Certification or Degree

Go for both...Bachelors first, Certs second. You can't go wrong with more education.

 

I've been in the business for almost 20 years and in the long run a degree will help you as you move up the food chain, not as much as in other careers but it will help. Plus, going back and finishing a degree later becomes much harder as you get older. Trust me! I did it when I was in my early 30's and it kicked my ass to work full time and go to school almost full time.

 

A degree! I don't know many colleges that think a certificate program is useful in classes. You'll probably need certificates anyway in a job, so a bachelor's will give you a leg up on all the other schlups.

And think about it, a bunch of certificates is kind of a lazy way to get knowledge - like "I don't care about college, I just want to do the bare minimum."

 

True, hence my 2nd sentence. Having a BS/BA puts you one up on just having the required-certs.

 

My experience is that Certs offer short term interest to employers, generally higher turnover lower paying jobs. BA/BS tend to hold the higher paying long term career path jobs.

But my career has been filled with high tech companies running UNIX boxes on everyones desktop and not so much mainstream business technology.

 

http://itclounge.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/do-it-certifications-have-positive-influence-on-salaries/

From the professional groups at Linkedin, and from some face to face conversations I’ve had, it seems that there’s a general opinion that IT certificates don’t mean as much as they did several years ago. Some say that IT certifications do not make any difference in the employment process, i.e. it doesn’t make any difference if you have an IT certificate or not. Others say that industry specific IT certs don’t have any influence on paychecks.
Although in some cases both these claims are true, I still think that having an IT cert (generally speaking) has positive influence both in the employment process and later on with the paycheck. But, who am I to tell you what’s true and what’s not, right? Read on and see what others say.
Following text from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Midmarket/...Certifications-Pay-in-Q2-Report-Finds-890102/
A Foote Partners report finds certified and noncertified pay rates rose unexpectedly in the second quarter for 2010, but notes market volatility is likely to continue to impact hiring practices in the IT sector.
Pay for 219 individual IT certifications displayed an unexpected gain in the second quarter of 2010 (April through June), the first quarterly increase since the same period in 2006, according to a recently published quarterly update of Foote Partners’ IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index (ITSCPI) of market values for 449 certified and noncertified IT and business skills. Meanwhile, premium pay for 230 noncertified skills posted a second straight gain, returning to solid quarterly growth that began in 2004 but faltered briefly during the economic recession.
Also published this week were updates to Foote Partners IT Skills and Certifications Volatility Index, which measures and compares volatility in market values for certified and noncertified skills from 2007 through July 2010. The 2nd Quarter 2010 market volatility score of 32 percent remains virtually unchanged from the previous quarter, an improvement compared to the all-time highest index of 38.7 percent recorded last summer. The research firm noted volatility index scores of between 14 percent and 19 percent posted in quarterly returns from 2004 to 2008 have been considered normal market behavior heretofore.
David Foote, Foote Partners co-founder, CEO and Chief Research Officer and publisher of the report, said he believes this sudden burst in certifications market is an aberration and simply further evidence of highly volatile and uncertain conditions in the market for skills at the moment, and said he’d like to be able to report broader optimism in the labor market for certified professionals but can’t.
“There’s nothing in our research that points to any of the usual factors being in place that can sustain a more expansive turnaround in certification pay that has been on a steady decline for the past five years,” he said. “Until that happens, from time to time you can expect to see short-term certification demand spurts like we saw in the 2nd quarter with specific specializations in applications development, networking and security.”
Noncertified IT skill categories, which led a 1.7 percent average increase in pay premiums for 230 skills in Q2 2010 (April, May and June) include systems and networking skills (+3 percent in market value), applications development skills (+2.4 percent) and management, methodology and process skills (+2.2 percent). Specific IT certification categories saw a modest 0.5 percent increase in pay premiums across 219 certifications for the same period, with beginner and training certifications rising 5.6 percent in market value, followed by system administration and engineering certifications (+1.1 percent) and applications development certifications (+0.8 percent).
“As we’ve mentioned before, accelerated transition to new workforce models and IT service delivery systems is driving a lot of the current market. Employers have been struggling with transforming the IT workforce for years, trying to become more agile, flexible and responsive to the business,” Foote said. “This skills market volatility is a sure sign that employers are taking advantage of a rare window of opportunity to think through and execute on new staffing models that don’t have full-time hiring as a central component.”

 

Degrees > Certificates

 

If you get a degree through a quality program (not a diploma mill) that follows a specific industry course for the IT portion of the credits then you should be able to get your degree and be setup to get a couple certs. That is the path I am taking now, as I have been in the field for 3 years and am working on my BS in Networking and Communications Mgmt. The course material that this degree uses is Cisco material as much as possible and right now all of our material is the CCNA study guides. So - I'm going to get my degree, walk over and take my CCNA, and probably throw on the Network+ just for grins. By the time I get my degree I will have been in the industry for 5 years and will probably be studying for the CCNP test.

 

I think the path you are on is fantastic and I wish you the best. If you have the time since you are planning on getting your Network+, is to go ahead and try to get your Security+ and maybe the A+ before the end of the year. Reason being is that Comptia is no longer allowing you to be certified for life under their current program and if you get all three by the end of the year, you will have these certifications for life.

Just a thought....

 

Comptia is doing away with their life certs? What is the point of them then? They aren't as highly regarded as Cisco - or as hard. If they are going that route, I'm thinking I won't care as much. If I'm going to spend money on certs - I'm going to go for the brand name certs like Cisco, Microsoft, or something around Linux.

 

ive got my A+ and the new STRATA one as well as IC3. Might do Network+ also.

ive been helping out people with their pc's in my area. and word is getting out amongst friends. some people just feel comfortable enough with experience and certifications.

 

Simple answer is that IT is basically where this country has gone where as we used to be manufacturing. So it is a field hiring a lot of workers. I think it is a shame that a kid can't get out of high school and get a decent job without having to go another 4/8 years, get in debt and compete with other 4/8 year college educated folks battling it out for 40 k jobs. It used to be that plumbers and electricians were respectable jobs, now if one doesn't have a degree it's almost though of like they dropped out of school.

 

i know for alot of companies , certs and degree both basically equate into years of experience , so my A+, Sec+, and Net+ add up to 3 years on top of whatever actual work experience you have, some of the higher certs are 2-4 years, also i don't have a degree , and have gotten probably 10+ job offers since i put my resume out a year ago , prior military helps alot though

 

I talked to a couple of you earlier today, I think as far as opening more doors to other than IT/PC careers a Degree will definintely be more beneficial than certs. But remember if you're already working in the field, your certs are your ticket to a quicker hire, a prospective employer wants to hire someone that can hit the ground running, with minimal supervision, they love the candidates with recent hands on experience.

I went to a hole in the wall tech school called HTTP (Hands on Technical Training & Placement ) pretty cheesy name huh ?Got my A+ DOS/MSWin/ networking certs. to get in the door and the training & intense actual systems "hands on" diagnostic /configuration of "dead systems" took me from the classroom to building 128 node blade rack cluster servers for a company that was called racksaver (then it was Veritas) & even though it was entry level they had me flashing BIOS upgrades on servers that went out our door to the tune of 250K on the low end up to 650K-750K for servers going to places like Pixar pictures, Industrial Lights & Magic, Nvidia pretty big players, thats where your certs will push you along. But get the degree also if you have the interest & drive to do so...

side note: I don't even work with PC's anymore except my own & family & a few friends, I got burned out years ago, I do HVAC / Sheetmetal...Go figure

anyway good luck you guys & good luck on your upcoming A+, its not real hard but its no cake walk either. IMO....

 

I decided to go for the Degree! And while I am going for it I am going to take some certificate test!

 

Weird, most of the time that goes the opposite way...

Sounds like an exotic dancer job...