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Students on Fast Track changing IT landscape - Industry Trend or Event

Computing Canada - February 23, 1998

Are we creating a two-tiered IT education system? It's certainly beginning to look that way

Tere's a revolution going on in the education of people entering the professional, highly skilled positions in Information Technology. The number of graduates now coming from the Fast Track programs taking under a year is comparable to the number coming from all the two-, three- and four-year programs in the computer science and computer technology departments in Canadian universities and colleges.

The Fast Track programs are run by both private companies such as ITI and CDI, and through public institutions.

They usually take between 30 and 40 weeks to complete, emphasize training in the "hot technologies," incorporate a short work term and aim to produce workers who can hit the floor running when they start work.

In contrast to the university computer science programs, there is little about the theory of Information Technology and few non-IT courses in their curricula. They are also expensive, costing upwards of $20,000.

These programs have been in place for several years. For instance, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) first ran such programs for employment insurance claimants six years ago. Other similar programs started around the same time and they have mushroomed since then. Since there is now some track record, I was interested in how these workers had fit into the workforce. Had they stayed in IT? Were they treated differently from their fellow IT workers who had computer science degrees and computer technology diplomas? To find out, I talked to several companies in the permanent and contract placement businesses in Alberta.

In general, the Fast Track graduates get employment quickly because they have the technical skills that employers want.

The programs are providing needed staff. In the long term, there is not enough evidence to suggest that the Fast Track workers cannot compete for more senior positions with those with more IT education. I did hear concerns that some companies require a degree for more senior positions, which might exclude these graduates. However, many of the entrants into these programs already have degrees in non-IT subjects, so that this may not be a real barrier to them.

In fact, these Fast Track graduates may be the staff often identified as being the ideal entry-level workers. They have learned to think and have a general education learned through a university education. And having a technical skill makes them immediately productive.

What does the success of these programs say about our IT education system and employment in our industry? For instance, does IT "professional" employment really only need the one year of post-secondary education normally given to technicians?

Has IT "professional" employment become like real estate and insurance selling? Few people leave high school wanting to become real estate or insurance salespeople. But after a few years in the work force, many switch to these worthy occupations and build themselves successful careers. This has been the situation for the Fast Track graduates.

Are we getting into a two-tiered system for IT education -- a private one for the rich and a public one for the poor? One of Canada's key building blocks for future success is reasonably priced post-secondary education for all. If there is a real demand for graduates from these programs, why shouldn't they come out of the public purse?

Where do the two-, three- and four-year IT programs in universities and colleges now fit in? For instance, should the computer science programs be modified to two distinct streams? In one stream, the final year focuses on the same training that is now given in the Fast Track programs. The other stream would focus on the more theoretical aspects of computer science and be designed to prepare graduates for post-graduate work.

Adopting this content for the first stream would move the universities back to the curricula that many had in the early 1980s where there were many courses on different programming languages. The universities had moved away from this on the grounds there was more value in students learning the theory of languages and other academic aspects of computer science.

The success of the Fast Track programs has been a win/win/win situation for many parties. It also raises more questions than I am able to answer.

Ron Foyer is a Calgary-based consultant with an Information Systems Professional designation who specializes in project management.

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