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Hello,

I’m just starting my career in IT. I’ve been reading the posts about certification and the expenses.

What I do right now: IT helpdesk level 1. I have 8 months experience in my career/current job right now.

What I want to be in the future? Not sure, I like the IT director job but I also like the idea of a system administrator or a network admin.

I would like to get a job at a hospital doing IT work. I want to get out of the helpdesk and into something more challenging.

My education so far is AA in liberal arts not official yet but if I want a bachelors I need to get an AS in business administration so that I can transfer to Cal State Fullerton and get in.

My bachelors would be Business admin with minor in comp info systems.

My question is should I ditch getting the bachelors and go get certificates instead? I’m working on the A+ right now since school is out for the summer.

Thanks, all help is appreciated.

5 Spice ups
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First, CAREFULLY define your goals. Your goals will tell you what path to take. There is no one size fits all.

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Next, read these to help with guidance on degrees although it sounds like you are mostly doing what is in there anyway.

http://www.smbitjournal.com/2015/11/how-to-approach-the-university-experience/

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Next, yes, short of just giving up and doing nothing, nothing is harder to overcome than university time and money to your long term career. It teaches you bad habits and hurts you at the most vulnerable part of your career, the beginning. It is almost impossible for someone to overcome the damage that university can do to your career versus what you could do with the same time and money instead.

Certs are not the answer, but can be part of it. The A+ is not an IT cert, but a bench one. You need IT certs but, far more importantly, you need IT skills. Certs can be a good way to push you towards skills. You need to be educating yoruself and at a pace far beyond what a college can or will do. You should be looking at university as a party, a pace of learning that is just silly. If not, IT is going to be very challenging for you. And in IT you will need to be educating yourself for your entire career, if you depend on professors to help you learn you will be capped in your career by what you can afford time and money to learn in college AND by the level of your professors (which is normally just below “junior” in most jobs as junior IT pays more than being a professor.)

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The best way to get ahead in IT is learning. Consider a path like this…

  1. Decide on a 1, 3, 5 and 15 year set of goals.
  2. Build a home lab.
  3. Learn anything and everything you would ever run into in the best companies at home. Build a home lab and level of experience that almost no company even does. Put businesses to shame.
  4. Use certs that directly support your 1 and 3 year goal to drive additional education. Earn certs while doing your own lab work to build a level of knowledge and hands on experience that almost no one else has. Get the certs since you are doing the work, but the certs are not the goal.
  5. Consider intern and volunteer work. Generally moves your career way faster than normal work.
  6. Pick up weekend projects and side jobs when possible.
  7. In under two years you should be able to accumulate a level of experience worth far, far more than five years of college would at a fraction of the cost that will not just benefit you immediately but will provide a strong foundation for a full and rewarding career.
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Then, once you get your next career position, keep working. Repeat the process. Continue to build your experience, build your skills, make a new set of goals. Always look for the next step in the path.

Most anyone I know that did this often build a level of career advancement that put them as mid-level professionals before their counterparts even graduated from college.

While your college self might be looking for that “next step” job, your “taught myself” self might be deciding on hiring college grads for those positions working for you.

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And, of course, any money that you would have had to put towards that degree… instead stick it either in a Roth IRA or a normal S&P 500 Index Fund and don’t touch it either way until retirement. You can trivially retire on the average cost of college in the US if you invest the money equally at the same point in your life.

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@Scott Alan Miller pretty much covered the kitchen sink.

I will add that if you desire to get into higher levels of management a degree is usually required. Often times a graduate degree is preferred.

2 Spice ups
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Why to ditch anything which you have already started. You should have think about this first when you started it. Remember when you have taken the decision than remain with it at any cost. Moreover technically I think you should complete your bachelors and along with it you should start the certifications.

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I agree with everything above me – the certificates are great, but they will only get you so far. Anyone can get a certification, but getting a degree is something that companies prefer. Even if you work on it as you climb the corporate ladder, it’s still happening in your favor, and the advancement of knowledge and success is something that you should always strive for…

#RavenClaw / #Raverin

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lol

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Degree and advancement of knowledge are not the same thing. In fact, it’s easy to argue that they are opposed. You can learn far, far more using the same time and money without going to college as with.

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Thanks for all of the feedback. Spiceworks wants me to select a best answer. But I have no idea what to pick. One last question. Is the trade schools like ITT Tech worth it? I’ve heard schools like that aren’t accredited.

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No, not worth it at all. These are the absolutely worst because…1. Even people who are pro-college tend to toss your resume straight in the bin if they see these. These are widely considered scams or, at least, excessively poor and don’t include the training we expect from the university system so even when colleges are good for you, these are not.

  1. The cost is way too high compared to good schools - which exacerbates the issue above. Why would someone pay extra for an education they can’t put on their resume?
  2. Unaccredited means that you cannot claim to be degreed in certain circumstances, like on government forms, insurance credits, international relocations and such. The legal benefits granted by having a degree don’t include people from these schools leaving you officially without a degree.
  3. Because of #3, some jobs will consider it lying to even say that you have a degree if you go to one that is not accredited.
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I have an article coming soon that talks about how to choose a college BUT… your best bet is always a high quality state school. Best IMHO is SUNY Empire, very good school and SUNY is one of the best world wide names in education from the US.

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UC Berkeley is obviously extremely good as well, but more CS than IT focused. SUNY Poly is good as well, and SUNY Binghamton. NTG recommends SUNY Empire to internal stuff looking for formal educational options.

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And I’m not implying that most states don’t have good options as well, I just don’t know what they are state by state.