Serendipity is on Cisco's side again. Sometimes doing things differently happens by happy accident, like the way Cisco turned the education market into a global secret weapon. Several years ago, Cisco was trying to sell routers to schools in Arizona. The educators there could afford the hardware but had no budget for staffing or upkeep. What resulted was the first Cisco Networking Academy, a program that now encompasses more than 3,300 high school and college academies in 50 states and 60 countries.
Cisco maintains an online curriculum, helps train teachers, and sets standards for graduation.
The course is four semesters in length and covers how to design, build, and maintain global computer networks. Running everywhere from Bed-Stuy to Bangladesh, the Networking Academies are wildly successful. But there's more. The Networking Academies provide a constant supply of cheap, well-trained labor to keep Cisco networks up and running. And only Cisco networks, because while networking, in general, is covered in the curriculum, the specific networking taught is highly focused on Cisco products.