From: king@feline.uucp (KingLeon)
Subject: Re: CS Job Market: What Is The Story?
Organization: Humber College Technology Dept.
Distribution: can
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 1992 09:19:09 GMT

> In article <8181-PCNews-124beta@jacc.com> jcarroll@jacc.com (Jim Carroll) writes:
> 
> 
>    I met with some students from Humber College a few weeks ago. They echoed
>    your sentiments. I asked them what they were being taught : it was typical
>    *large data processing environment* concepts, with COBOL and RPG.
> 
>    What are companies looking for? People who can program in C; people who
>    can put together applications using API's; people who can integrate
>    Novell networks and other assorted stuff.....
> 
>    Somehow, the educational system is relying on the curriculum of the 80's
>    and Corporate Canada has moved into the 90's.
> 

Guess you were talking to the wrong students from Humber College.  I'm  a
professor in the Computer Engineering Department at Humber.  My students
program in C from the beginning of 2nd year, take courses in Real Time,
work under DOS, VMS and several flavours of Unix etc.  They also work with
networks and systems in a technical sense: programming, managing and debuggin
hardware and software (certainly trainable to Novell CNE).  We also do some 
work with API's ie: DOS interrupts, ORACLE (though we had to drop the C to
ORACLE exercise this year because of time constraints - it'll be back).
Last year we introduced the Whitewater Resource Toolkit for Windows;  this
year we did some Windows programming into the Graphics course and intro'd
RESEDIT for the Mac.   Data structures are introduced as if the student were
writing their own API for that data type.  We also have a 2nd year Software
Engineering/Systems Analysis Course as well.  So we're getting there.

    Please remember that our lead times for introducing material is different
than yours.  Texts have to be ordered half a semester before the start of
a term, and evaluated before that; material has to be tried out - a community
college has to give its students marketable skills ie:  I'm fully aware
that programming Windows/X/MAC OS/OS//2 has a 6 months learning curve -
I've got to make the student productive over a single 15 week course.
So, last year my 2nd year Software Project Course was using Unix Curses
(with some students opting for a PC windowing API knowing I did not have
time to support it) while introducing Windows to 3rd year.  Over time the
material should migrate down.

    I should add that we are buried somewhere near the back of the college
calendar -  I'm sure that staff at the registrar's office a) Think we
teach computer repair (we do - by osmosis - if a student breaks something,
finds a problem, they ask around and fix it)  b) Think of the business
division courses first.  We also have fewer students - First year has
150 applicants but they are only allowing one class of 35 students.
(Sigh )-:) However we do have openings for students in the 2nd year
because of 1st year attrition.       

BTW:  Note that you wear a label of "consultant".   In general I don't 
recommend to my students that they apply to consulting or headhunting
firms for the first two years out of school.  I feel its important to
get their feet wet as a "regular" employee in order to find out their 
abilities.  We also don't teach COBOL or business programming:  they can
use a spreadsheet and BS a Cost-Benefit Analysis but know nothing about
bookkeeping. 
Xref: sparky can.general:2245 can.politics:3897 soc.culture.canada:3509