Why are external vendor exams so expensive?

I've recently become a first year BIT student at WelTec. It's a good
degree, covers A+ in the first year. Now, the first year's fees are
something like $3700 or so. That's pretty cheap for a degree, so I'm
not complaining even though I have $11 to my name, and pay day is like
5 days away. But that's student life. However, if I want to sit the
official A+ exams at a Prometric testing centre, they're $317 an exam,
and two a required for A+, so that's $634! I can't even afford 2
minute noodles let alone $634! Now, these exams are (often) multi
choice exams done over the internet. Why are they so expensive? No
doubt there are feeds in creating the questions, testing their
effectiveness etc..., but $634's a bit rich I think. So far here is
my list of external vendor exams I'd like to sit, and their prices...

A+: $317 x 2 = $634
Network+: $484
CCNA: $240
Citrix CCA: $158 + $80(US) = $320

Giving a grand total of $1678, or nearly half my degree costs for the
first year! I guess the reason why I'm moaning is just because it's
soo hard being a student these days in IT, and I wouldn't even want to
think about what dental students are going through!

Apparently the government wants to build a knowledge economy, however,
they wont do it without IT graduates, which are at the lowest levels
in 15 years (source NZ Herald). I'm contemplating going overseas too
once my degree finishes simply because the government has done
*nothing* to entice or even help me out while studying. No allowance
because my parents ear to much (though they spend it all on their
mortgage). No accommodation supplement for the same reason. All they
gave me is a stupid student loan. No wonder students are bitter and
are leaving for greener (money wise) pastures.

 

Waylon Kenning said the following on 19/09/2004 11:10:

The cost of Exams in the IT industry is nothing new, they have always
been expensive. (As have courses)

I know the exam centre kicks a fair part of the fee to MS for there
exams and I would suspect the sme for other companies.

 

It seems like Sun, 19 Sep 2004 11:19:06 +1200 was when Collector-NZ

Yeah, my question is why? Financial exclusivity?

 

When you have graduated $634 == one days work.
Wouldn't that be a good investment?

 

Like hell it does. You don't get paid anything like that until you've
got a lot of experience under your belt, unless you're very, very, very
good - In which case you were probably working as a teenager, and never
bothered with tertiary education anyway.

--
Matthew Poole Auckland, New Zealand
"Veni, vidi, velcro...
I came, I saw, I stuck around"

My real e-mail is mattATp00leDOTnet

 

Waylon Kenning said the following on 19/09/2004 11:42:

Kick Backs to the company whos name isused as in MS Novelle Cisco etc

 

and, you may find you spend all this cash, and the technologies change after
you enter the workforce.

 

Most training is really about learning to learn.
So that shouldn't be a problem. Just a normal part of the cycle
that everyone has to deal with all of the time.

 

Kerry said the following on 19/09/2004 12:24:

If that is the case why did MS threaten to and IIRC actually cancel the
MS Certifications of people who completed before Win 2K unless they did
Win2k Courses

 

Oh, I thought the discussion was about IT - not Microsoft.
Does IT equate to a Microsoft certified course these days?
If so, then it should be called an MW course.

A proper IT course would go a bit further than teaching how
to put the latest MS cd in your computer and following the
instructions.

 

Think about what someone with that kind of knowledge can earn per day
applying it. Now think about the tutors for those courses--they have to
be paid something to make it worth their while to impart that knowledge
instead of earning money applying it.

You do the math.

 

It seems like Sun, 19 Sep 2004 12:54:10 +1200 was when Lawrence

But take a company such as Cisco. They would need CCNAs (and higher of
course) out in the workforce else no one would understand how Cisco
Routers were configured, except those people who either trained by
themselves or through some third party vendor that Cisco had no
quality control over. Therefore, it would be in Cisco's best
interests to start an educational program so there were people around
to service their products. And as an incentive to those people who
wish to learn about Cisco's IOS for example, wouldn't you think exam
fees would be as low as possible?

This doesn't of course apply to say Comptia exams, but certainly Red
Hat/Cisco/Microsoft/SCO etc...

Also, I was referring specifically to tutors teaching classes face to
face, I have no problems with that. I was talking more about courses
taught online, thorough the reading of materials and doing interactive
activities. Once this content has been created, it can be used with
millions of people, so in effect, the cost per student for an e-course
should be very very low I would think.

 

Waylon Kenning wrote:
<snip>

As usual it's the laws of supply and demand - if you're the only
provider of the qualification, and there's a demand for it in the
marketplace you'll price gouge for all that you're worth.

SAP are even worse. Their courses run AU$600-$800+GST per day, run for
between 2 and 5 days, then if you want the certification, you get to sit
the exams for either AU$400 or $700+GST per exam, and they only run most
of them in Aus now. A quick add up of the courses and exams I want to
do runs to $12K+, will entail 5 trips to Aussie (at least another $4K)
and will mean taking a month off work.

Looks like I need to find an employer that will pick up the tab.

 

That last sentence doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

I've seen your posts on nz.comp over the years and think you're aiming
too low. Although I do understand concerns over the costs of the more
pretentious degrees and find this to be a failing of our education
system rather than anything else. Still, rant over.

More of one, yes. The clichéd figures are 10% of GDP in ten years, or
100 companies of 100M turnover each. Whether this is an annualised
turnover or merely their total turnover before falling over one
afternoon is a different story.

But, yes, a knowledge economy.

I'm sick of hearing this, and it's bullshit. I'm sure they're at their
lowest levels in 15 years (it's 2004, today's graduates will have
entered their courses *just* as the dotcom bubble burst), but I don't
see - and have never seen - just what we need IT graduates for.

I, for instance, seem to hold down what mostly passes for a career in
the IT industry without once having had any formal training. Oh, we had
a bloke come in and spend three days teaching us COM once but that's not
quite what I meant. I have no degree in IT. I have no certification of
any form or description. It has never hurt me.

In fact it doesn't appear to have hurt any of the people around me, and
the only guys I know that did do 'computing' at University spent a
couple of years coding in the bowels of a corporation (name witheld to
protect the innocent) before leaving and forming their own business.
That had nothing to do with programming at all.

I worked in a software company in London once where we had a policy of
specifically not employing IT graduates. Engineers, mathematicians - all
much better at writing code than IT graduates.

Incidentally most of this "more graduates" noise is being made by the
Universities - the same people who grab $shitloads of our fine taxpayer
dollars, the same again from their "revenue earning units" (students),
and then use this money to employ people to go and scrounge for more. Go
find some of the moaning about how they need a "next generation
Internet" meaning "we want the taxpayer to shell out so we can run 10Gig
pipes up and down the country".

Arseholes. I don't get on well with NZ Universities.

Do it. You'll have a great time.

Scarcely the government's problem.

Dave

 

Yes and if you do that, you can start your own business and be earning
$200,000 pa.
So is it worth Your while?
- Tim

 

That matches my own experience (as a math honors graduate).

That was what I call a very sound well-thought-out reply.
On behalf of all sensible people, thank you very much.

 

David Preece said the following on 19/09/2004 17:23:

I have not snipped your post because it is exactly what the IT industry
in NZ is.

I have a degree, but not in IT, while IT is my field now and has been
for a while.

The issue of qualification in IT actually goes to the fact that the IT
industry is a young profession and life experiance and age do not count
anymore.

When you reach the age of about 40ish then you would find it very
difficult to enter a new job.

After a long discussion with someone today it became even more apparant
to me that the IT industry in NZ has matured as the older identities in
the industry are struggling.

 

Yes they do.
Experience is the most valued commodity, in my experience.

People say to me "The way you can make things happen and how
bullet proof the code is you write give me an unreal expectation of how
all development should be".

Bullshit. I have never had a problem.

You will get young people who struggle too.

 

It seems like Sun, 19 Sep 2004 17:23:40 +1200 was when David Preece

There is a method to my madness though, WelTec's degree is based
around industry courses such as A+, Network+ MCSA, and Allied Telesyn
(sp?) papers. So I figures, why not kill two birds with one stone,
learn the same content and get a degree and external certs for it.
And anyways, if the degree turns out being too easy, with B passes it
allows entry into a Master of Computing at Unitec, which with an A
pass in the Masters, allows entry into New Zealand's only (to my
knowledge) Doctorate of Computing.

My dad has that arguement. But really, even though in the past people
could leave school and get a job, odds are these days people who have
degrees can't get those same jobs as easily. It seems the IT industry
likes people with degrees and certs, but loves experience. So
everyone wants experience, but where are you supposed to get this
experience if no one wants a graduate without experience?

How I see it, is that you have to learn new information to be useful
in a job, so why not at the same time get external certificates, and
hell, while you're there, why not get a degree on top? Learning's the
push, but a degree's a nice thing ya'know, it looks good on the wall I
guess, and when I see my friends they can call me "Waylon Kenning
Bach. InfoTech." or something, I dunno.

Well, lets see, the government looks at a parent's pay for a person
under 25, but doesn't take into account their expenses (say power,
food, phone and a morgage). So, in essence, my parents could be worse
off than parents who earn less but have less costs, so their child
gets an allowance, but not I? Now where's the consistancy in that?