Seitu Khafre is at boot camp, readying himself to spend the next 19 months at war. For the past four weeks, the 38-year-old security guard has undergone a training regimen in Baltimore that includes grueling "exercises," surprise tests and regular homework to master a new language.

This month he will be shipped to the front lines to face his enemy -- the Year 2000 computer bug.

Khafre is among the first conscripts in a program started by the University System of Maryland and Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. to help train workers to battle the glitch. He and 10 other classmates are getting a five-week crash course in the COBOL computer programming technology, which runs many of the older mainframe computers affected by the date problem.

Although most students in the class have no previous programming skills, come graduation Thursday, course leaders promise, participants will be able to repair basic COBOL programs so they'll understand the Year 2000 problem and beyond.

Most will walk straight into jobs, officials predict. "There are going to be a lot of companies that are going to need basic emergency help, and that's what we're providing," said Jim Hill, the university system's executive director of continuing education.

The training program, which university system officials said will be offered at a yet-to-be-selected Montgomery County campus starting next month, was designed to help address a widespread shortage of workers in Maryland and Northern Virginia with the technical skills to repair the date glitch.

The dearth has become so serious that in recent months, some technology companies have tried to hire retirees, while others have shipped programs in need of fixes to foreign countries where there are more COBOL programmers. The employers say that traditional COBOL training programs, which can take a full year, are too slow for them.

Hill said the boot camp has worker-hungry tech firms very interested. "I had one company call up and say they'd be interested in hiring everyone" in the first class, he said.

Twenty firms, including BDM International Inc., Raytheon Systems Co., Chevy Chase Federal Savings Bank and the Baltimore Life Cos., have expressed interested in hiring graduates from the program. But some corporate recruiters, including those working with the university system, said they were concerned the boot camp graduates would not be up to the job.

"They want somebody who has had hands-on experience, who can hit the ground running," said Alan Shulman, an executive vice president at Aetea Information Technology Inc., a tech industry headhunting firm in Rockville that is looking over resumes from program participants. "These guys aren't seasoned programmers. It's going to be a hard sell to some of our clients."

"We'll need to have some initial successes in the field," he said. "If that happens, it'll be a lot easier sell."

As the market for COBOL-trained workers continues to constrict and 2000 draws closer, Shulman predicted that companies will become less choosy. "At some point, this may be the only answer out there," he said. "We're not there now, but we're getting close."

Some firms, though, said they have a specific need for less-experienced COBOL technicians. Raytheon Systems' Year 2000 Service Center in Falls Church, for example, is looking for about 15 programmers to de-bug a 5 million-line COBOL program, said Jay Shapiro, a Raytheon program manager. "About half of them just need to be able to operate basic [software] tools," he said. "The people the state of Maryland is going to provide fit the description."

The students don't have to pay a cent for the training, which even includes free breakfasts and lunches. Employers who hire graduates must pay for the student's $4,000 training cost. The companies also must commit to pay the student at least $12 an hour and put $8 an hour into a fund that the student can use to pay future tuition at any public university in the state.

A student who works for about two years on the date glitch could accrue enough in the fund to cover a four-year undergraduate program at a University of Maryland campus, Hill said.

The program for now has about 30 students in three classes, with plans laid to start more in coming weeks. So far, it has drawn inquiries from several hundred students, Hill said.

Doug Becker, the co-chief executive of Sylvan, said the deal has positive aspects for all sides. "The student gets incredible work experience and the employer gets people they desperately need, and we get the opportunity to enter an important new market."

Becker said Sylvan hopes to expand the program to other states. Over the weekend, Sylvan executives and Hill were scheduled to travel to Nashville to discuss the program before two large national university groups. Hill said he already has fielded inquiries from officials in North Carolina, New York and Arizona.

The program, which is taught by teachers from a Sylvan affiliate, Caliber Learning Network Inc., provides students with the equivalent of 2 1/2 college semesters of COBOL training, said Vince DeBlase, who designed the curriculum. The five-week course runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., four days a week. Additional information is available at 410-625-9212.

Mornings typically are devoted to lectures, while afternoons are "lab time," when students practice writing programs. Although the course provides a broad COBOL overview, lessons concentrate on Year 2000 issues. Techniques such as expanding "date fields" from two digits, such as "98," to four digits, "1998," are emphasized, DeBlase said.

"It's a lot to learn in such a short time," said Jeremy Sigmon, one of the students. Sigmon, 20, had been working as a painter and going to community college before he decided to join the boot camp.

"It sounded like a really good opportunity to pick up computer skills," said Sigmon, who subsisted on about three hours of sleep a night, trying to squeeze in homework and a part-time job when he was not in the classroom.

The classes are taught in a downtown Baltimore office building across from the city's federal courthouse. Students spend the day tapping away on their keyboards in a hastily assembled computer room, where wires snake across the floor.

"This is a great deal for us," said Todd Steinberg, 20, a student at Towson University who was lured by the potential for a four-year scholarship. Many of the participants are students who are looking for a way to finance their education.

But there's also the attraction of being on the front lines, preventing a looming crisis. "It's exciting," said Doug Tucker, 20, another one of the students. "We're going to save the millennium."