Michael Dolan Dot Com

Friday, August 11th, 2006

IBM – Pace University Partner

A while back I spoke to a group of students at Pace University here in NYC. It was interesting to go back and see what students were interested in, what they were studying, and how much Linux and open source had penetrated the classroom. I was “prebriefed” that Pace was mostly a “Windows-only” world but was surprised to find about 1/5th of the group was already playing with Linux on their own and one student was even running a skunkworks Linux cluster in the computer lab (don’t I miss college…).

Anyway, I’m a bit “biased” on this article since I’m quoted, but the reporter really seemed to get the message. It’s a local NY paper but the message is the same for anyone who has an opportunity to talk to college, high school, or even elementary school students. Many schools have teachers, administrators, and computer labs that were primarily setup/designed in a “Windows-only” world. Most of the students get trapped in this world and typically you will find a few of the top students broaden their horizons and teach themselves Linux.

It would be nice to see more universities taking the plunge, kicking Windows out of a few classes and seriously educating the next crop of talent to have skills in Linux, open source, and who understand the importance of open standards. As Linux and open technologies penetrate deeper into the IT ecosystem, we need the talent to support those implementations.

Ok, I’m done pontificating, here’s The Journal News Article – “IBM, Pace partner to boost students’ cutting-edge computer skills”