I recently graduated (last April) from what used to be called Computer Technology (Info systems), which was a 2 year diploma. It offered programming training in Java beginning with the basics right up to a full year long project using real world software development practices to create a web based software application. It was a great place to learn a lot of technology in a short amount of time.
That said, things have dramatically changed. And I don't know if the instructors liked the changes since they spent my last semester complaining about how the schools adminstration was changing things without listening to them.
They just re-tooled the entire IT program to make it more competitive with Devry or some crap like that. Basically, the top three all share the first year of courses and you get a smattering of exposure to a bunch of programming languages. No more training in one language from start to finish. Also, they've ripped the two math courses (Linear Algebra and Calculas) out and replaced them with dumbed down things like "World of Information Technology". They also pulled out the one thing that made their program unique, the year long project in your second year. It's scope has now been reduced to a one semester course meaning it's size and complexity has gone down.
I assume the reason for this is to attract and graduate more students. Unfortunately that's gonna lower the reputation of the program in the industry since lazier people will beable to graduate.
SAIT is a great place to learn this stuff but I would seriously look at taking their 4 year Applied Degree program in IT over this new 2 year program. Hopefully they kept the majority of their instructors, but if many of them walked (as they were talking about doing last year), I'd be hesitant to recommend the program.
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To be fair, this change is endemic to the entire IT schooling field. Faced with lowering enrollment and graduation rates, many IT schools and faculties are starting to rework their programs. Unfortunately what usually occurs is that they go the Devry route and focus solely on the technical skills while pulling the theoretical/math based courses. In my opinion, that's a big mistake. but then, many companies don't need much more then a competant code monkey diligently working away on their 4th generation language without any understanding of what is going on underneath the virtual machine/JIT compiler.
</rant>
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