I agree with you about IT careers. Back in the late 80s when I was starting college, it was exactly the way you describe. It is really interesting how things changed in the late 90's regarding this. I remember it falling back for a while after the dot com boom, only to pick back up in late 2000. A lot of people really don't realize that the prestige that comes from IT is only a recent thing, I think because having grown up around it, it's all that they know.