The only way you can make the certification totally worthwhile is to look at how Cisco does it for their highest level (CCIE?). You actually have to go to Cisco and take the exam in a lab. They purposely break things that you then have to fix. You're score depends on the time it took and did you solve the problem. I've talked to a couple of people that have been through the exam and it was described as being just this side of hell. Something like 80% of the people fail the first attempt. Some would argue that the exam is too difficult. I would argue that it makes the cert mean something.


>I'm not so sure we want to go there < G > My first network experience was on NW 2.x running on the old 68B servers. High speed 150kbps network connections, too.
> As for MCSE's - one of the reasons I REFUSE to participate int he scam that is this so-called certification stuff is the experiences I've had with people holding all those papers. One client's in-house person dared sneer at me because I do not have an MCSE, whereas he had A+, CNA, CNE, MCP, MCP+I, MCSE, etc. - his whole cube wall was plastered with certs. However, Mr. Genius here needed us to come in to install backup Exec on his NT boxes because they couldn't make it work to back up multiple servers from one main backup server. It's STILL too easy to get these certs without real world experience, and real world experience counts for 10 times the skill level than any week-long class. The problem with the MCSE and CNE testing (a long time ago I did have a CNE, but I let it lapse since I wasn't working with any Netware shortly after - I was using Banyan, and I did have an MCP for NT4 but I believe that has expired now) is that the questions are nothing I even encountered in hundreds of
>server installs in the real world, and the required answers are usually not in the least how I would go about troubleshooting the problem. I really don't know how you can acurately measure these skills. Perhaps a completely open exam, with a wide array of resources avaialble to solve the problem, graded on timeliness and completeness of the solution. But the logistics of providing everyone with their favorite resources would be a nightmare. See, most of my coworkers see me as the 'go-to' guy when they can't figure somethign out. But my little secret is not that I have somehow memeorized every solution to every esoteric problem - far from it, I have TERRIBLE memory. But what I DO know is how to quickly and effectively find an answer, plus having a lot of experience I can connect close-but-not-quite-there suggestions and track down more information. I'm at a loss as to how to teach this skill, but I don;t think it's one of those things you either have or don't have, I think other can do
>this just as well if they could learn the skills. For example, schools around here do a lot with teaching kids how to type using Word. think a more effective use of the computer time would be to teach them how to perform effective searches of internet resources. I run into too many people who gaze in wonder that I found a certain piece of information, when all I did was type the topic word in Yahoo and check out the first 3 hits. No rocket science in parsing their statement into one key word or anything.
> Ok, now that I have rambled on in a dissertation that I really should turn into a web page...
>
> Randy
>