Howard Oakley
Universities are churning out students with computing degrees, but these mean little until a universal certification standard is introduced.
The past couple of decades have seen an explosion in qualifications. Whereas degrees used to be the prerogative of the few, everyone now seems to have gone to university; even your postman may sport a degree in psychology or economics from an institution that until a few years ago was a down-at-heel college coaching school drop-outs. Electricians and gas installers have to periodically repeat their trade certificates lest they be deemed unfit to practise, as will doctors who want to maintain their licence. Inevitably, bankers, still living in a charmed alternative universe, are now less likely to obtain professional qualifications than they used to, and politicians seem a lost cause for fear they might forge or purchase such credentials.
So what qualifications should you seek in a computer consultant, network wizard, software developer or even the salesperson whose advice you want to trust?
Although our new and vivacious, if underfunded, universities seem able to pump out thousands with natty certificates claiming competence in sports sciences or media studies, practical aspects of computing are almost entirely lacking. Heavyweight software development, the kind we keep paying Microsoft and Adobe hefty upgrade charges to support, may demand graduates in software engineering, but ask such a graduate to build you a FileMaker Pro database and few would have a clue where to start. Microsoft and Cisco operate large educational schemes, whose qualifications are recognised and required worldwide. Although Apple has set up its own certification system, which flourishes in the US, many of our most talented Mac specialists have not yet jumped aboard. With just four UK educational establishments offering certificated Mac OS X system training, it’s easy to see why.
In some senses, computer qualifications aren’t essential to the safety and well-being of society. The competence of the electrician re-wiring your office or home, or the gas installer plumbing in a replacement boiler, has immediate bearing on your safety. But three years’ study of the social context of sports is hardly essential to those staffing leisure centres – current first aid and lifesaving qualifications are. On the other hand, it might have been nice to know that those who developed the software for Toyota’s car control systems were actually able to do so.
There are plenty of other computer-related tasks that have more serious implications. How, for example, can we tell whether a selfprofessed security expert is both speaking with authority and working for the general good? When you ask a networking consultant to specify the hardware required to run your business, how can you know that their advice is both sound and cost-efficient? When a sales assistant recommends a particular model and configuration to you, how can you trust that this comes from understanding rather than optimising their bonus? Selling and supporting computers is far more complex and technically demanding than doing the same for interior decor or clothing, and the consequences of errors more serious and costly.
I’m no fan of the proliferation of qualifications, nor of meaningless recertification schemes that afford the incompetent false authority to continue to practise. However, Europe needs to move with the times and bring in something more useful and recognised than the minimal European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL). It’s time to develop some meaningful qualifications to bring credence to those whose occupation requires technical knowledge of Macs and other computer systems.
