the first two hours. With some luck (and here is the upside), our very hypothetical geek will get laid and on and on and on until they finish their degree....

Certs provide no value to kids in school. Abstract math, the study of algorithms, the understanding of the engeneering process behinf organizations like IETF, W3C do provide it....quit loosing time colleges, educate ppl. Certs are for lame professionals that lost the next wave (which is most of us, at some point anyway).

Other certifications...

[exhilaration]

For those interested in certifications, also take a look at Linux+ [comptia.com] from CompTIA (the A+ folks). I plan to take the exam soon, and frankly, it looks pretty easy.

You guys can bash certifications left and right, but to a new graduate desperately looking for a job, they can prove useful. The job market is so bad at the moment that recent college graduates applying for entry-level positions are competing with people that have decades of experience. If having "RHCT" or "RCHE" on your resume can help, it's worth investing a couple of hundred bucks into it.

Let's start our own. Who's with me?

[Billy the Mountain]

Certification has pluses and minuses for employees and employers alike, the real winners turn out to be the Cerifying organization. So, why not? Let's start "Billy The Mountain's Certified Information Technology Professional" program. "What, you say you're not BTMCITP? Gedowwdahea!"

Step 1. We'll charge $400 a pop, with a $50 annual maint. fee

Step 2. ????

Step 3. Marvel at how it's just like were printing our own money.

BTM

take out 'Engineer' from these titles

[rob-fu]

I thought engineering was something you had to go to college for, not some 'school' in a strip mall that does computer 'certs'.

The Red Hat benefits

[frankthechicken]

Theres an interesting comaprison between the benfefits [redhat.com] that Red Hat perceives that can be gained through taking their course and Microsofts [microsoft.com] idea of the benefits you get for its MCSE.

Its an interesting contrast of philosophys, Red Hat stresses its IT benefits, whereas Microsoft seems to stress the special offers that come free with the course.

Apparently you get a free badge with the Microsoft cereal, I think I know which one I'm going to be buying.

Same as a degree

[www.sorehands.com]

This is the same type of issue as people with degrees.

A person with a BSCS may be able to program a 2000 line program, but give them a problem to fix on a 200,000 program and they are dead.

All a degree or certification does is state that the person has taken course work and exams that show they they knew some knowledge at some point. It is not an end-all-be-all determination of skill. It is only one aspect to look at when determining a persons ability.

Paper Certs

[NTT]

There was a time when being an MCP/MSCE *actually* was worthwhile. Before every fly-by-night tech education company realized they could make a buck off the courseware and flooded the market with paper-cert toting meta-geeks. I see this as a good thing. Anything that RH does to expand awareness of its products ultimately helps the whole OSS & FSF idealogies through a trickle down effect.

Re:Havent we learned??

[orthogonal]

Certification serves two main purposes.
First, it invests technical pros in your product. If a person has worked for weeks or months to learn the arcana necessary to support Red Hat, what arethey going to suggest when management comes to them asking for an OS recommendation? This invested loyalty is a good part of what keeps MS shops MS shops.

Great, instead of recommending Red Hat because they honestly believe it's the best answer, they'll be pimping it to protect their paychecks.

"Sure enough, boss! Red Hat's the best solution for our embedded OS. Works great on toasters. And it's the most secure and stable too! Let's use it for all mission critical systems. And it's great for new users and long time linux geeks. You betcha, boss!"

Is it because you love linux or because you hate Microsoft that you've decided the ends justify the means?

I'm reminded of a Russian(?) aphorism: "Choose your enemies well, because you'll become them."

Certification speaks to the HR Rep.

[stefanlasiewski]

Certifications like the CompTIA certs do not carry much value to techies, but may mean alot to that HR rep.

If you don't have the right alphabet soup at the top of your resume, that HR person may very well throw away your resume, even if you have years of experience.

That said, I don't have a certification, and I still don't have a job after looking since November. I'm looking into getting a RHCE and CompTIA to help me get past the HR level.

Re:Same as a degree

[captain_craptacular]

I beg to differ. A person with a BSCS should have a good enough understanding of the fundamentals of programming and debugging "in the large" to track down and fix a problem in any sized program. It's all about knowing how to go about it, and thats what you should learn in a BS program.

I also find it rather disturbing that you compare a BSCS to a certification program that takes somewhere between a couple weeks and a couple months to get. I'll hire a BSCS over a any day if thats the only fundamental difference.

Re:Havent we learned??

[stand]

THAT is what I would like to see a certification treated as...a minimum requirement for evaluation.

I agree that this is all that a certification should be worth as they exist now, but I think that a certification *should* mean more. There are two things that make a certification more valid, in my eyes:

1. It needs to be administered by a disinterested third party. Otherwise, it's just a means for company x to increase sales by creating its own extended (unpaid) employee base. Most certifications (unfortunately) are disqualified on this count.
2. It needs to have an element of peer review. I can easily peg a stranger who claims to have a skill that is one of my specialties as a pretender after just 5 minutes of talking with him/her. Think of your certification as a membership card to an exclusive club. In order to get in, in addition to passing some tests or whatever, I should be interviewed and approved by a minimum number of current members. Got to avoid the Old Boys network though, that's hard.

Re:Wow...

[bluesoul88]

Well, I'll cover some ground already mentioned and say that for someone coming out of high-school or college and in need of a Systems job, either MCSE or RHCE could be just what the doctor ordered. I think I heard $3200 overall for becoming an RHCE (If you get it on your first try, that is). Sure, it's a little steep, but it's probably one of the best investments towards your future you could make.

Re:Same as a degree

[luzrek]

Degree's and Certs are fundamentally different. The process of getting a degree (for a good student at a good school) should impart general knowledge that will be applicable to a wide variety of problems in a particular field granting a base from which the degree holder can use to solve problems well into the future. In contrast a certification shows that the certification holder can solve a particular set of problems or accomplish a particular set of tasks. Just having a BSCS does not mean you would make a good (or even competant) Linux administrator, C programmer, or database administrator (MLS/MIS for that). It means that you will be able to apply your general knowledge to learn a specific skill set more quickly. Therefore, the cert is the only thing that gaurantees a new hire has a particular skill.

IMO the value of a comuter science degree is questionable. It is much better to have someone with specific knowledge who just happens to know how to program. Why do you think so many programmers have scientists, artists, doctors, lawyers, and accountants as their ultimate bosses? Because programming for programming's sake is a very limited business.