Montgomery College, with funding and assistance from Montgomery County and Oracle Corp., has launched an Information Technology Institute to help train the legions of computer experts now in demand in one of the premier technology regions in the nation.

The institute is based at the college's Germantown campus but will offer credit and noncredit courses at its Rockville and Takoma Park facilities, as well as at two local technology firms: Attronica Computers Inc., in Rockville, and Computer Analytics Inc., in Silver Spring.

College officials said the institute, a public-private partnership, will be crucial in an area dominated by the Interstate 270 technology corridor, where there are more than 475 biomedical, communication and other high-tech firms employing almost 10,000 workers.

Oracle, the Redwood Shores, Calif., database software giant -- the world's second-largest software company with 35,000 employees -- is helping via a new academic initiative that provides deeply discounted software, which college officials said they could never afford otherwise, as well as support services and staff training.

Oracle officials said the corporation, which is aiding other schools as well, is providing almost $1 million worth of software and is offering 50 percent discounts on all Oracle training courses for college staff members.

As a result, the new institute will be able to offer a wide range of courses -- from the basics, like buying a computer, through desktop publishing and Web page design, to network engineering, said Stephen Cain, the institute's interim director.

"It's very exciting," he said. "It's an exciting area to be in, in part because of all the changes, but it's also been very gratifying to see the college grow in this way. I'm extremely grateful to our County Council for seeing the plan and supporting it. There's been a lot of years when we have not been able to fund the kind of initiatives that we've wanted to."

Cain, who also praised Oracle and County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), said the institute grew, in part, from the college's realization that 13,000 students took information technology courses last year but that certain "high end" courses were still missing from the curriculum.

It also grew out of the close contact between the college, the largest community college in the state, and the business community.

Cain said the local boom in "infocom" (information-communication) business is creating a huge demand for skilled workers.

"There are hundreds and hundreds of start-up companies," said Cain, "some of them very small, from one to four employees. Others are extremely large." He said demand is so high that some firms are hiring skilled workers regardless of where they went to college, if they went at all.

"They're really focusing right now, it seems, on skills and expertise and in some cases not so much on the degrees that people have," he said. "A lot of folks are getting jobs right now without college degrees. When it comes to the infotech folks, they're not so much worried about the degrees as the skill.

"It just goes to show how really serious the shortage is," he said. "There are a lot of compromises on the requirements for a professional-level job."

And it is a shortage that can be hard for colleges to keep up with.

Often, he said, curriculum changes are aimed at fairly static disciplines in arts or sciences. With the fast-changing developments in infotech, he said, "you have to respond to moving targets."

Interest can swing widely in a year, for example, from one company's software to another's, or from one software version to another, and it can be hard for academic institutions to respond. "You need to be flexible. It's a little bit different than a new edition of a textbook in a history class," Cain said.

Wanda Miles, senior manager of the Oracle Academic Initiative, said the company decided to focus on Montgomery College because of the local technology boom and because of the region's diverse student population. "Oracle is a global company, and we need a diverse work force for the customers that we service," she said.

Miles said that Oracle is acting in part out of self-interest. "We've got growth constraints," she said. "If you can't find enough programmers or technical workers, it's difficult to get all your products out."

And for Montgomery County, which has spent $2 million on the institute, she said, "It's a great way to attract more businesses to your area if you can prove that you can supply them with a steady stream of qualified employees."