Low Cost Mainframe Training

By the very nature of being young professionals in a specialized and mature technical community, most millennial mainframers face the constant challenge of skill acquisition and credentialing. While we benefit from the wealth of experience of older mainframers, it often seems that we suffer from a lack of O'Reilly-style study materials or training programs. Even many of the community colleges throughout the country offer courses in Cisco networking or Java programming, but good luck finding coursework on z/OS or COBOL or Mainframe Assembler.

In light of this training shortage, it's fantastic that IBM and Marist College have partnered to expand the Institute for Data Center Professionals (IDCP) into the realm of mainframe education. For millennial mainframers in the workforce, Marist offers $2700 non-credit certificate programs composed of a sequence of three courses. Considering that each course is identical to Marist's traditional three-credit hour offering, the cost of this training is approximately equal to the tuition at a local community college. In my humble opinion, this gives the Marist IDCP certificate programs one of the highest returns on investment (ROI) in mainframe education. For millennial mainframers in need of additional college credit, Marist offers their mainframe courses at the rate of $575 per credit hour. In exchange for this premium over the non-credit option, the for-credit option potentially allows you to transfer credits earned from Marist's world-class mainframe courses back to your current degree program.

Here are several examples of non-credit certificate programs available:

NEW!! DB2 Application Programming Certificate (Special Introductory Pricing of $2000)

• Introduction to z/OS and Major Subsystems
• DB2 Fundamentals
• DB2 Application Programming

Assembler Language Application Programming Certificate

• Introduction to z/OS and Major Subsystems
• Basic Assembler Language
• Advanced Assembler Language

z/OS Associate Certificate

• Introduction to z/OS and Major Subsystems
• z/OS Networking
• z/OS Security

Registration for the Spring semester is currently underway. The deadline for enrollment is February 6, 2012, and classes begin on February 13th. Please visit: http://idcp.marist.edu/learnzos for more information, and contact Marist College at learnzos@marist.edu if you have any questions.

This post was originally hosted on the Millennial Mainframer blog