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The Case for Radically New IT Training

Terry Critchley

This blog presents the case for a radical new approach to basic information technology (IT) education. This conclusion is based on a study of courses and other forms of IT education which purport to cover IT "fundamentals." It is based on my own decades of IT experience and dogma-free research into current IT literature and media.

Information technology training occurs in numerous forms from computer science (CS) courses, as taught in schools and universities, to other eclectic ones and PC-oriented versions of the computing world. I maintain that these courses, especially CS ones, do not stack up to the needs of the fluid, modern IT as practiced in the workplace, especially the enterprise. My reasoning is as follows:

1. There is, and has been for over two decades, an IT skills shortage which is at its peak today (any day).

2. Practically the only source of CS skills are the schools and universities and, of the CS graduates, over half do not stay in the IT job they were hired for. CS is grossly understaffed with females and a survey I created for the CAS (computing at school) group unearthed major reasons for this female reluctance as: too geekish and theoretical, boring and needs great maths skills. Neither is true of the IT world I inhabited and which I observe and write about today.

3. CS and other curricula, many of which I have studied, do not match even the keywords which typify modern IT as practiced in the workplace. This can be shown by comparing any existing curriculum with the attached keyword list which typifies modern IT. This list has been verified as representative of modern IT by four of my peers in IT.

4. Fully 70% of IT projects fail in degrees from not quite what I wanted to total disaster. This failure rate applies to the more specific area of digital transformation and legacy modernization. In short, nearly every IT activity.

As a result, most businesses are reliant on computers (digital) in a range of ways from their being necessary for us to function to mission critical. This reliance is badly hampered by the drawbacks in skills available, as discussed above.

A Solution to This Dilemma

There are a few possible solutions:

1. Do nothing and carry on as usual — the it'll be alright on the night solution

2. Soldier on as usual but get more and more people to study CS and undertake other versions of IT training — the bang your head against the wall solution

3. Devise new IT training, along with an IT apprenticeship, which is apposite the current IT demanded in the workplace; make it accessible by means other than expensive 3- or 4-year university courses; make it easily updated as technology changes; and to widen the demography, age-independent, of new IT training entrants. These needs mandate an online course(s).

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

The Case for Radically New IT Training

Terry Critchley

This blog presents the case for a radical new approach to basic information technology (IT) education. This conclusion is based on a study of courses and other forms of IT education which purport to cover IT "fundamentals." It is based on my own decades of IT experience and dogma-free research into current IT literature and media.

Information technology training occurs in numerous forms from computer science (CS) courses, as taught in schools and universities, to other eclectic ones and PC-oriented versions of the computing world. I maintain that these courses, especially CS ones, do not stack up to the needs of the fluid, modern IT as practiced in the workplace, especially the enterprise. My reasoning is as follows:

1. There is, and has been for over two decades, an IT skills shortage which is at its peak today (any day).

2. Practically the only source of CS skills are the schools and universities and, of the CS graduates, over half do not stay in the IT job they were hired for. CS is grossly understaffed with females and a survey I created for the CAS (computing at school) group unearthed major reasons for this female reluctance as: too geekish and theoretical, boring and needs great maths skills. Neither is true of the IT world I inhabited and which I observe and write about today.

3. CS and other curricula, many of which I have studied, do not match even the keywords which typify modern IT as practiced in the workplace. This can be shown by comparing any existing curriculum with the attached keyword list which typifies modern IT. This list has been verified as representative of modern IT by four of my peers in IT.

4. Fully 70% of IT projects fail in degrees from not quite what I wanted to total disaster. This failure rate applies to the more specific area of digital transformation and legacy modernization. In short, nearly every IT activity.

As a result, most businesses are reliant on computers (digital) in a range of ways from their being necessary for us to function to mission critical. This reliance is badly hampered by the drawbacks in skills available, as discussed above.

A Solution to This Dilemma

There are a few possible solutions:

1. Do nothing and carry on as usual — the it'll be alright on the night solution

2. Soldier on as usual but get more and more people to study CS and undertake other versions of IT training — the bang your head against the wall solution

3. Devise new IT training, along with an IT apprenticeship, which is apposite the current IT demanded in the workplace; make it accessible by means other than expensive 3- or 4-year university courses; make it easily updated as technology changes; and to widen the demography, age-independent, of new IT training entrants. These needs mandate an online course(s).

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...