Please Help! - Schooling/Careers

Susta1n

I expect this post to be rather lengthy to give as much information as possible about my situation. Please try and read as much as possible!

Introduction/Current Position
Im currently 22 years old, living at home with my parents. I graduated from a top high school in my area (Louisville, Ky). Straight out of high school I decided to attend a Automotive Tech school at my local community college, specializing in Toyota. I did this mainly to stray from the beaten path of attending a university and obtaining a 4-year degree. At the time of my life I felt I had enough of traditional schooling and wanted to invest my time into something that I genuinely wanted to learn more about/.

Fast forward 4 years, and Im really not found of the field whatsoever. I do not regret spending my time as I did, as the knowledge I gained is something I'll always have. I don't like the way the industry is headed, or how the main base of technicians are treated/payed. I feel if there is a time to change career paths, attend school, and commit myself to something..I'd rather do it now while living at home and having some support rather than later.

Ive always been extremely interested in computers. In high school I took 4 Cisco courses, C++ and Basic programming courses, and a web design course. Anything computer related has always come very easy to me, and its something Id like to make a career out of.

Goals
This is the first piece of advice I need. Quite honestly, I don't care which field I go into, as they all seem fairly interesting to me. Some of the fields that have stood out to me, are Computer Security and Forensics as well as Computer Engineering. As far as what my criteria is for what I might want to study? Putting overall interest aside for a moment, Im mainly concerned with job availability and quite frankly, overall pay. Regardless of how much I enjoy what Im doing, I believe we all go to work for simply one reason - to make money. Id rather invest my time in something that maximizes both interest and money made though, and not to simply do what makes the most money. I want to learn as much as I absolutely can within a field and become as proficient as possible at my study.

Schooling
This is my main concern as Im not really sure what to do. There are 3 schools im looking at in my city.
University of Louisville: UofL College of Business | Computer Information Systems (CIS)
Jefferson Community College: Computer & Information Technologies - Southwest Campu... | JCTC
Sullivan College of Technology and Design: Computer Network Security & Forensics

Firstly, Im really not a fan of attending for a 4 year degree at UofL, as I cant stand the giant class sizes and curriculum outside of my field of study. Maybe its just a personal thing, but the entire experience turns me off. The school is huge, there thousands upon thousands of people everywhere, and I just get completely disoriented. I tried going here part time while working at my current job, it didn't work out for me. Which got me looking at the other 2 options.

JCC(JCTC) is essetially a 2 year associates program. The southeast campus that im looking at as a much much smaller student population and is the only campus that offers InfoSec. This is the one im leaning towards the most. This schol costs roughly $10-12,000 for a 2-yar associated degree.

Sullivan is a For-Profit Tech College. From my browsing of this forum, I could clearly see the feelings towards For-Profit organizations. That being said though, out of he 3 options, it appears to have the most solid curriculum list. This one appeals to me the most, but it is a $40,000 School for that 2-year associates degree. As im sure most of you can relate, I'd really rather not waste 40K if it isn't going to further my career that much in comparison to the other schools.

Overall
Thats where im at currently. I don't have many people to ask about this subject, because I don't know anyone personally that does this line of work. I really want to learn the most I can and excel, but Im not sure which path to take or where to go. Im willing to spend what I must to achieve my goals, but I don't want to waste the money either. I'll be able to receive some financial aid, but the rest would be covered in student loans unfortunately. Any help would be greatly appreciated! If any of you have anymore questions I will do my best to provide anymore information if possible!

Xavor

If you're talking about the Associate for the Sullivan school, I would not pay a premium for a 2 year degree. HR doesn't give much weight to 2 year degrees, and that's where it matters when you're new to the field.

If you're looking to go after a 4 year degree at some point (and for InfoSec, you should), do a 2 year degree with the focus on completing all the general education prerequisites for said degree. This way, you save a lot of money when you get into a BS program.

The degree title isn't too important for these roles. If you look at the job postings for IT it's usually looking for IT related, but any accredited degree with experience usually works. This early on, just pick a school which you can afford without racking up debt, get a IT job of any kind, and focus on a solid entry certification such as Security+. Also, if you build on that Cisco material by finishing a CCNA you can get into a entry network job pretty quickly.

aftereffector

40K for an associate's degree? Yikes. I need to start my own for profit tech college if they are pulling in that kind of tuition!

I'm sort of where you are trying to get (full time employment in computer security), though my job is more aligned with risk management frameworks and auditing and much less aligned with pentesting and forensics. However, I use a lot of the knowledge that is tested on the CISSP exam on a daily basis. I didn't get here by going to college, getting a degree, and then getting a job... I took an alternate route that involved photography, the military, and an online history degree. The military was a fantastic jump-start to my professional career, and I don't see myself being anywhere near as far along in my career path at my age if I hadn't gotten my commission, but it's not something I really recommend for people I don't know well. However, there are a few things that I did that might help you out in your situation.

1) Community college. Before I joined, I had 97 hours of college credit. Two semesters of that was from a regular four-year state university, which I struggled at for various reasons I won't bore you with, but the rest of it - about 70 hours - was all from community college. I knocked out English, Technical Writing, a two-semester sequence of both chemistry and physics with labs, a full math sequence from college algebra to vector calculus (which I don't remember even the tiniest part of), two government classes, two history classes, enough Spanish to complete a foreign language requirement, and basically all the other courses that are a part of most university common core requirements. This allowed me to get a bachelor's degree by just taking the program-specific requirements, as I was able to transfer in almost every general education and elective credit in the degree plan. Community college is very inexpensive as a resident student, and the class schedules are flexible enough that you could take 18 credit hours per semester like an on-campus student or 9 semester hours on nights and weekends with a full-time job. Did I mention how cheap community college is? It's ridiculous. I think I was paying around $300 for a four-class semester. CHEAP.

2) Get a four-year degree. Not in computer science, even though that is a wonderful major that will stand you in good stead for a long and profitable career in computer security or computer engineering - just get a degree. It helps if you like the coursework, and if you want to get the CS degree, by all means! But the most important thing, by far, is to have a piece of paper with your name and the words "Bachelor of (whatever)" printed on it. Obviously the institution should be accredited and I recommend against for-profit schools, but my diploma is from a low-ranked for-profit school and it's in Military History and I'm doing okay despite both of those things.

3) Don't go heavily into debt for your education. You can get a lot of financial aid - scholarships and grants, for instance; and you can choose where you attend, which is why I recommended against a for-profit school in the previous point. I came out okay because the Army paid for every credit hour I took at that school. Not everyone gets that kind of a deal, and if I wasn't afforded tuition assistance through the military, I would definitely not have been paying $750 per credit hour for a history degree.

A lot of this is going to depend on you - not your intelligence or scholastic ability, really, but your determination and drive to succeed. I didn't have that when I went to the state university, got Cs, Ds and an F in my second semester of aerospace engineering, and dropped out to join the Army as a combat photographer. I very quickly developed that determination and drive to succeed when I realized that combat photography is not the best way to spend a 20 year career, and I didn't let anything get in the way of that piece of paper that says "Bachelor of Arts". For exactly four years, I had no social life, I had no hobbies besides keeping fit, and I kept knocking out courses whether I was at home, at a military school, stationed overseas, or in Iraq. By the time I finished, I didn't have a motivation problem anymore.

If you want it, you can - and will - get it.