(Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk <> wrote:
CCN relies heavily on providing vocational courses. In so far as these have an IT aspect, there's no significant market for CCN in basing them on Open Source software. They will have to teach people how to use MS products, and if they don't offer that then they won't get students and their funding crisis will get worse. Like many such colleges, their most profitable students will be recruited from outside the EC.
This sort of tail wagging the dog that IT education is often accused of. The ultimate aim of colleges (and FE colleges in particular) is to produce a skilled workforce. So, instead of teaching people how to use specific electrical testing gear, you teach them about electricity and then apply it to specific test gear, which is then supplemented by their work experience. The test gear they use at work may or may not be what the college has, but it often doesn't matter, as long as they are skilled enough to learn it reasonably quickly.
Contrast that with current computing and IT education. Some of it is actually independent of particular software, and necessarily so for markets where MS Office et al are not available in the language of instruction, but not yet in England.
If student or employer demand dictates -- rather than informs -- course provision, I think that is a disaster that will set us back years.
NB sig etc, as ever.