Teaching Students Mainframe Skills for the Niche Market: An Exploratory Proposal

Contrary to the common belief, mainframe is here to stay in corporate Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. Many organizations find it more advantageous in leveraging the mainframe and are adding more workloads and exploiting new technologies. They increase the mainframe usage and leverage it to drive business value and become more successful. However, the mainframe industry faces the challenge of talent shortage because many older mainframe professionals are retiring. On the other hand, very few universities teach students mainframe skills. The high demand of mainframe jobs and the low supply of college graduates with mainframe skills present a unique opportunity for Information Systems (IS) programs to train students mainframe skills for job placement in the niche market. Therefore, we propose the idea of exploring teaching students mainframe skills in IS curriculum. Several excellent programs and resources to prepare students with mainframe skills are also reported in this paper