Mainframe education

550 schools now part of System z Academic Initiative, Yale not included

IBM announced today that its System z mainframe Academic Initiative program is now in 500 schools. The list of participating schools includes colleges and universities in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America.

IBM also announced the winners of its annual Master the Mainframe program, in which about 1,800 students participated. Congratulations to the winnters: Bryan Weaver, Yeming Hu, David Jones, Bin Sun and Jinhu Huang.

I decided to come up with an imaginary discussion with a pro-mainframer and an anti-mainframer regarding the IBM announcement and the academic program in general. Though not word-for-word, I have heard similar arguments in private conversations.

Pro-mainframer: Wow, the System z academic program is now in 550 schools across the world.

Anti-mainframer (in nasally voice): Is it in any of the Ivys?

PM: Yes, actually. It’s in Columbia University.

AM (points index finger in the air): Oxford? Cambridge?

PM: No.

AM (while smoking a pipe and sitting in an armchair wearing a silk robe): Hmm, hmm, yes, I didn’t think so.

PM: 550 is still a lot of schools.

AM (while cleaning his monocle): Only one of the Ivys, you say? Not impressed. Not impressed at all.