Looking for opinions

[timbernet]

In 2005, before I graduated high school, I was offered a 2-year internship with a local city. The salary was around $20K per year + a $20K scholarship at the end of my term. The internship was the “network engineer” for the city’s municipal ISP. Before me they were paying consultants $80/hour and that was costing too much.

I took the offer – I live 10 minutes away and I am a customer of the ISP, so it made sense. It would give me time to learn more about my field and give me a break from school.

Basically, the consultants didn’t leave any documentation about what they did – so I had to re-build the entire network from scratch. When I started the city was billing around $4K monthly, now, as I am leaving we are pulling in $8.5K/month (small city) – I like to think that I had something to do with the growth in customers…

The job has been great; it let me see how my CISCO classes were right, and has let me meet many great people in the business. Now comes the hard part – time to go to college.

As bad as it sounds – I don’t want to go back! I have a job offer with another ISP in Portland, OR that I have been working for on the weekends. Plus I have a few consulting firms that I do projects with that pay fairly well. I love being able to take a few days off and go driving and taking photos. I love not being employee #3000 – smaller companies are great. I guess I have an entrepreneurial/small-biz spirit – I started a web hosting company in 2004 and I actually do make some money from it (more of a hobby than anything else) – it is very liberating to know that you are in control or very close to the top…

Some say that a college degree will get you further in life, will get you hired faster, and will get you more money…. I suppose they are right in most cases – but I just worry that after 4-years of school and many thousands of dollars later I won’t be any further ahead but 4-years behind and in debt… My sister got a bachelors at a fairly well known school, George Fox, and she now works at Starbucks as a barista… She is also looking at a Masters program. More school!!!?? NO!

I get so many mixed reviews – my father, 80% of co-workers, and some friends say skip school … while my mother, sister, and 20% of my co-workers say I need college to be successful.


So my question to the POTN community is what your opinions are in this area? Obviously it is ultimately my choice and I can’t let others make the choice for me – but getting input from others would be very useful in making that choice.

Thanks!

[liza]

Sounds to me like you've already made your decision. If you don't want to go back to school, then don't do it. You won't be successful if it's something you don't value. Do it when you're ready, and only when you're ready to dedicate yourself to it. I would suggest, however, that you take a night class or two just to show prospective employers that you're trying to better yourself. Some might question the lack of a college degree.

[timbernet]

Sounds to me like you've already made your decision. If you don't want to go back to school, then don't do it. You won't be successful if it's something you don't value. Do it when you're ready, and only when you're ready to dedicate yourself to it. I would suggest, however, that you take a night class or two just to show prospective employers that you're trying to better yourself. Some might question the lack of a college degree.

Night classes would work for me... I have no problems with that.

And I haven't made my mind up 100%... There is the fear that if I do go to school I will have wasted a lot - but there is also the fear that if I don't go to school I will have wasted my chance to go....

[Fernando]

Don't do it unles it's right for you.

I'm ABD, a dissertation away from a PhD. However I see several of my employees who are throwing away money on college because someone else thinks they should go. These kids, and you, need to have a desire to go. Once they find a direction then college may be right for them. By the same token, two of my guys are both young and driven and their studies are good fits for them.

It sound like whichever way you go you have support, and that's often the most imporatant part.

-F

[th3r0m]

It sounds like you are pretty knowledgeable in your field, however, if you are looking to be hired on somewhere, a high-education degree of some sort will help. It's not necessarily the education or schooling you receive, but the degree itself (the line on your resume that says ("BS in BS" ;)). Many employers set limits on candidates they will accept like the candidate must have a Bachelors degree or Associates degree to apply and if you don't they will not even look at your resume. my two cents

[Sp00ks]

I did not have the opportunity to attend college. That is a long story that I don't need to go into. I even made a career change in my early 30's. Now I work for the worlds 3rd largest company, at least that is where they were ranked the last time I checked. I have made up in experience what I lacked in a degree. Now, in order to move up the management chain, if that is the direction I choose to go, then I have to have a degree. The company requires it. The degree itself doesn't really matter as long as you have one.
Let me tell you, it will be easier for you to do it now than when you have a wife and kids and working 60 hrs a week.

You apply for a job and the employer narrows his decision down to you and one other guy. You have the exact same qualifications and will both be a fine addition to the company. The other guy has a degree and you do not.......

I have worked very hard to get where I am. I think a degree may have helped me get there faster. Who knows, if I had gotten my degree, I may be flipping burgers at some fast food joint as well.

[Becca]

I don't think you need a college degree to be successful. A degree is a fine thing, but it doesn't guarantee success. If you have another job already lined up, take it and use the $20k scholarship towards some night classes to get your MCSA or other certifications that you can put on your resume. I had a friend that learned network design in the military and thought he would always have a job. When the tech industries went through their rough times a few years ago, he couldn't get a job because the market was flooded with people who had certifications.

[gjl711]

A college degree is not a necessity to be successful and the farther away you get from your college days, the less important that degree becomes. Employers don’t care what you think you know because a piece of paper say that you should know it, they care about what value you will bring to the company and what you can really do. The more value you offer, the less important a formal education becomes. However, on the converse side, that little piece of paper is an investment in your future and it can open doors that may not open otherwise. For example, right now in the states there is a surplus of engineers. We get hundreds of applications monthly. When it comes time to do some hiring, I will have to cull through the list and narrow that list of candidates. With a pool that deep to choose from, that culling process gets very mechanical and one of the first steps is degreed vs. non degreed. Why, because the odds are that the degreed engineer would have more capability. Fair, nope, there are probably many great non degreed candidates in that list as there are poor candidate amongst those with degrees. So, if it were me, I would take the position, bite the bullet and go to night school until you do get a degree. Maybe work might even pay for the schooling. It’s tough but with perseverance it can be done.

[bieber]

Here's my take on it. You're a smart person, it's easy enough to see that by how well you've done for yourself (not just how good you are at your job, but how you've managed to position yourself with jobs; there are a lot of really good employees who will spend their entire lives working the same low-level job, and you're not one of them). If you feel like you want to go and learn things, go to college. It's a great experience, and if you think it sounds like a good idea, by all means go for it. But if it just sounds like a drag to you, there's no reason you have to do it. If you're enjoying things better the way they are, and doing well for yourself, why bother?

[drparker]

When this tech industry started you could get very far very fast without the degree. Which is exactly what I did. But in todays world you will hit a ceiling that you wont be able to pass above. I do not have the degree but 99.9% of the people I work with do.


We wont even interview people who don't have degree, the pools to big for us to need to troll the shallow end. The days of pure skill being all that mater in the high tech game are over. We charge $150 to $250 an hour for consulting based on skill and total revunue opportunity.


If I had a degree I would be making 50k more a year, easy, and that's a lot of L series glass.:lol:

[Mark_Cohran]

Do you have to have a degree to be successful. No, certainly not. Look at Bill Gates. But not all of us are Bill Gates. I didn't complete my degree until I was in my 30's. I joined the military right out of high school, spent two years getting my training and certification and a Nuclear Reactor Operator, then spent the next 10 years going to sea on submarines. I took classes as they became available at sea and on shore, but didn't get a chance to attend college full time until my first shore tour in the 90's. Then I finished my degree as quickly as I could. What extra did that mean to me (since I already had experience in electronics and engineering)? It meant I got a lot of job interviews that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise because the job openings had a minimum criteria of a degree. Eventually, when I decided on a position with a company, the degree meant 10K more a year than my peers without a degree. And finally, when I decided to change positions within my field some years ago, my options weren't limited to positions that didn't require a degree.

So, degrees open doors that might otherwised be closed, but that has to be tempered with the knowledge of your field and how it works. Whatever you choose to do, I wish you the best of luck.

Mark

[rwoodcock]

A college degree is almost a minimum requirement these days, much like a high school diploma used to be. Can you get by without one, sure. But rest assured at some point in your future, you will find yourself in a situation where it limits you from moving further.
A college degree, to an employer, indicates your ability to learn advanced concepts and technologies as much as anything else. And employers want to hire people who have proven they can learn, because life, and work, is all about change. You have to learn from the past and apply those learnings to the future situations that do not yet exist. That's the certification that a college degree will get you that nothing else will. On the job experience will only show your current technical ability, not your ability to learn.
You need to go to college. You don't have to go right away. But go!