Boot camp for IT students

By Adam Gifford

One of the most widely sought qualifications in the IT industry is the Microsoft Certified System Engineer MCSE.

It usually takes up to six months of intense part-time study to achieve, with a mountain of paper to be digested and practical exercises undertaken before the six exams are sat.

IT training company Com Tech Education Services has introduced the MCSE Boot Camp, which guarantees that students with suitable aptitude and appropriate skill levels will be certified in 20 days.

"Someone without a lot of knowledge in NT would not pass the course. I did not find it easy and I've been in the industry for more than five years working with Windows and NT," said Brian Leybourne, a Telecom staffer who undertook the first boot camp in January.

Mr Leybourne said doing part-time study on top of a full-time job didn't appeal.

The Com Tech approach of highly qualified staff, small classes in well equipped labs and an intense workload allowed him to get the qualification and get back to work quickly.

The MCSE qualification is continually upgraded to cope with changes to the technology, so unless all six exams are passed within a certain time they expire, and further exams must be sat.

While studying for the six papers individually would cost about $14,000, the boot camp costs $9900.

Five of the eight students on the initial course paid their own way, "which shows how useful people consider it," Mr Leybourne said.

His previous education included a spell at university until he realised "by the time I'd get out to the industry the information would be out of date. They're still teaching yesterday's news."

He switched to polytechnic to get a more practical grounding, but again left before completing a national certificate in business computing.

"I realised the qualification gives you a grounding in computers, but in the real world of technical administration the things you do are so different it was not worth staying on. Experience is worth more than that kind of certificate," Mr Leybourne said.

The MCSE exams aren't ones that can be crammed for the night before. The on-line exams are adaptive, meaning the questions change depending on the responses.

If students' answers indicate they have a good grasp of a particular area, the exam will quickly move on. If they start making mistakes, it will ask more and difficult questions to probe the weakness.

Mr Leybourne said he got a real sense of achievement passing the certificate.

"I leapt up and shouted when I got the result of the sixth exam, 20 or 30 seconds after I pressed the send button."

Even though they cover different aspects of the technology, the six exam papers all include considerable overlaps.

Mr Leybourne said one of the advantages of the boot camp approach is it acts like a refresher course over the whole area.

Since being back on the job, Mr Leybourne said he had notice of an improvement in his productivity somewhere between slight and significant.

"It's opened my mind a lot more."

Com Tech Education Services general manager Steve Ross said students and employers had been crying out for ways to speed up the certification process.

"By providing this focused and intense alternative way of studying, we can help tackle the acute certified skills shortage in New Zealand," Mr Ross said.