>Many of the job ads,
>and (sadly) many of my friends in industry, ask which
>tools the students know.

Surely they are wrong and you are right, but nevertheless I understand their
position no less than yours. They need some "coordinate system" for their
estimates, and those well-known tools provide such a system - although bad,
but still without alternatives.

> They should be asking how
>fast the students can learn the tools and practices in
>that workplace, and how willing the students are to
>learn them.

Yes, but there are no established, well-known and named levels for those
qualities - so they do not constitute a usable coordinate system for outsiders
(I mean "outsiders" relative to the educational system).
  In, say, mathematics, the situation is quite different - there *are*
well-established and recognized levels of mastering various topics.


Alexander Kopilovitch                      [log in to unmask]
Saint-Petersburg
Russia