This is hardly a new problem- and in many ways, I'm not sure it's a problem at all compared to the company cultural issues brought up by skywhopper.
Whether it's programming or system administration, you're always going to have new people getting excited about the sudden power they've learned. Being able to make computers do things opens up this whole new world, and when people find themselves in that world they may end up overestimating their skills and underestimating how much they need to grow. What they fail at understanding they make up with in enthusiasm, and with experience they become more knowledgable about what they don't know.
If we waited until they were "qualified" for jobs they would never get the experience to become qualified. At the same time there is more than enough room in the current job market to support people of lower skillsets, and for some companies that's considered an investment (junior people tend to turn to senior people over time).
This is where it becomes a company culture issue. If a company is smart they'll have a few senior people making sure things are held to the right standard, and a few junior people who can get things done but need some guidance and direction. However, lots of companies (especially the smaller ones who may be more constrained by budget) go for the cheaper route and would rather hire someone junior as their main support. The problem isn't that the sysadmins aren't qualified sysadmins, it's that they're junior system admins who have been hired for the wrong job. Companies that fail to value experience tend to suffer as a result.
I've found that there isn't an easy ramp into system admin from university -- most of the talent comes from dogmatic self learning in computer repair shops or subpar IT shops. All the good guys at $BIG_SOFTWARE_COMPANY seem to be in their 30s after putting in years doing /tedious/, but extremely useful, work for little pay.
My uni used student sysadmins to run hosting for Open Source projects. Great experience on production infrastructure without big dollars on the line when mistakes are made.
Amen to that. When I see some of the job desc in job postings for DevOps/Sysadmin, I wonder. Is there really someone out there will all the skills that are asked for?
3-5 years of linux system administration experience
3-5 years of windows 2000/2010 administration experience
3-5 years of networking level tcp/ip experience with custom protocols
3-5 years of c++ experience
3-5 years of .net experience
3-5 years of .....
I think more than half the job postings out there are created by entry/mid level hr persons who find similar job descriptions on other sites and copy paste requirements. This then has propagated into monster job descriptions you see now.
I noted this as well, for the pay these companies are offering, anyone with that level of experience they are asking for would laugh and move on. It's almost as if it's a trojan horse of a job post. Only those stupid enough to apply to a job post like that are the kinds of employees they are looking for.
Whether it's programming or system administration, you're always going to have new people getting excited about the sudden power they've learned. Being able to make computers do things opens up this whole new world, and when people find themselves in that world they may end up overestimating their skills and underestimating how much they need to grow. What they fail at understanding they make up with in enthusiasm, and with experience they become more knowledgable about what they don't know.
If we waited until they were "qualified" for jobs they would never get the experience to become qualified. At the same time there is more than enough room in the current job market to support people of lower skillsets, and for some companies that's considered an investment (junior people tend to turn to senior people over time).
This is where it becomes a company culture issue. If a company is smart they'll have a few senior people making sure things are held to the right standard, and a few junior people who can get things done but need some guidance and direction. However, lots of companies (especially the smaller ones who may be more constrained by budget) go for the cheaper route and would rather hire someone junior as their main support. The problem isn't that the sysadmins aren't qualified sysadmins, it's that they're junior system admins who have been hired for the wrong job. Companies that fail to value experience tend to suffer as a result.