Re: Sysadmin degree

[Brad Morrison <brad.morrison@sprintparanet.com>]

At 09:27 AM 2/25/98 -0800, John Sechrest made a very eloquent case for the
current state of affairs in the realm of sysadmin degrees.  Then, he queried:

>Under what circumstances could you see 
>		a) A minor in System administration

Given the necessity of BS-CS/SA degrees being extraordinarily
inter-disciplinary, I can't see this one for anyone except the incredibly
rare CS/English double-major.
	
>		b) A department of System administration

Slim and none--it's imaginable that a sub-department might exist, but not a
whole department alongside Computer Science, which often is a sub-dept
under Mathematics.

>		c) A faculty chair in System administration

Now I get the point.  This is starting to remind of the horrendous MIS
degree plans, with too many Business classes, three programming classes
(BASIC,COBOL,PL/I), and a survey Statistics class ("We'll be spending the
bulk of the semester on using our financial calculators to find the minimus
and maximus point of various functions...").  No real math, certainly no
formal logic, pretty much a weak Business degree with some weird smattering
of computer classes.  Oh, yeah, they also take a dBASE IV class (probably
MS-Access at the really hip schools).

Don't get me wrong--I'm all for this sort of thing.  My company is
sponsoring SA mentorship at the University of New Orleans in return for
tuition credits for employees who participate, and I'd love to see this in
more places.  Where, though, are you going to find a really good SA who
wants to become a college professor?
--
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
Brad Morrison: Senior Technical Analyst, Sprint Paranet
"Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater
benefit."
--Napoleon Hill