The Problem of Paper Certifications

Is it wrong to prepare students for a test? No, that's arguably part of an instructor's job. But there's more to what a good instructor in a good class should be doing than just saying "study this, it's on the test." One would hope that when a student has spent a lot of time and money to get an education, he or she would leave the class with as well-rounded an education as is possible to receive. What sometimes happens instead is that the student learns precisely what he has to in order to pass the certification test, and little more.

This results in a professionally certified incompetent, ready to join the work force and annoy his colleagues and employer with his lack of experience and the holes in his knowledge, neither of which become apparent until our newly certified worker is already on the job.

If he joins a large IT department and is motivated and interested, he'll pick up what he needs to know as he progresses, and they'll probably be happy just to have a warm body to come and get the more experienced folks if the system crashes. If he's on his own, in a small department, or hired to work on something mission-critical, he's likely to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what he should already know. And if he goes directly to the instructor ranks (oh yes, that happens) he won't even have solid instruction behind him, much less the kind of real world experience with his area of so-called expertise necessary to know the difference between textbook B.S. and the information that needs to be burned into his student's skulls in order for the students to become competent professionals.

Put more simply, imagine you wanted to be an auto mechanic. How confident would you be if you'd only lifted the hood of the one car, in your school's garage, and only learned to do what your instructor said would be on the test? Would you trust a mechanic who got his certification this way to do anything more complicated than changing your oil? Would you hire him to work in your shop?