From: Jerry Kreps <jerrykreps@jlkreps.net> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 17:13:16 -0600 Message-Id: <00112917131600.30978@JLKreps> Subject: Re: [SLE] Linux Certifications On Wednesday 29 November 2000 14:08, Don Hansford wrote:
Just had to add a bit :-) As a teacher (TAFE College), I can understand where Berndt was coming from. For example, out of 12 students who are currently likely to pass the networks administration course we ran this year, I would consider employing maybe 2 as SysAdmins. 5 - 6 may be useful in a Help-Desk type situation, and the rest I wouldn't employ for love or money! But they have the piece of paper, because they could answer the required questions. Because the cost of training is so high, the training has to produce "results", so they get a raft of predictable scenarios to work with on a set schedule. Meet the (limited) criteria, and you pass. And even worse, due to the proliferation of the Politically Correct Anal-retentives, the only choice we have in marking them is "competent" or "not yet competent". What a crock! The brightest student in the class gets exactly the same mark as some bludger that has just squeezed through! Oh, for the good old days!!!!
I agree. I taught for 18 years, 8 at a private college. The PC folks are in total denial. Several things are going to happen with the 12 students you mentioned. Most will find jobs because your college will, essentially lie about their qualifications. The two, and I bet they are self-starters, will do alright. Four or five will end up on that help desk, and stay there till they quit and change fields. Four or five will be let go very quickly when it is determined that their certification doesn't express their ability or training. The employers of 8 to 10 will no longer consider TAFE college as anything more than a glorified highs school. Those 8 or 10 will blame TAFE for their failures, and they will be 50% right. At least eighty percent of the time, then, TAFE comes across as a waste of money. Bad news travels fast. The two good students have no iincentive to give TAFE credit for their own efforts. They succeded IN SPITE of TAFE. Each of the remainder will tell 10 others, blaming TAFE for unemployablility. I've seen several locak colleges go down in this area because of that problems. The might University of Nebraska has a Math dept that stinks because of PC attitudes, and employing foreign students who can't speak english or teach, as undergraduate teachers while they attend grad school. Sickens me. JLK <p> -- Scientific theories, according to Sir Karl Popper, can be "falsified," or proven wrong, by experiment. Unscientific theories -Marxist dialectical history and Freudian psychology were Popper's favorites- are formed in such a way that they cannot be falsified by data.