A few years ago I landed my first programming job as a COBOL programmer, I had no professional(programming) experience or a college degree but the company offered an in-house training type deal. It was several weeks long and they had a trainer come in every day and teach us COBOL and it's accompanying technologies(SQL,JCL,REXX), the pay was 50,000 a year starting out and it wasn't a bad gig. Would I go back to it? Probably not, but you can certainly make a decent living getting into COBOL these days. The work was boring and nothing cool or cutting edge but at the time employment was employment to me. My resume is online and I certainly get my fair share of offers for COBOL work. So learning it could certainly have some merit if you're looking to make some money.