FWIW ibm hosts a coding competition called master the mainframe to help students learn mainframe programming on the latest systems.
(Note: I'm not affiliated with ibm)
That looks awesome. Passed it along to some folks at NYU. I wish _I_ could join. Surely they don't have so much demand they'd need to restrict this to high school and university students... In general if they're willing to do these programs why not provide training/re-training for adults in need of work?
To take part in the competition parts you need to be a student, but everyone can use the "learning system", and from what I've heard that includes all the same exercises and tasks.
I placed highly in this competition two years running while in college myself. It was highly informative and I would recommend it to anyone else in a similar position.