Re: Announcing: The IBM Customer Advisory Council for Informix

Michael Segel wrote: > DA Morgan wrote: > > For some reason your post didn't copy in to my follow up. > > Ya know, it amazes me that students get to pick and choose what goes in to > their coursework. > > I guess in a real school, where the faculty actually knows something and > does real research, they decide the course material. > > Of course they also tend to teach theory and not pander to the "latest and > greatest" hyped product. > > Sorry charlie. Its unfortunate, but your students lose. Essentially ALL courses at ALL universities are determined by the faculty. And essentially ALL students at ALL universities make choices. They are adults ... not children. Especially for my classes as the requirement is a minimum of a BA or BS degree to be accepted. If students don't want a course ... no professor is going to teach to an empty lecture hall. No doubt you think we should mandate Informix as an essential part of someone obtaining a computer science degree. I am sorry to say that is not how it works. Coursework in compter science is either theoretical or practical. The theoretical is taught for the most part in C and Java. The practical is taught in using something practical. Right now there are 2, count them one, two Informix jobs available in the entire state of Washington. Informix .......... 2 Sybase jobs ....... 17 DB2 jobs .......... 27 Oracle jobs ....... 225 SQL Server jobs ... 276 (source www.dice.com) Thus we teach courses in Oracle and SQL Server. That is how the marketplace works. It is not the students voting ... it is the corporate IT departments: And both we and the students pay attention. -- Daniel A. Morgan http://www.psoug.org damorgan@x.washington.edu (replace x with u to respond)