[Qgis-user] QGIS vs ArcGIS in Education and Practice

[Brent Wood]

Hi,
I agree that most "GIS jobs" are after ESRI expertise. However, I think you have answered yourself - many universities offer GIS classes. Based on donated ESRI software to create market dominance. 

Many other disciplines, especially in environmental science also run GIS classes with a focus on their discipline. These typically use QGIS & open source as they are not the beneficiaries of ESRI marketing largesse, and open source provides the required functionality within budget :-) 

So - if you want to train GIS professionals, ESRI does make sense, if you want to train (say) ecologists in using GIS for ecology, use QGIS.
If you want a more solid grounding is GIS, & spatial data analysis, modeling & management, teach a suite comprising QGIS, R & Postgis.

Another aspect to consider, in the third world, especially African & Pacific Island nations, QGIS is the preferred platform. Generally only in the first world, and often just western nations, is commercial GIS software a popular choice.  

Brent Wood 

    On Saturday, December 17, 2016 6:08 AM, Innisfree McKinnon <innisfree.mckinnon at gmail.com> wrote:
 

 Hello again,Many, if not the majority of university students in GIS classes are not going to end up with GIS as their main career focus. The vast majority of my students are environmental science majors who are going to end up working in government positions that require some GIS. So yes, lots of students who are in college GIS classes aren't that motivated. In my experience in every class there are a few students who take to GIS and could make a career out of it. The rest are going to get enough basic skills to use it if their job requires it, but it isn't their passion.
I have been arguing the QGIS is more affordable and accessible, but learning two or more applications complicates things. Do I have them repeat things they already know how to do in one application in the other? Do I teach certain skills/techniques in one platform and others in the other platform? Ideally I would like to teach them how to evaluate and select the application that they like best for a particular project, but how do I do that? 
Most QGIS users seem passionate about open source, and tend to avoid ESRI products if at all possible, in my experience. But most gov. jobs in the U.S. still say must have experience with ArcGIS. Otherwise I would love to move to all open source.Innisfree
On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 11:40 PM, Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:

On 16 December 2016 at 08:38, Nicolas Cadieux
<nicolas.cadieux at archeotec.ca> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is a good question! My answer would be that students have a better
> chance of having a job if the learn GIS and not a software.

+1 to that. To put it bluntly, I think ANY GIS practitioner who can
only list experience with a single application (or vendor's suite) on
their resume is not at all competitive in today's market. There's
enough free open source or trial software available that it really
shows a lack of motivation for someone not to have skills in more than
one application.

Nyall
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