How to get into IT

[DieScum]

OU is the gold standard for distance learning in the UK. Their fees are going up too (equiv to 5k for a years study) which seems a hell of a lot. I guess the difference is that you don't have the accommodation costs, and you can work and study at the same time.

It's interesting because at the same time more and more courses are available for free. From the best universities with the best teaching methods and teachers. If you are only interested in gaining the knowledge then these are better in many ways than any traditional uni course I have ever taken.

I can see a gap in the market for accreditation there. An enterprising university could offer budget courses where all the material and lectures are from the free open source university programs but additional assignments and exams are given by the university.

[bobspud]

This, to me at least, is the kicker.

Without an education, I would have achieved zilch in life. And my background was very poor, so I feel a deep, deep sympathy for any student today faced with a similar situation.

When you look at some of the excellent work many American Universities have done, or are in the progress of doing, in making their courses available on the Internet, I can't help but feel this has to be the future of education. In my three years at Uni., I felt the vast majority of it could have been made available on-line for a fraction of the cost and effort; sure, there are parts of all courses that can't be done this way, but much of most courses can.

I'm truly hopeful that the far more widespread use of technology will help provide quality education for all in the future. We certainly have to reverse the current trend of education being and expensive privilege available only to a select few. If we carry on like this, our country truly will be doomed.

Rant mode off.

Hunger is hunger. No amount of education can replace it. If you hadn't gone to Uni you would have found something else eventually. I too came from a poor background, I had the added handicap of a totally crap education to go with it. yet I live in a very nice house and earn more money than anyone in my family all done from the very bottom of the pile. I am not fussed about my kids attending uni and will more than likely take them to work as my assistants for experience as soon as they are legally able to work.

I agree about the online aspects of what you say, but I feel that education is no longer an expensive privilege. Any idiot can get a student loan that they will be saddled with for the rest of their lives ( wonder what will happen when more people start to make sure they can't pay them off) . Formal education today is a con. Doubly so in IT. Companies that sell expensive IT courses with the promise of a job in IT at the end get reported to trading standards as con artists, while we allow the red brick universities just down the road to tell our young that they will get nowhere without waisting 3 years and vast amounts of cash to be exactly the same as the sucker next to them when they leave...

For the average intern or grad programme recruit I come across with my clients, I think most of them were robbed.

[bobspud]

It's interesting because at the same time more and more courses are available for free. From the best universities with the best teaching methods and teachers. If you are only interested in gaining the knowledge then these are better in many ways than any traditional uni course I have ever taken.

I can see a gap in the market for accreditation there. An enterprising university could offer budget courses where all the material and lectures are from the free open source university programs but additional assignments and exams are given by the university.

What like the OU?

[DieScum]

Not quite, the OU is still expensive and produces all their own material.

When you've got Stanford, MIT, Harvard, etc putting up excellent classes for free online you'd question why someone would pay nine grand a year at Wolverhampton Poly, or however many grand at the OU, for something not as good.

[SupremeSpod]

Erm...

You don't need a degree to get a decent job in IT.

Just saying, like...

[BrilloPad]

Erm...

You don't need a degree to get a decent job in IT.

Just saying, like...

+1. I have a degree - but some of the best people I have worked with had A-levels.

[bobspud]

+1. I have a degree - but some of the best people I have worked with had A-levels.

I didn't know we'd met

[BrilloPad]

I didn't know we'd met

Indeed we have. Of course it is taken as read that there is an exception to every rule.

[bobspud]

Indeed we have. Of course it is taken as read that there is an exception to every rule.

I asked for that! Well played.