[Spooky23]

I think there are two worlds here. For folks in the Valley, in NYC, or in companies working at the bleeding edge, you want to fund the best, most qualified people, period. That makes sense, and in the best interests of the country.

But, in terms of numbers, the real money is the more banal "staff augmentation" programmers that you see in "compliance advertisements" in industry trade rags. There is a shortage of qualified COBOL programmers, but you don't hear about training programs for COBOL (back in the 70's clerical staff were trained to do write that stuff, not compsci types). But you do see government contracts paying $30/hour to "body shop" vendors, who in turn are paying Indians $12-17/hr. similar story for people doing business rules in some J2EE thing.

That's a problem, because many of the few million un- or under-employed workers in the US could be trained to do this type of work quickly.

[rdouble]

Except that legacy system maintenance is like agricultural work. You can't get Americans to do the work.

[ahamilton]

There are no jobs "Americans won't do." Depressed wages and the de facto Spanish language requirement reduce American interest in agricultural work.