Giving Advice to School Leavers

I am a team manager in a fairly large IT department of a large Hospital. I am continually asked by staff to give career advise for there children who want to “get into” IT. They ask what courses there kids should do, what university qualifications should they have.

I have some difficulty giving this advise, as I came up through the old way of hard work and knowledge gained through experience, and have a somewhat negitive view of formal qualifications.

So I throw the question to the group,If you had a 16 year old kid asking for advise, what would you reply?