Decaflon

I graduated with a degree in Interactive Multimedia from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. I spent 5 years as an Art Director for a company where the IT department came to me with questions more often than I went to them. If a designer/geek knows more about networking and Win/Mac operating systems than the IT department, I'd say that at least in this case, your theory holds true. Now I run my own business and handle all of the IT myself... I might be underqualified, but at least I'm not getting paid an IT salary ;-).

After going through the IT program at UMBC, I definitely agree with you.

They have the degree, but they don't have the insight.

Although having a degree in IT would be great, but at each job I have been at they never had enough in the budget to support an IT specialist. I have learned at each position and asked questions when necessary. I admit being underqualified IT guy, but I have learned a lot by baptism by fire.

I think most places where I have worked would like to have had an IT professional, but they just couldn't afford it.

What exactly do you include when you say IT? You mean PC techs? Network Admins? DBAs? Programmers? All of the above?

I'm underqualified as a PC Tech but I'm competent.

Less so as network administrator but if you spend any time setting up server side programming in a windows environment, you tend to learn more than you ever wanted to know.

My degree was IS and I knew way more than most of my co-graduates. but I had more practical experience too.

Yes, and it constantly gets in my way, and hurts business and customers.

I don't have any sort of IT degree, though that's a very broad subject. Constantly I find that I know more about fixing computers, maintaining servers, managing networks, etc than whatever consultant or technician a company has doing the job. I often want to go "look, just do this <insert small operation> and it'll work."

I think the problem is twofold. One: Universities giving "IT Degrees" that are so generic they can get people hired anywhere, when the actual skills are very specific and not applicable to most positions advertised as IT. Two: Hiring practices of most companies. They'll see a degree and scoop someone up if they interview well, without bothering to see if this person has the specific skills they need, or a broad range of knowledge which would also be usefull. No, they think, this guy has an IT degree, he'll be able to do whatever we need! It never works that way of course.