Degree or No Degree??

Now that I have finally decided what I want to do with my IT career, get my MCSE and Net + for starters, I am trying to decide whether pursuing a degree is worth the effort. I have heard both good and bad things about it, i.e., it costs too much for the return, it takes too long, if you have certifications they are the same thing, etc.

I am looking for opinions, thoughts, comments, etc, on whether you guys, who are in the same industry and should actually be able to give decent opinions, think that having a degree is worth it?

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sprkymrk

From what I've seen, most older IT folks that don't have a degree wish they had gotten one when they were young because now they are hitting the glass ceiling in their current jobs.

Many younger IT folks that don't have a degree whine that they shouldn't need one because certs and experience are just as good. Some can get jobs, some can't.

If my kids wanted to get into IT, I would recommend the college route if at all possible. It's easier to work on certs with a full time job than to pursue a degree with a full time job. If, after college, they can't get a job because of not being certified, it's only a matter of a few months to get a few decent certs under your belt.

biggene

Well, being that I am already 38, thats one of the largest parts of the conundrum. I don't think I have come anywhere close to the "glass ceiling" in my current position, but I know to get into management just about anywhere in the South, you have to have a degree. I have a decent job now, as a desktop support tech, and my boss is all for me getting any and every cert I want.

sharptech

I was in college getting my degree and landed my first job as the full time IT Tech- I am currently still here- been here for 2+ years. The college pays for my certs now so I am taking advantage of that and getting as many as I can done.

Having a degree IMO can help in certain situations I am sure and would not hurt at all.

Good luck in what you decide.

SRTMCSE

The climate of this field is you need a degree. There are too many ppl with certs and a degree to not have one. I have a good job (notice I said good, not great) and a whole bunch of certs. I made the wrong move and went right into the field and skipped college. Now I'm 22 with a fiancee and a baby daughter and just enrolled in a local community college part time persuing my Computer Science associates (planning on transferring to a 4 year college) and an associates in applied science for Computer Security. Unfortunately the rate I'm taking classes it'll take me about 4 years to finish those 2 majors, but in the long run it'll help.

The way I think of it, when I'm done with my 2 year degree, on the 4 year plan, LOL, I'll have about 7 or 8 years of experience + certs + 2 associate degrees. Then I can persue the Bachelors, but at least then I'll be more marketable.

I do wish I persued college when I was younger (if I would've started at 18 I would've been done already).

int80h

PC techs and sys admins don't need a degree any more than a janitor needs a degree. Sys admin work only requires a vocational training.

If you want to get into engineering however, a degree is a requirement 99.99% of the time.

Basically if you want administer cisco routers you dont need a degree. If you want to design cisco routers a degree is a requirement.

JDMurray

The on-line universities are filled with students in the 35-55 age range who need a degree in order to advance in their careers. I meet many of these people when I take on-line classes, and I'm envious that many of them have an employer who is paying for their degree.

If you don't start your degree now, in four years you'll end up looking back and realize that you'd have a degree if only you had started. The realization of "wasted time" is one of the worse feelings to have.

biggene

Yeah,
That's basically where I am at now. I started 5 years ago at a brick and mortar school, then my dad passed away, and I moved back to the south to take care of my Mom, and just stopped going to school.

Olajuwon

Get a degree while you can.

sprkymrk

int80h wrote:

PC techs and sys admins don't need a degree any more than a janitor needs a degree. Sys admin work only requires a vocational training.

Tell that to my VP, Prez and Board of Directors please. Also mention that to all the monster.com job posters requiring a degree for the above jobs. I'm sure they'll all disagree.

That's not to say that you can't be a super skilled admin/tech without a degree, it's just saying the market is very limited if you don't have them. And I wouldn't compare janitors to sysadmins... Most janitors I know are much smarter.

As far as engineering goes, if tradition would allow it you could simply attend a 9 month vocational speciality school to aquire those skills as well. There's no rocket science in engineering, a 9 month trade school followed by entry level engineering jobs are entirely possible, just not traditional. Thus the college degree is required so they know you took 3-4 classes that are actually useful for the real world, padded with a bunch of social science/literature/basket weaving classes for good measure to round out 4 years and $75,000 of your life.

sprkymrk

jdmurray wrote:

The on-line universities are filled with students in the 35-55 age range who need a degree in order to advance in their careers. I meet many of these people when I take on-line classes, and I'm envious that many of them have an employer who is paying for their degree.

If you don't start your degree now, in four years you'll end up looking back and realize that you'd have a degree if only you had started. The realization of "wasted time" is one of the worse feelings to have.

True words of wisdom JD.

moss12

I am going to finish diploma hopefully it will help afterwards I can decide on the degree

TeKniques

Get the degree, a lot of jobs (even the PC Tech and Sys Admins jobs) are requiring degrees. A 4 year degree will go a long way as you advance your career.

sprkymrk,

9 months for an Engineering specialty is

Depending on the type of Engineering ... Advanced Math, Basic/Advanced Physics, and Engineering courses in general will take longer than that. But yeah, all that nonsense crap they make us take to pile up that 4 year debt sucks ... totally agree there.

Good luck to you.

oldbarney

jdmurray wrote:

The on-line universities are filled with students in the 35-55 age range who need a degree in order to advance in their careers. I meet many of these people when I take on-line classes, and I'm envious that many of them have an employer who is paying for their degree.

If you don't start your degree now, in four years you'll end up looking back and realize that you'd have a degree if only you had started. The realization of "wasted time" is one of the worse feelings to have.

Very true. Placement in my current position was based primarily on my bachelors. The certs and experience helped with a foot in the door. But a 4-year degree proved the deciding factor.

sprkymrk

TeKniques wrote:

sprkymrk,

9 months for an Engineering specialty is

Depending on the type of Engineering ... Advanced Math, Basic/Advanced Physics, and Engineering courses in general will take longer than that. But yeah, all that nonsense crap they make us take to pile up that 4 year debt sucks ... totally agree there.

I know what you mean, but my point was that it takes about the same amount of time to become a very skilled sysadmin as it does to become a skilled engineer. A 9 month trade school for engineers will prepare them to become junior level engineers the same way a 9 month tech school prepares a person for a junior level sysadmin job. Would I hire a fresh out-of-school engineer to build a Sears Tower? no.. Would I hire a brand new 9 month MCSE to run my network? No. But the comparison many people make is "MCSE in 9 months=65K job as Network Admin" but my goodness you need a college degree to become a 40K per year engineer.

The truth is, an engineer is neither smarter nor more skilled in his job than a systems admin with the same amount of experience is in his job. We all know brainiac engineers who don't know how to install winzip on their computer or turn on the monitor. The fact that tradition forces us to think that to become an engineer (or whatever) requires a degree while a network admin job can be had with no degree is silly. If all systems administration jobs required a 4 year degree, that would not make the good network admins any better. If an engineering job could be had by attending a trade school where all they did was engineering that would not make them any less skilled. The fact is (not knocking a college degree mind you) that most college degrees are 90% advanced high school GenEd while the other 10% will actually be used in the "real" world. The opposite is true of (good) trade/tech schools where 90% of what you learn can be applied immediately to the real world with the remaining 10% used for simply book knowledge/theory.

jaeusm

There's no rocket science in engineering

Depends on what field of engineering you're talking about. Probably also depends on your idea of engineering.

a 9 month trade school followed by entry level engineering jobs are entirely possible

Maybe that's true somewhere, but I've never worked for a company where 9 months of engineering education would suffice. Nine months would allow for the mathematics and physics groundwork to be laid (if greatly accelerated) before the engineering classes begin.

Thus the college degree is required so they know you took 3-4 classes that are actually useful for the real world, padded with a bunch of social science/literature/basket weaving classes for good measure to round out 4 years

I don't know about that. My alma mater was on semesters, and I took 22 engineering classes as an undergraduate, and 9 math and physics classes. For universities on quarters, the numbers would be higher.

A 9 month trade school for engineers will prepare them to become junior level engineers

Junior level engineer after nine months? I guess that depends on what you consider an engineer to be.

sprkymrk

jaeusm wrote:

There's no rocket science in engineering

Depends on what field of engineering you're talking about. Probably also depends on your idea of engineering.

a 9 month trade school followed by entry level engineering jobs are entirely possible

Maybe that's true somewhere, but I've never worked for a company where 9 months of engineering education would suffice. Nine months would allow for the mathematics and physics groundwork to be laid (if greatly accelerated) before the engineering classes begin.

Thus the college degree is required so they know you took 3-4 classes that are actually useful for the real world, padded with a bunch of social science/literature/basket weaving classes for good measure to round out 4 years

I don't know about that. My alma mater was on semesters, and I took 22 engineering classes as an undergraduate, and 9 math and physics classes. For universities on quarters, the numbers would be higher.

A 9 month trade school for engineers will prepare them to become junior level engineers

Junior level engineer after nine months? I guess that depends on what you consider an engineer to be.

You took my "if tradition allowed" theme out of my post entirely when you quoted me. If you go back and read, I never said there is a 9 month trade school for engineers, or any company that would hire one if there was. My point was that "it's possible" ---- "if tradition allowed". You could crank out 9 month certified engineers the same way you can crank out 9 month MCSE's or 9 month CCNA's. Traditionally we accept the latter (MCSE or CCNA) as the norm but we would be aghast at the former, as you demonstrated in your reply. "What, a 9 month engineer? What can he build? A treehouse?"
We in the IT trade realize a 9 month trade school MCSE will probably not be qualified to administer a network of any signifigance until he/she has acquired a few years of experience.
My long winded response was not to pick on engineers - hey, we all love Dilbert, right?

, but rather an answer to the somewhat insulting remark by int80h- possibly unintended, but which compared me and my fellow system administrators with janitors. If necessary education levels are comparable between the two, then janitors actually have a much harder job due to the physical requirements. So next time a janitor plugs the floor polisher into a server room outlet and blows the circuit, I suppose we ought to let him restore the backups as well.
So there was no offence intended to engineers, they were the example used in int80h's post which I replied to. No offence to janitors either, they earn their money for sure.

jaeusm

If you go back and read, I never said there is a 9 month trade school for engineers, or any company that would hire one if there was.

And I never said that you did.

My point was that "it's possible" ---- "if tradition allowed".

And my point was that it's not possible, regardless of tradition.

My long winded response was not to pick on engineers - hey, we all love Dilbert, right? , but rather an answer to the somewhat insulting remark by int80h- possibly unintended, but which compared me and my fellow system administrators with janitors.

I understand your point, as I did before my previous post. I'm not launching a personal attack on you, I just think the engineer analogy is inaccurate. And yes, int80h's post was a bit insulting.

Danman32

Actually, an engineering degree is theoretically possible in 9 months, since it typically requires 120 credit hours which is 3 40 hour work weeks. You'd probably blow up your brain if you tried that though.

One thing we don't realize is that MCSE and related courses are generally accelerated to be one continuous class encompassing an entire day sequenced throughout an entire week. Some tests even span several courses.

But there is a difference between an 'engineer' certification and an engineering degree. I don't know if it had been settled, but at one time courts in some juristrictions were not allowing the term 'engineer' be used for IT certifications since it did not follow an accredited degree requirement.

As for degrees containing more fluff than stuff, rubbish. Sure there is a core that one needs to take to get the degree that may not be related to the major, but for one it does help a person be more 'rounded' in other aspects of life than just their major, and the core is really a small part of the engineering track. Actually, some of the university core requirements have to be carefully chosen to fulfill prerequisites to the required engineering courses for the desired engineering degree. Otherwise you end up taking more credit courses than the degree actually required.
When I transferred to State University of New York at Stony Brook after 2 years of attending Queens College (part of City University of New York), I almost got stuck having to add an extra year simply because one series of course dependencies were 7 semesters long, and Stony Brook did not initially want to admit me to the engineering college right away. I was smart though to choose courses at Queens College that related to my engineering degree, though I wasn't counselled well by Stony Brook while I attended QC otherwise I would have taken chemistry at QC. Heck even the engineering degree has a core of course selections that are not comletely related to one's major. I really didn't need material science to design an electrical circuit.

Also, just because an engineer can't do an administrative task does not make him less smart or less skilled. He just thinks a different way based on how he was taught. As I was in school for engineering, I also did some tech work repairing radios, TVs and other electronic stuff. The way I chose a replacement transistor I later learned would make an electronic engineer freak out if he has never been a tech. To him, the transistor beta and response curve would be all wrong for the circuit, even though the appliance would otherwise work fine after the substitution.

Even Einstein had trouble with certain simple tasks during his life. I hope you aren't going to call HIM stupid.

sprkymrk

Danman32 wrote:

As for degrees containing more fluff than stuff, rubbish. Sure there is a core that one needs to take to get the degree that may not be related to the major, but for one it does help a person be more 'rounded' in other aspects of life than just their major, and the core is really a small part of the engineering track. Actually, some of the university core requirements have to be carefully chosen to fulfill prerequisites to the required engineering courses for the desired engineering degree. Otherwise you end up taking more credit courses than the degree actually required.

I stand by my statement, even if it was exagerated. That's the same reason we have so many high school kids taking college level courses. And as you mentioned, colleges love to heap as much GenEd "rounding" as they can on people. In my opinion they do that in order to suck more $$$ out of students.

Danman32 wrote:

Also, just because an engineer can't do an administrative task does not make him less smart or less skilled.

That is actually a point I was trying to make... An engineer is not necessarily smarter than a sysadmin, nor is a sysadmin smarter than an engineer, both are skilled in different areas. The original poster to whom I replied appeared to imply that while the Wise and Mighty Engineer had to have a degree, a sysadmin was on the same level as a janitor.

Danman32 wrote:

Even Einstein had trouble with certain simple tasks during his life. I hope you aren't going to call HIM stupid.

Hmmm. He certainly wasn't stupid, and unless I wrote something in invisible ink, I never called engineers, sysadmins, or janitors stupid either.

dagger1x

The brakeman on a locomotive is called an "engineer" that doesnt mean that what he does at work is "engineering". They belong to a union called the operating engineers which as far as I can tell is Heavy Equipment operators. Two things, Operators dont engineer anything and Engineers dont usually operate anything.

We had 25 year Machinist's who got certified through certification programs at the local universities. These people were "engineers" Work instructions on a specific part was called a packet and the Engineers prepared these packets so I had the information I needed to set up and run the part. Tooling, Blueprints, processes, programming, tolerances & specifications, inspection was all contained in that packet.

These guys werent geniuses, they just had alot of experience and knowlege that applied in this particular machine shop. They knew what they were doing and deserved to be paid for the engineering duties they performed. I think the term engineer gets thrown around pretty loosely these days. If you design and build things you are occupied in the hallowed ground of the "engineer"

Webmaster

Interesting discussion, and comparisson in the previous post.

Danman32 wrote:

One thing we don't realize is that MCSE and related courses are generally accelerated to be one continuous class encompassing an entire day sequenced throughout an entire week. Some tests even span several courses.

MCSE is not a course, it is a professional certification, which devaluated drastically over the past 10 years. Nowadays MCSE, as well as other IT certification are used as education and preparation for the real world. 10 years ago hardly anyone used only the courses, books, home lab, practice exams because MCSEs without experience weren't in demand. And those who were already had a technical degree. CCNA is another good example of this, but also shows how much has changed, CCNA is now offered as part of traditional education.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this change, I do the same, i.e. learn about wireless network by using the CWNA certification as a guide. But being certified used to mean that the individual has a lot of skills and knowledge gained thru studying and experience. Lots of experience. It also meant and is still supposed to mean the individual is able to do things 'the' right way, the vendor way, the way the vendor intentend the product to be used under specific circumstances. So if you hired an MCSE you could get the maximum out of your product.

I think the term engineer gets thrown around pretty loosely these days. If you design and build things you are occupied in the hallowed ground of the "engineer"

My point is that back when the MCSE just became hot, an MCSE received more respect than many engineers. Although there were plenty of 'engineers' who hated the E in MCSE, and I think they should have gone with Specialist, Expert or something else more general. And although the Microsoft Certified Architect is not just another Microsoft certification imo, the word Architect leads to the same discussion.