According to The Register, the state of North Carolina has become the first US state to implement the Microsoft IT Academy Program for its 628 high schools.

The program offers students and teachers the latest Microsoft software for classrooms and labs, Microsoft e-learning materials, discounts on courseware, access to Tech Net, and marketing resources to help promote the institutions’ association with Microsoft, along with certification in Microsoft technologies.

So Microsoft are giving the schools a bunch of freebies and a certification and, in return, expects the schools to do their marketing for them.

To deal with the last bit first, asking schools to do marketing strikes me as fundamentally dodgy and something that is likely to lead to a range of conflicts of interest. But what of the Microsoft technologies that the students will be learning.

North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction June Atkinson said in a statement:

The ability to effectively use Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access is an essential skill in most businesses and offices today. I am pleased that North Carolina can provide this opportunity for teachers to improve their skills and for students to be career-ready.

In other words, the state of North Carolina will do Microsoft’s marketing for tham and, in return, Microsoft will these unfortunate students certificates proving that they are capable of rote-lerarning an interface that is supposed to be so intuitive that it needs no training.

The state is not making these students “career-ready”, it is setting them up for failure as soon as their employer introduces an application not on the course list.