Steve Jones (blog/@way0utwest) from SQLServerCentral posted his daily editorial today titled "The Industry Problem" in which he describes an article he found regarding STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates and their preparation for jobs in the "real world."
I know when I was in college (15+ years ago) CS degrees were meant for one thing - programmers. (There weren't "software developers" way back then. {-;) If you were interested in anything else computer-related (server support, etc.) then a CS degree was not for you, because it was all COBOL, FORTRAN, early BASIC, and math.
At that time I asked myself what would be broadly useful, and I decided to get a Business degree (this was also before many schools had MIS, so I just got a general Management degree) - some people wondered about it at the time, but I came out of college knowing a lot more about businesses - all businesses - and how they work than did my CS or Engineering counterparts who were laser-focussed on their specific areas.
Some of the best speakers I see on technology/being a DBA/etc. these days talk about it the same way my second boss did - let me help you think and work like a DBA - learning the specific technology isn't as important because the technology will change every two to three years anyway.
This is the same thing I look for when I am participating in an interview - do you think like a DBA? Do you ask the right questions? Are you interested in learning new things? All of this is much more important to me than "Have you ever set up transactional replication before?"
