Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 11:46:54 -0500 From: "Bruce Pea" <pea@andrewpea.com> To: tedm@toybox.placo.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Certification Message-ID: <200107041146540500.004268FB@192.168.10.5> References: <000401c10450$cfb7ab60$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <200107041140410510.003CB7D5@192.168.10.5>
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< I apologize to everyone for the first copy of this post that went out. I pulled the trigger before I hit spell check. > Ted, I have thought about the certification issue for a long time and I think you raise some very good points. The reason I never took the time to get either Novell or Microsoft's certifications was mainly because, after looking over the material, I didn't think they were teaching me much of anything new that I didn't already know. I couldn't see any value in spending the money just to be able to say I had the certification nor was my ego ever in the need of those kinds of strokes... already have a bunch of letters after my name (thanks mom and dad for paying tuition all those years). However, I think a rigorous, well written, and carefully prepared FBSD course would be very well received by FBSD users. I've been setting up and administering networks for fourteen years. Started out on Netware, migrated to NT, and finally found my way to FreeBSD. I have several versions of Greg's book, a copy of your book and a copy of the handbook that I devour and pour over time and again not to mention the huge stack of O'Reilly and other assorted books and manuals covering general UNIX topics I find indispensable. I've been setting up and administering FreeBSD long enough to feel quit confident and capable of my skills yet I have this nagging feeling that there is much to learn about UNIX... I don't think I'm in the 'zen zone' yet and I'd like to get there. So, if someone created a real 'meat and potatoes' FreeBSD course I'd be the first to throw my money down and sign up. As far as accreditation goes perhaps there could be some sort of 'open source accreditation'. What I mean by that is just as open source code is subjected to the scrutiny of the world, why not create a FBSD course and let the FBSD community bless it? Perhaps we could create an accreditation 'core team' to review and approve the curriculum. People who want to take the course could pay a couple of hundred dollars for the training that could be used to pay someone to administer the program. After completing the course we could give them a certificate. It would be much more meaningful and significant to me to pass a course that my fellow FreeBSD peers and sysadmins considered valuable and credible than to take some other course that had some other 'official accreditation' just to get another piece of paper. I think a FreeBSD course is a great idea, but *really* teach me something. Don't just do it to have a certification program. Bruce Pea *********** REPLY SEPARATOR *********** On 7/3/2001 at 11:16 PM Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: >I'd like to start a discussion about this topic as I've been >pondering a few questions related to this myself. > >To start with it's been my observation that certifications are >desired for one of 3 general reasons: > >a) Employment: employers want people to have them to make it easier to weed >out >a flood of applicants, candidates want them to be able to apply for certain >jobs. > >b) Personal Pride: people want the certification so they can make their >pedegree >look bigger, have one more certificate on the wall, etc. > >c) Education: Students hope getting the certification will help them learn >about the thing they want to get certified on. > >Now, I would speculate that for BSD, reason number 1 is nonexistent, and >for >reason number 2 the type of people that want another notch aren't going to >be the type that want it from BSD. That leaves reason number 3, the >education part. > >Now, there's some certification programs that do a fairly good job of the >education part, the Cisco CNE is probably one. Most though are not aimed >at >educating, instead they are political. (note that this has nothing to do >with how "hard" the certification is to get) For example, the MCSE from >Microsoft is most definitely not about education (apologies to the MCSE's >in >the crowd here) as the materials I've reviewed on MCSE's are rather >outdated >when it comes to the networking part in particular. For example they only >even started discussing classless IP addressing last year in the official >MCSE curriculum. That certification is more about Microsoft being able to >use the fact that it has a certification as a marketing plus to sell more >Windows. I still do have respect for the folks that get it but mainly >respect at the fact that they went to the trouble and completed it, not >that >I thought it was particularly hard for most of them to get. Even the Cisco >CNA is like this, it teaches little and is mainly there to teach people >what >a router looks like, it's more about advertising the Cisco name than >anything else. > >With FreeBSD, there is no central company with an axe to grind to see the >world filled with CFE's (Certified FreeBSD Engineers? ;-)) so your not >going >to see the funding from anyone for a "vanity" or "marketing" CFE >certification program. Instead, any certification program that anyone puts >together is going to have to be aimed at reason number 3 - the education >part. At least, that's the reasoning that I keep coming up with. > >Now, once a CFE program DOES exist and has critical mass, why then >certainly >it would be able to address reasons number 1 and 2 as well as >marketing/political reasons. But to get there a certification program >would >need to start out shooting for reason number 3. > >So, now we have kind of a "were we need to be at" premise, you next need to >address the issue of accreditation. All accreditation really is, boiled >down, is a blessing by someone who everyone agrees is _the_ authority on >the >topic. > >An unaccredited certification program is worthless. You see these all the >time - for example our local community college has loads of >"certifications" >they will issue in Computer Information Technology but nothing in that >program is transferrable to anything else because none of it is accredited. >They ALSO have real, live CompSci courses that ARE accredited and thus can >be transferred. > >With the vendor-certifications, like the CNE and the MCSE, the vendors >themselves do the accreditation, or at least are supposed to. > >With FreeBSD, once again the lack of a single central authority on the >project means that a vendor of a FreeBSD certification program is not going >to be able to get accreditation on any kind of CFE program. In short, >_who_ >out there is _the_ authority that can say whether some vendor's FreeBSD >certification program is good or not? > >There's lots of people out there, even myself, who could _write_ a FreeBSD >curriculum and certification program. But without a single FreeBSD body to >bless it, it seems to me that it's worthless. for example, if New Horizons >hired someone like me to write a FreeBSD certification program, how would >you as a student be able to trust that the information the program is >teaching is even correct? > > >Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com >Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide >Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com > > >>-----Original Message----- >>From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of David Caldwell >>Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 9:34 PM >>To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >>Subject: Certification >> >> >>Is there a certification program for any of the BSD Unixes? >> >>I have seen them for Linux and for Sun Solaris, as well as the >>various other >>flavors of Unix. Will there be or is there one for BSD? >> >>David Caldwell >>dns at knology dot net >> >> >>To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >>with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message >> > > >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org >with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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