Recruiting IT Students?

spacemonk asks: "I teach at a community college and our enrollment numbers are down in our IT programs. We have found that many have the perception that there are few IT jobs. We feel this is causing many students, who might be interested in IT, to enroll in other programs. There is obviously a lot of conflicting information regarding the impact of off-shoring, and so forth, but much of what we have found indicates that the IT job market is improving, and IT is still a career that can offer job opportunities to students. For example, we have had internship opportunities that we have not been able to send candidates to, simply because we don't have the students. Needless to say, this is very frustrating. How would you honestly describe the IT job market to students considering this major? What can be done to recruit more students into IT programs?"

Re:Time to let go

[bfizzle]

The Wallstree Journal has an article titled "Google Ignites Silicon Valley Hiring Frenzy". I suspect we can expect this to spread beyond Silicon Valley

Chicken and egg experience problem

[ndogg]

I know a lot of students that are stuck in a chicken and egg experience problem: all the jobs they're looking require X number of years of experience on the job. Well, they haven't really had a job in their particular field (usually they've just been working at a restaurant, the college itself in non-field related work, or a department store).

I would bet you almost anything that you'll have students flocking to you if you state that you have entry-level/new graduate positions open.

Easy Solution

[TiggertheMad]

What can be done to recruit more students into IT programs?

Advertise in India...

Re:Sad truth is...

[Anonymous Coward]

plenty of other industries, try being an auto technician (mechanic).

Re:Training

[molog]

So you will only hire people with the technical skills you need already? I hate to break it to you, but training someone to come to work on time, and how to deal with customers is not training them. You want someone that already knows the job. You will not get that for what you are asking for. If you can not deal with the economic realities of the SV area, then perish and STFU.

Molog

Re:Don't quit your day job (yet)

[Anonymous Coward]

With Linux, at the boot menu, did you never try issuing:
mykernelimage INIT=/bin/sh?

With FreeBSD you would do it by hitting space while the system prints "Booting kernel in 10 secs..." and you will be prompted a ?. Type boot -s and press enter to enter single-user mode. You will be prompted for a shell and you will have to mount everything manually, but it's really not that hard.

I expect other UNIX systems to behave analogically.

Go read a manual!

Re:That kind of qualification smokes my baloney

[BuildGate]

>> That's exactly the kind of "qualification" that is irrelevant.

This (SSH and Telnet) is not "qualification", this is very basic knowledge. On the other hand,

>> Do you know the COM3 default base port on obsolete PCs (0x3E8, INT 4)?

This is irrelavant.

>> I'm a computer scientist. What I need to accomplish the task, I learn.

Yes, your boss will give you time to learn. But no employers on the earth will allow you to learn EVERYTHING from scratch. Got it?

You have Java experience but not C#? Ok, give you time to learn.
You have MSSQL experience but not Oracle? Ok, give you time to learn.
You have AIX expereince but not Solaris? Ok, give you time to learn.

But if you look knowing NOTHING in the interview...uhmmmm, that's still Ok, just go home and learn.

Re:Not easy coming from a UK College

[jaseuk]

I completed the same course 9 years ago and it was enough to get my first programming job and move up. A degree wasn't essential, but I'm sure if I hadn't had that first opportunity then a degree would have been "essential". It's all luck of the draw, I was employed by my IT lecturers who were setting up a startup. That kept me very occupied for 7 years and gave me some great experience in IT and management. I've now hopped over into local government where I'm Security Officer.

I'd thoroughly recommend getting into local government IT in the UK as they are usually underfunded with poorly trained "lifer" staff, yet have stupidly large WANS and a ridiculous amount of different applications to develop and support all with a relatively small actual user base (150 locations/offices, 150 servers, approx 300 applications, 2000 users, Cisco, Windows 2003, Solaris, SCO, Linux, BSD, SQL Server, Ingres, Oracle). It's certainly worth keeping an eye out for even very poorly paid low-level jobs in your local council, just be sure that they are within their IT department and not an Information Officer in an actual department. It would be very worthwhile taking on summer / work placement type stuff and I'm sure they would be receptive to this.

If you are still not getting anywhere I'd suggest getting your tesco job back and perhaps follow up with a part-time HND, make sure you take the CCNA exam if it is also offered. Also while your doing that try and get some sort of work placement.

Good luck!

Jason.

Re:That kind of qualification smokes my baloney

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so what exactly is your position here? Is it that there is no possible way that design patterns can be useful for software engineering? Because I just have to disagree with you on this point.

One case where I have found design patterns useful is in using the Mac Cocoa API. Much of this API involves GUI design, where really many of the patterns were developed. Knowing design patterns has helped me understand, use and communicate about this API. For most of the rest of the programming I do (including most of the actual work of the programs) there aren't so many applicable patterns.

I'm not going to disagree with you that software engineering tends to be faddish, or patterns are faciley substitued for analysis, or that enterprise software is bloated,or any of that. I think you are letting your bitterness for the current state of software desgn prejudice your view of a perfectly valid software engineering concept. After all, if most people weren't misusing design patterns in software design, they would probably just find something worse..

Re:Well, what kind of IT?

[Anonymous Coward]

managers who don't know the difference between a monkey and somebody who can learn
 
I believe most managers know the difference perfectly well. They just see no problem at all in replacing their monkeys when they replace the IT fads the monkeys are drilled for, with new fads and new monkeys. Seems to work, too.

In reply to the original question: your enrollment numbers will probably be highest if you offer short (but halfway intense) courses in things like C# or Python. Just remember to update your curricula every other year.