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Are 6 month college degrees worth it?
Glirk Dient
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My step mom wants me to enroll in a community college that is offering a 6 month IT degree for $500 instead of a typical 2 year degree. She heard it on the news and not an infomercial so she is convinced that it's legitimate because they need to hire people badly. Is there any credibility to these programs? Are they worth anything in the job market?
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I would, though, be worried about the transfer ability of credits if she wants to pursue a BS or BA.
The vast majority of tech jobs that will hire you with 6 months of farily generic/general "training" would hire you without any training but it may give you a slight edge over those people, much like entry level certifications like A+. It will also count for basically nothing once you try to move beyond entry level jobs.
That's not to say you won't learn anything. Depending on the courses, your current knowledge, and your general aptitude for this stuff you may learn some useful stuff or at least be pointed in the right direction to learn cool stuff.
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Probably some training in regards to HIPAA and IT in the workplace.
Avoid technical schools like the plague. That is my parting wisdom for you.
If you can find a proper transfer degree, it basically lets you take many of your gen ed and early major related classes at CC rates and difficulty (usually easier than 4 year degrees, in my experience). I have a certificate from an community college (9 class program) that was basically a waste of time and money and am now in a proper CS program at a community college that lets me transfer to one of the local 4 year universities as a Junior, with all of the first 2 years of requirements taken care of for like 1/4 the cost.
I don't disagree, but at least with an AA you're getting something and a lot of kids use that to transfer to state and get a BA.
Steam Username:Glirk_Dient
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm doing the same thing, although I'm working on both a Transfer program, and an AAS in Network Technology. This way I figure if the job market improves, I may be able to get something sooner, and can finish working on my transfer/4-year part time without having to incur quite as much debt.
Transfer programs are insanely good ideas, I'm so glad states are developing them.
Unless you already have a solid degree, certificates aren't worth it IMO. They are worth it though afterwards, to show employers you continue your education, want to learn new things, etc.
Not really.
Frankly, AA's are barely worth anything except to funnel into a higher degree.
HOWEVER, if your credits will count toward an AA then $500 is a hell of a good deal.
I've heard many people suggest that taking basic courses at the CC level is a very wise choice to save tuition money.
Just make sure this college is legit, fully accredited with the state, and so on. You'll want your credits to transfer to a state university.
If so... sure... that's not a bad idea. Just don't expect it to land you a great job... do it to get on the first step to a higher degree.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Smaller companies that just don't need huge amounts of IT needs (like a small tire company, for instance), can save more money by employing one or two people on staff as IT people, rather than contract everything out to something like IBM. Business/Enterprise systems is obviously a good way to go.
Anyway OP, the main thing is to have a very good idea of what you're getting and how the cert/degree will be helpful to you beforehand. Something like an HIPAA training might be useful if your employer was asking you to retrain for it or something, but on it's own it's probably not that likely to open new doors for you.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
But after that, a lot of employers (if they're smart) are most concerned with what specific skillset you possess and that you can demonstrate them. You can even self-teach yourself and as long as you put those skills into practice and have a degree they don't necessarily care if you took a class or not to get certain skills. So I'd also highly recommend taking as much as you can at CC to save money because computer skills are computer skills, it doesn't matter where you went but what you yourself put into learning.
Plus as long as you have a degree it's then easy to go back and pick and choose whatever class or self-teaching you want to tailor yourself to getting hired for certain jobs.