[punk-coder]

I actually went through something like this back in 1996. A few local companies (AFLAC, TSYS and Blue Cross/Blue Shield) sponsored a program that taught Assembler, COBOL, IMS, DB2, JCL, Rexx, etc. Those who made it through all the testing, interviews, background checks, etc. were paid to go to school 8 hours a day for 3 months. When you were done you were guaranteed a job at one of those companies, and you agreed to work there a minimum of 4 years to work off the money that was paid to you while you went through training. If you left the company before the time was up you had to pay back the remaining balance. This put all of us into working on mainframes during Y2K. Once Y2K was done I moved on to Java, then .NET, and now work in Machine Learning, 24 years later. It was a great way to get my foot in the door.