I feel qualified to add to this discussion, because I have direct experience with this.

I'm 20 years old and had completed two years of college when my university raised tuition and dropped one of my loans. So now I've been working full-time for a year.

After leaving school I got a contract job to provide support while CIGNA upgraded their computer systems. Not bad pay, not very fun. Next I was unemployed for several months looking for a job, but found no companies that would look at my resume. Why not? It was missing two things: A degree and Java. The odd thing about Java was that everyone wanted people with 5 - 10 years of Java experience. Strange, no? Anyway I digress.

My next job was at the wonderful Wal-Mart chain of stores(not fun). I worked graveyard cashier for 3 months until I got my current position.

I now work at a large company that works on DoD contracts. It is almost impossible to get a job here without a degree. The company will not look at your resume if you don't have a degree. The only reason that I got my job is that someone I've known since High School is a management type person here. He got my resume in the door, and I got a job from the interview.

The moral of this story? Get a degree, it's worth it. I am making 50% less then a college grad in the same position. I had to work at Wal-Mart<shudder>. Plus, where else do you get that much bandwidth except on a college dorm :-).

I plan to go back once I've saved up money from my current position. I just thought I'd share my experiences in case they help.

--xPhase

In reply to Re: Formal Education Required? by xphase_work
in thread Formal Education Required? by mexnix

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.