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long after his 1999 high school graduation, Erik Espinoza reaped
the benefits of two years of training in network technologies.
His high school alma mater in San Francisco hired him as a network
administrator, and now -- just 20 and with no college degree --
he earns an enviable $60,000 a year.
But Espinoza's salary is modest compared to what other young
IT jocks in Silicon Valley earn. Brad Downey, 20, has no college
degree, but he pulls down $85,000 and owns a two-story home with
a pool. Downey works as a network administrator for SBC DataComm
in Dublin, Calif. Like Espinoza, he began learning his networking
skills in a school-to-work program in high school.
Far from Silicon Valley in Allentown, Pa., 19-year-old Semon
Dorgam was making $22,000 a year in a computer shop shortly after
high school graduation when a different company got wind of his
technical skills. He switched jobs and now earns about $55,000
a year and is part owner in a high-tech consulting firm. Dorgam
also jump-started his IT career in high school.
It's hard to imagine young people making so much money without
a college degree. But in today's technology-driven economy, a
chronic shortage of skilled information technology (IT) workers
is driving up salaries, and schools are responding by offering
IT training programs tailored to corporate needs.
The IT market, says Allentown's Dorgam, is "a young guy's dream
come true."
Off to work they go 
Some students who've gone through these programs are bypassing
a traditional college education for now to take high-paying jobs
straight out of high school. Others are taking their IT skills
to college, confident they'll nab part-time and summer jobs that
pay as much as $50 an hour. Still others are acquiring IT skills
in high school so they have something to fall back on if their
career dreams don't come true.
The upside is hard to miss. According to a study released in
April by the Information Technology Association of America, about
1.6 million new IT workers will be needed this year, but hiring
managers predict that about 850,000 positions probably won't be
filled by appropriately skilled workers. In the Chicago area alone,
more than half of the region's IT jobs are likely to go unfilled
next year, according to a report from the Chicagoland Chamber
of Commerce. This chronic shortage puts a 19-year-old with no
college degree in a position to bargain for a salary that some
college-educated adults in other fields have spent years working
to reach.
Still, there are potential drawbacks. Some educators worry that
bright students might forgo the benefits of a college education
to make big bucks in high-tech jobs that are great now, but not
so promising down the road. And school-to-work experts caution
schools not to forget that their primary mission is to educate
students to succeed in a rapidly changing economy -- not to train
youngsters in narrow technical skills.
"Responding to the specific and narrow needs of employers --
that's not what education should be about," says Ivan Charner,
director of the National Institute for Work and Learning, an arm
of the Academy for Educational Development in Washington, D.C.
"We need well-educated kids who have the job skills and abilities
to move in and out of different fields."
Back in school
For Espinoza, the dividends he is reaping come in part from
his participation in the Cisco
Networking Academy Program, a partnership between Cisco Systems
Inc. of San Jose, Calif., and local schools, businesses, government
agencies, and community organizations around the world. Schools
set up local academies to offer elective courses in which students
are taught how to design, build, and maintain computer networks.
A high school's regular academic requirements are independent
of the Cisco program.
The Cisco curriculum is free, but to set up a Cisco lab costs
a school between $10,000 and $20,000 for materials and equipment.
Courses are usually taught by school staff members. Academy students
can take a series of standardized exams (the same ones taken by
adult professionals) to be certified for networking jobs. Espinoza
started in the program at Mission High School in San Francisco
and continued to work on higher levels of certification after
graduation.
While in high school, Espinoza was already well on his way to
an IT career. By his senior year, he was setting up NT servers,
Internet pornography filters, and internal web servers. He also
served as a computer troubleshooter, fixing software glitches
and repairing machines. With roughly 1,100 students and a student-to-computer
ratio of 2-to-1, he stayed busy. Two of the teachers who supervised
him during his internship are now working for him. "I make task
lists for them," says Espinoza, who still lives with his parents.
"It's kind of weird at times."
Looking back, he says, "the key to my success as far as learning
was being given all the access. While I was still a student here,
they gave me my own machine, they gave me projects to do." So,
when the school hired him as a network administrator, many of
his duties were as familiar as the building itself.
In addition to his job at his old school, Espinoza is taking
college courses at City College of San Francisco and hopes to
transfer to a four-year college. He is thinking about studying
business administration -- not computers -- because that would
be a strong combination for future job prospects. For now, though,
he says, "I love the school environment. It's very fast paced,
and I can learn a lot."
Jump-starting an IT career
The route to a high-paying tech job for Brad Downey began in
a rundown portable classroom with no air-conditioning. That's
where he met a teacher who enticed him to attend after-school
sessions at a Cisco Networking Academy at a nearby high school.
The program was just starting.
"It's definitely great to get a jump-start on this in high school,"
Downey says.
Shortly after high school graduation, Downey passed his Cisco
Certified Network Associate exam. That led to a $15-an-hour job
at SBC Datacomm, a network integrator company. He passed the Cisco
Certified Network Professional exam three months later, and his
salary jumped to $52,000 a year. Recently, he passed an exam for
advanced networking, and his salary increased from $68,000 to
$85,000.
At some point, Downey plans to take one or two college classes
a semester and gradually pursue a bachelor's degree -- all paid
for by his employer. "The only thing stopping me is my time and
schedule," he says.
Downey knows his technical skills are what got him this job.
But he realizes that anyone in his field also needs a solid academic
foundation. "Sometimes, I have to write reports and proposals,
and those aren't easy for me," he says. "Without basic English
skills, I couldn't survive in any job."
Downey is not alone in that sentiment. At a recent national
school-to-work conference, says Charner of the National Institute
for Work and Learning, an editor from Boston-based Fast Company
magazine, which covers the IT industry aggressively, told a group
of educators that most companies are looking for much more than
technical skills. Charner says the Fast Company editor said most
employers wanted people who were creative and comfortable tossing
around and critiquing new ideas, people who could communicate
well on paper and in meetings and work productively in groups.
"Cisco is really great for some kids," says Charner. "But would
I want a kid to be trained only in Cisco [skills] and no other
aspects of technology? Absolutely not."
Reading, writing, and computing
Some models for technology education attempt to educate students
in core academic areas while also teaching technical skills. This
fall, the National Academy Foundation, a big name in the school-to-work
movement, and the Center for Occupational Research and Development
(CORD) started technology/academic programs in 12 schools.
The
Academy of Information Technology (AIT) initiative aims to
give students a broad scope of IT knowledge, but it will not certify
them in specific technology skills. "We're not going to pop out
the next wave of Cisco engineers," says Dow Myers, project director
of AIT. "In my opinion, our program is kind of a long-term versus
a short-term solution. One of our goals is to pop out a bunch
of lifelong learners who can change with the times."
Funded through grants and corporate sponsorships, AIT will work
much like other school-to-work academies. Once students are accepted
into their school's technology academy -- which works somewhat
like a school-within-a-school -- technology skills and knowledge
are infused through nearly everything they learn. In an algebra
class, for example, they might see how algebraic equations are
used to program video-game characters to morph into different
creatures. In a literature or communications class, Myers says,
students might read the Odyssey and compare the siren song that
captivated Odysseus and his travelers to the Internet: "Is the
Internet a modern-day siren song? What's happening to people?
Are they getting addicted to it?" Or a social studies class might
look into the implications of a society in which most people are
telecommuters. What are the benefits and drawbacks?
Beyond this, academy students learn skills in web design, programming,
network systems support, telecommunications, and database management.
And they are instructed in so called "soft skills" such as interviewing
for jobs, writing resumes and cover letters, and managing time.
But the academy's curriculum rests on a strong liberal arts
foundation. And that's how it should be, says Denis Doyle, author
of Reclaiming the Legacy: In Defense of Liberal Education. Doyle,
a well-known education writer, also serves as chairman of SchoolNet.com,
a firm that helps schools design customized Internet portals.
Says Doyle: "Personally, I prefer F. Scott Fitzgerald to Fortran.
The secret is to have strong intellectual underpinnings of a liberal
education and put technology training on top of that."
When an 18-year-old becomes a network administrator and starts
earning $50,000 to $70,000 a year, Doyle says, it's easy for the
teenager to think he'll be earning that kind of money forever.
But "the risk for him is if he doesn't get educated he might find
himself unemployable ... a few years later."
Something to fall back on 
Unlike traditional school-to-work programs, IT training programs
often attract a wide range of students, from kids who have no
interest in attending college to high achievers thinking of applying
to top-notch colleges like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
High school senior Corinne Cooley is one of those high achievers.
With straight A's and a nearly perfect SAT score (1580 combined),
Cooley's future looks bright. But she's trying to make sure she
has as many career options as possible.
When she was a freshman at Burlington-Edison High School in
Washington state, teacher Barry Cochran encouraged her to enroll
in the school's Authorized
Academic Training Provider program, which is sponsored by
Microsoft. Students take elective classes to prepare for a series
of seven exams -- a student who passes all seven is certified
as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. Schools are not charged
a fee to participate.
"It was a little scary at first because it was mostly juniors
and seniors and almost all boys," says Cooley. "It was really
intimidating talking about all these programs I'd never heard
about."
But she stuck with it. "I usually don't study that much," says
Cooley. "But for these exams, I was panicking and cramming for
weeks on end. ... You have to know your stuff."
And the studying is paying off. Cooley has passed four of the
seven exams so far and, Cochran says, she was among an elite group
of people who aced one of them.
Still, Cooley says her dream is not to get a job in IT. She
wants to be an astrophysicist and plans to go straight to college
to pursue that dream. IT is simply a backup. "I should go and
get a high-paying IT job," she says. "But it's not what I want
to do for a living. The thing about IT I don't like is, there's
this box here, and the box is the box, and you fix it. It's a
limited realm."
Even so, that limited realm offers great opportunities for summer
jobs when she is in college. Says Cooley: "I'd much rather be
administrating a network than waiting tables."
Adjusting to market shifts
One thing schools do not want to do is prepare students for
jobs that won't be around in a few years. Ideally, school-to-work
programs keep a close eye on the market to determine what jobs
are hot.
That's the aim of the REALskills!
program at Mohonasen High School in Schenectady, N.Y. A national
school-to-work technology program, REALskills! was created as
an alliance among National Computer Systems Inc., SmartForce Systems
Inc., and Manpower Professional, a job placement agency. Schools
purchase an annual site license for between $11,000 and $17,500
to offer REALskills! courses. (Some schools offset the cost by
charging a fee for REALskills! adult education classes.)
For participating schools, Manpower sets up student internships
that pay up to $25 an hour and offer valuable hands-on experience.
(Students must first pass a professional certification test to
be eligible for internships.) Manpower officials also visit REALskills!
classes regularly to give students instruction in interviewing,
dressing for work, writing a resume, and other nontechnical skills.
Only a year old, Mohonasen's program is already popular. This
year, 63 students applied for the 26 available slots.
One participant, Mohonasen senior Dan Reynolds, plans to study
computer engineering in college and says the REALskills! program
is giving him a head start. "I was always interested in computers,"
he says, "but I mostly concentrated on software. This course teaches
you so much more ... about hardware and software."
Fellow senior Zack Sowards adds: "I like the hands-on work ...
taking computers apart and putting them back together. I hope
to get a really good job [in IT] straight out of college. It's
the wave of the future."
Still, even with the high salaries and virtually unlimited number
of job openings, most kids are not pursuing formal IT training
in high school. Cochran of Burlington-Edison High School in Washington
state says, "My hunch and what I've experienced is that kids just
aren't aware of what IT jobs are out there, what they pay, and
what the job requirements are." Plus, he says, too many students
still think of IT workers as "computer geeks wearing thick glasses.
They don't have a picture of what a real IT professional is like."
A gambler riding a hot streak
Allentown's Dorgam, for one, does not think of himself as the
stereotypical IT nerd. Rather, he likens himself to a gambler
riding a hot streak. "Just because I got lucky," he says, "doesn't
mean everyone else will."
After Dorgam was hired as a network administrator for National
Stainless, an Allentown-based stainless steel distributor, the
company's owner asked him to be a partner in National Network
Solutions, a startup network consulting and systems integration
firm. When Dorgam spoke to Electronic School, he was about to
leave for San Diego to help an organization install a remote video
surveillance system that could be monitored from anywhere in the
world. After that, he was scheduled to fly to Manhattan to do
some consulting, and then to Miami.
In a year or two, if National Network Solutions continues to
grow, Dorgam plans to take night classes at Lehigh University,
possibly in computer engineering. And he wants to get some IT
certifications too.
He's on the fast track, he says. And he's already close to fulfilling
important personal goals. Three years ago, his father died of
a heart attack. One of Dorgam's father's dreams was for his son
to own a business. If the startup consulting firm succeeds, Dorgam
will have fulfilled that dream.
And next? Says Dorgam, "I want to retire when I'm 40."
Kevin Bushweller, former senior technology editor
for Electronic School, is now an assistant managing editor
of Education Week.
Photo of Eric Espinoza by Mark
Hundley
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