From: Jon Paris
If they were thinking this far ahead then how do you explain why they
are all seeking soft degrees in the liberal arts arena? The kids are
not _just_ abandoning Comp-Sci - they are abandoning _all_ science
related programs. Enrollment is down in all of them. The threat of
off-shoring doesn't explain that.
Actually, I don't much care about the kids going to University. Those have
never been the primary source of programmers in the midrange market. They
may well be for the sexy career paths like game programming, but I've NEVER
met someone who went to college to become an ERP programmer.
I'm worried about the technical colleges such as DeVry. Just recently,
DeVry was very gung ho about a System i curriculum, but unfortunately a
tepid turnout from the community may have turned them off. A lot of the
blame for that can be laid directly at the feet of the business community
and the local user group, but the overall cycle is still there. A kid
realizes he's not going to be a surgeon, so the next best thing used to be
going to the local technical college. If there's no System i curriculum
there, or if the industry sucks in general, then there are no newbie
programmers.
Anyway - this debate is going nowhere as it does every time it occurs.
Not true, we've actually addressed some of the more serious issues,
especially the rampant abuse of the visa system. The lack of new
programmers is only a small portion of the issue. The bigger and most
undeniable fact is that outsourcing just transfers wealth out of the
American middle class to outsourcing companies (and to a small degree the
employees of those corporations) and to the primary shareholders of
multinational companies. It's a short term redistribution at best, since it
is the disposable income of the American middle class that has supported a
significant segment of the growth of the world's economy in the first place.
It's simple math that redistributing the wealth of some 300 million people
to over six BILLION people while at the same time destroying the largest
consumer market in the world is going to do nothing except raise the number
of people in substandard living conditions.
But hey, that's what happens when common sense and globalism collide.
Joe
midrange.com
