Second bachelors or online postgrad?

jungleroomx

Next spring ill be graduating with a bachelors in IT. I'm currently engaged in certifications for the funsies. Now I'm looking for other options to continue my education past the bachelors level. My options boil down to:

Continue a postgrad degree online after finding employment. This is going to be the more difficult of the two options as the GI Bill doesn't do postgrad. It will have to be online, and I really don't know a lot about online only degrees.

Get a second complementary degree to go along with mine, like Business. I'll be able to go full time with this and not worry about employment, but I also fear it'll remove me from a relevant job for longer than I'd like. Right now I do part time blue collar work on the weekends along with the GI Bill payouts.

I'm truly stuck here because I know that just stopping at a bachelors degree is going to be selling myself short, but due to my geographical and familial situation (not to mention financial) a masters degree will be very difficult to pull off but probably the more rewarding of the two options (unless I apply to a degre mill).

Any advice? Any good online schools? Any help would be appreciated.

Enc

A second bachelors degree is a lot of time and money for something that typically doesn't increase your pay or employability. Typically you only take a second bachelor's degree if your first isn't satisfying your minimum requirements for employment in your preferred work field.

Getting a masters or graduate certificate just because it's a thing to do is also not a great idea. You typically can only afford to get a graduate degree once (unless your employer is paying for it) so you want to be sort of locked into a field or profession you like and one that you have evidence that getting a masters degree will actually create better promotional capabilities upon completion. Typically I recommend graduates spend 2-4 years in the workforce before going after a master's degree unless they are planning on teaching or going into a specific form of academic research since there are a lot of masters students these days and just having an MS or MA (or especially an MBA) without work experience often is a bigger problem than benefit.

Hands down though, don't get a second degree of any kind just because you think it is a thing you should do. You need to know that it is a thing you need before you spend the copious amount of time and effort.

If you ask ten different academic advisors this question you likely will get 10 different answers, though.

As far as online graduate programs, look at your state public university system to see what offerings are available. Most graduate degrees are offered either in mixed mode, online, or only in evening classes as graduate students are typically assumed to be working professionals.

jungleroomx

Appreciated. That's pretty damn good advice. I already washed out of college once because I wasn't there with the proper mindset (about 2005), so you'd figure I'd learn. I think I'm just apprehensive about graduating because i can't just go live with Mom and Dad if I can't find a job quickly.

Maybe I should continue on the certifications path for now and concentrate my efforts on those and the special interest classes in doing on Coursera?

Enc

Personally I'd focus on networking and using your school's career services office to maximize your employability right at graduation. If professional certifications are part of that, definitely, but most career services offices at universities are for current students only, you lose access as an alumni so you want to start early.

I also strongly (very very strongly) suggest contacting your professors one-on-one to discuss job opportunities and suggestions for employment. Most professors are connected in some way to the job market. Same with family, friend, mentor, and internship contacts. Any contact is a viable contact. Talk up everyone, find out everything you can while still in school, and chase down leads. Footwork and who you know is how you get a job. What you know is essentially what gets you an interview and keeps you in the job.

schuss

If you do anything, an MBA would probably be the best for getting into the job market, but not good if you're not interested in consulting or management.

Enc

schuss wrote: »

If you do anything, an MBA would probably be the best for getting into the job market, but not good if you're not interested in consulting or management.

This is also very industry specific. Many fields now actively pull MBAs with no experience from search pools (I know I've been on three searches, one private and two public, where this was policy). In others, an MBA can be a greencard for entry level positions or even a benchmark for middle or upper level positions. Typically those latter cases are more interested in the work history part of the "MBA and five years of relevant work experience" though.

Graduate degrees are very, very valuable in very specific contexts, but without work history they are usually worth very little by themselves outside of research and education (where they are typically considered your entry level job in and of themselves).

jungleroomx

I appreciate all the help. I think I'm just going to continue on with certs (which are completely necessary in IT and analyst work) and graduate.

If nothing else, a second bachelors degree would actually be a form of unemployment insurance, in case the job market dries up a bit around graduation. It wont add any dollars to my college loan bill.

Great Scott

My experience as an IT professional is that Experience matters more than Certification which matters more than a B.S. Now that you're set to graduate, I'd concentrate on getting as much work experience as possible with the technologies that you'd want to work on.

In IT I would even take volunteer/unpaid work (in moderation) over getting extra certifications beyond what you think is necessary.

Note that due to my work history I've been pigeonholed into certain jobs and would have great difficulty getting out of that box. Fortunately it's a subset of IT that I like. Try to keep in mind as you find opportunities that you're going to naturally gravitate to more and more narrow duties due to getting expertise at a particular vendor or technology.

jungleroomx

I've got 5.5 years military experience working with relevant tech to a lot of jobs and also managerial and supervisory experience. That and point preferences and some good connections with my professors will be enough (I hope) to get my foot in the door somewhere.

DoctorArch

While law school isn't the be-all end-all to job security these days, with those credentials you might qualify to take the U.S. Patent Bar, which lets you be a patent agent before passing the legal bar and a patent attorney after passing the bar. Patent attorneys/agents, especially in the IT/tech field are still in good demand.