Educating a Sys Admin
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Education is important, but is it important in technology-related fields? The widely held opinion is that education is not as important for techies.
I recently had a friendly debate with a colleague about whether system administrators need a degree. By degree, we meant an associate's, bachelor's, master's, or other equivalent educational certificate from an accredited college or university. Spoiler: We both agreed that a degree isn't required. However, the debate didn't end there because, in my opinion, professionals who are in professional positions should have a degree.
Now, having said that, I've never heard of a degree program in system administration – at least not at the bachelor's level or beyond. Some two-year programs offer system administration as part of their IT-related curriculum, but I know of no formal computer information systems (CIS), management information systems (MIS), information systems (IS), or information technology (IT) degree programs in system administration. To be perfectly clear, we were discussing Linux system administration, but I'm not sure the reference platform matters.
My argument was that entry-level admins don't need a degree, but most companies offer tuition assistance and any non-degreed professional should be required to obtain a degree as part of the hiring contract. As I told him, I've worked with degreed and non-degreed sys admins and managers. I believe I even had senior managers or director-level managers that held no degrees. To my surprise, they got the jobs and managed (no pun intended) to maintain themselves in their respective positions. Unfortunately, during the 1990s, one could bluff one's way into a good IT or IT management job with no experience. It also helped to have friends in certain positions, but that's another story – perhaps for my memoir.
His argument was that he doesn't see a need for IT personnel at any level to have a degree. He didn't offer any explanation. I think
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