At my school ( Auburn University, Auburn Alabama, Class of 2000 ) we supposedly had access to an Academic LPAR on the school's system, but there were no classes to take which would have taught you anything about how the system operates or how to use it. There was one terminal in the basement of the math building which was hooked into the school's main system which you could log on to if you had an ID. No instructions, no chair, just a terminal sitting on a table. ( It reminds me of what those researchers in India are doing: putting an internet attached PC on the street behind some plexiglass with the keyboard and mouse hanging out and seeing how the local children learn to use it )
When I took my operating systems class, the first 2 weeks of class were basically an overview of the evolution of OS technology. It seemed that the first week was the history of IBM OS development from plugboards through MVS/TSO. After that everything else was UNIX ( with labs done in Linux, of course ) There just wasn't anything else to take to learn about MVS/OS390. There was a system administration class where you could admin a Solaris, NT, Linux, Plan 9, Amoeba, and some other wacky stuff; but there was no Mainframe system. Of course when I landed my present job, I asked some of the professors about the lack of any classes pertaining to IBM business systems. The reply was along the lines of "It's not a growing market segment, so we cut those courses out to make room for Java." **sigh, shakes head** Jay Brenneman z/OS System Build and Installation
