Re: SAGE, certification, and you

[William LeFebvre <wnl@groupsys.com>]

Bill Bogstad wrote:
> Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 12:19:39 EST
> From: Bill Bogstad <bogstad@pobox.com>
> To: William LeFebvre <wnl@groupsys.com>
> Subject: Re: SAGE, certification, and you 

> 	Yes, a college degree is helpful for many jobs and is unlikely to hurt
> much in any job.  However, what degree?

That is precisely the problem.  The number of schools which offer
curricula specifically designed for systems administration can be
counted on one hand.  This is largely due to the fact that the field
is still in its infancy, even moreso than programming, software
engineering or computer science.

> In recent reporting in the news abou
t
> the lack of skilled IT staff and the dearth of CS majors, one point which I'v
e
> seen reported (albeit rarely) is that only about 25% of people working in IT
> have a CS degree.

Is this because degrees in general are not important to IT or because
the traditional CS curriculum is largely not relevant to IT (and more
specifically to SA)?  I tend to think the latter.  There are many things
which college teaches you.  Some of them are even realted to your field
of study.  :-)  But unfortunately for systems administrators and other in
Information Technology, almost none of it is specific to the field.

> Even if you expand to include EE, CE, and similar degrees,
> I'd guess that you wouldn't find much more then 50% of working professionals
> have degrees that are remotely connected with IT.  

And compare this with other professional fields such as the engineering
disciplines (electrical, mechanical, chemical, etc.), medicine, law,
the sciences, etc.

> Now, I suppose that this
> could mean that 50% of the people working in the field are incompetent; but m
y
> personal experience is that the type of degree someone has is not that
> strongly coorrelated with their competence with IT systems.  There are even a
> fair number who have no degree at all.  I suspect that in system
> administration the percentage of working professionals with non-IT related (o
r
> no) degrees is higher; just because of the way that many people end up in
> system administration.

It is partly to do with the fact that most SAs backed in to it.  But I
also maintain that it is partly because most degreed programs are
largely irrelevant to IT and especially to systems administration.

> 	If SAGE is trying to really become a guild in order to boost the
> prestige (and incomes) of it's current members then this may not matter.
> However, I think the large group of system administrators who came to this
> field via non-traditional routes will have a problem with this.  They may not
> be members of SAGE yet, but I see no reason to alienate them.

No need for them to feel alienated.  How can they be expected to have
obtained a formal education when no mechanism existed for them to
receive one?  I learned more about Unix from the guy I shared an
office with than from any class I attended (and I was in undergraduate
and graduate studies for 9 years).

All I'm saying is that at the present time promoting the idea of a
bachelor's level systems administration curricula will do far more to
further our field as a profession than certification will.  I'm not
saying that we should completely abandon the idea of certification.  I
am saying that given the infancy of the profession, education would be
a better priority.  Again, all my personal opinion.

				William LeFebvre
				Group sys Consulting
				<wnl@groupsys.com>
				+1 770 813 3224