Daniel Jitnah <djitnah@greenwareit.com.au> wrote:
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/business-it/microsoft-wins-spot-in-sc...
So the main concern mentioned in the article seems to be that the courses teach the use of a certain vendor's products, not general introductory programming, algorithms, etc. The second concern is that such vendor-designed courses unduly increase brand recognition and use of a particular corporation's products. Expanding the initiative to cover other vendors wouldn't necessarily address this problem, though opening it to, say, Linux Professional Institute (LPI), which is distribution-independent, wouldn't be so readily subject to this criticism. Of course, in a general programming subject, the language is chosen by the educators but the implementation and operating system need not be.