Hello everyone... I was a COBOL mainframe programmer for over 21 years from 1981 to 2002, working for Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield in NYC when I and most of the IT department was outsourced (i.e. laid off). Instead of staying in the industry, I took a long 4 year vacation and have been working completely unrelated jobs since but would like to get back into IT again. Obviously with a 16 year absence from the industry and not up to what is the current latest/greatest in my particular specialization and a bit out of practice to say the least, I'm looking to take some online courses that can both refresh my skills as well as bring me more up to date to make my resume a bit more viable. There seem to be more than a few COBOL jobs out there as the legacy systems don't seem to be going away anytime soon, so I'm really more just interested in sticking with COBOL and the like instead of learning newer/different programming languages. Does anyone have any online school and course recommendations or any direction I should take in order to get a job given my background? Thanks for your help! 

Hi Richard,

Although IBM does not endorse any specific provider, we have found the Interskill (https://www.interskill.com/course-catalog/by-curriculum.html) and Marist College (http://idcp.marist.edu/enterprisesystemseducation/zos_program_overview/advancedcobolprogramming.html) COBOL courses very good.

Regards,

Nicole

Thanks so much for your input Nicole!