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Education IBM News

IBM High School To Churn Out IT Pros 34

Posted by samzenpus from the these-grades-brought-to-you-by-Pepsi dept.
theodp writes "This week, NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the City University of New York and IBM are creating a computer science-focused school in the city that will span grades 9-14 (students leave with an associate's degree). Graduates who pass muster will reportedly be first in line for jobs at IBM. 'The idea is to create a new [educational] model for science, technology, engineering, and math — areas where companies are aggressively hiring,' explained IBM's Stanley Litow. 'If you look at hiring requirements, you won't see a huge amount of difference in a lot of entry-level IT jobs.' No word yet on the school colors or whether a uniform will be required. IBM is giving the city $250,000 to create the school, which might have looked pretty generous if that Zuckerberg kid hadn't upped the ante with his $100,000,000 donation."
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IBM High School To Churn Out IT Pros More

IBM High School To Churn Out IT Pros

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  • The Cynical Reply (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Sunday October 03, 2010 @05:41PM (#33779104)
    Given the recent history of IBM and other major corporations and their aggressive outsourcing of formerly well paying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) jobs, ironically the very sort of jobs that Obama is desperately trying to promote amongst America's brightest high school students, why should we accept their PR crap without looking at what they really want. No doubt IBM is hoping to use and then discard bright high school students, taking advantage of their brilliance and naivete about the real world to squeeze lots of low cost work out of them before burning them out and discarding them. How are we supposed to get bright high school students excited about the years of schooling and study required to get a STEM job only to finish years later and find that no job is waiting for them? Surely these bright high school students can see through this charade? Well, one can hope anyway. IBM and the others have much work to do if they are to regain the trust of perspective science and technology students. Perhaps if they are wise, and I'm not holding my breath, they can start here by promising not to use and then discard these bright students as they have been known to do with their present employees; loyalty is a two way street after all.

    • You don't even have to go that far to be cynical about IBM. IBM is buying for a piddling $250,000 an entire school to train new hires for it for however many years IBM wants. That school will cost tens of millions to start up and operate. $250,000 is less than how much IBM spends in HR expenses in a single year finding the number of people it might hire in a single year from that school.

      It's a huge subsidy to IBM, for which IBM gets the reputation of "saving NYC schools". Bloomberg is the ultimate corporati

    • Actually this is a brilliant move on IBM's part. They can train high school students and then employ them at minimum wage here in the US. The technically trained high school students can do some of the work that engineers are hired for in India and China and cost even less! Plus there will be lower coordination costs and managers won't have to get up at ridiculous hours for conference calls, and IBM can pretend that they are a US company that is supporting the US economy. It's a win-win situation for the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RMH101 ( 636144 )
      ..and IBM already has a uniform. It's a blue shirt, black suit trousers and shoes, a tie and a defeated expression. Seriously, go watch outside an IBM Global Services office at lunchtime and count the number of guys who *don't* wear this. I still have half a dozen shirts in the wardrobe from my time inside..

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ananthap ( 971180 )
      In their race to get bonded labour, IBM will ensure that the dumbing down of educational standards is intitutionalised. The same thing is happening in my country (India). In order to get engineers and science graduates ready for the market or "customer facing" as these companies (and their Indian subsidaries) call it, these companies pay money to the schools to teach their subjects only. Thus they turn out hacks and not computer science graduates who understand general principles and theories. Remember that

  • Good thing he woke up to allow comments on this story.

  • Corporations teaching kids... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drsquare ( 530038 ) on Sunday October 03, 2010 @07:06PM (#33779672)

    What could possibly go wrong? I imagine this will end up as successful as Bill Gates' ventures into education.

    Maybe these tech barons should stick to computers and stop trying to play god with children's futures.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Maybe these tech barons should stick to computers and stop trying to play god with children's futures.

      I would, under normal circumstances, agree. The education of children must not be left to private citizens (except their own children), and definitely not private corporations (IBM/Microsoft/Google/Apple/Red Hat/Canonical) - If they want to pay money and help, sure. But they should not even be allowed to put a sticker on their donations, or control/moderate what kids learn.

      However, given the hidden agendas and downright stupidity of those actually entrusted with the responsibility of helping our children, I

  • excellent (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jcombel ( 1557059 )

    i'm always willing to support an attempt at alternative forms of education. i honestly wish i had a similar opportunity as a high-schooler.
     
    the only concern i'd have (and which has probably already been addressed) is to make sure the students get a diploma or GED at the end of the twelfth year. not seeing any indicator on that in tfa.

  • IBM hiring? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ralphdaugherty ( 225648 ) <ralph@ee.net> on Sunday October 03, 2010 @08:02PM (#33780008) Homepage

    Has anyone with an Associates degree been hired by IBM lately in the US? Has IBM hired anyone in the US lately?

    There's a whole lot of laid off IBM workers that are wondering the same thing, I'm thinking.

      rd

    • Has anyone with an Associates degree been hired by IBM lately in the US? Has IBM hired anyone in the US lately?

      There's a whole lot of laid off IBM workers that are wondering the same thing, I'm thinking.

      rd

      I don't think anyone with only an associate degree gets hired by anybody nowadays (at least on IT and software). There used to be a time (15-20 years ago) where you could get a decent job developing software with only an associates degree (truth to be told, most software development only requires what a GOOD software-centric AA/AS provides). But now - and thank to the dot-com hyperbole - there is a surplus of developers with a B.S. degree expecting to make $70K right out of school (and many of them with les

      • There used to be a time (15-20 years ago) where you could get a decent job developing software with only an associates degree (truth to be told, most software development only requires what a GOOD software-centric AA/AS provides)

        I'm from that time, and I have an Associates. I spent first ten years on PC, last twenty on AS/400 iseries.

        Collectively, I know from various news reports that we have lots of massive software development failures. For the companies I've wo

  • Getting it Both Ways (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Perhaps IBM is looking to hire help that has the same skillset, yet lacks the education. Following the mantra of "you don't have a college education, so we will pay you less...never mind we engineered your education to be college-free". Why go over to India if we can develop a reduced-skillset-less-pay workforce at home?

  • No word yet on the school colors or whether a uniform will be required.

    ... and also no word on whether the school canteen will serve wedges with sweet chili sauce, sour cream, or both.
    So what?

  • The IBM Songbook, for instance: http://www.etypewriters.com/ibmsongs.htm [etypewriters.com]
    I'm serious:

    The name of T. J. Watson means a courage none can stem,
    And we feel honored to be here to toast the I. B. M.

  • Reminded of how the owner of a local store chain that includes a pharmacy funding a pharmacy school at one of the local colleges; he didn't make it obvious beyond the "stick donor's name on the building" sense.

  • Wrong country. This high school should have been started in Bangalore. Where are the poor fucks who graduate in NYC going to find work?

  • Seriously, this is just sliding into some cyberpunk fantasy where the corporations own and run everything. IBM has a special school; these kids will be exploited as little codemonsters until they grow up and decide whether to move on or accept their predetermined lot in life. New grads are cheap, but you usually have to teach them how to acceptably code and work with your tools. Well, now IBM has that angle covered. Instant productivity!

    I don't like it, but if that's your bag, I won't hold it against yo

  • It would be ok...ish.... if entry to this school was not on a lottery system. What if you end up there and don't want to go into IT? What if you want to do art, or music or another subject that needs adequate funding rather than just being shoved in as a sideline (if that)? What is wrong with going about education the normal way, where you go to school to get a broad education, then go to university (or college of whatever americans do) to specialise, or go off and do a modern apprenticeship in something u

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