Frustrated by the lack of degrees and training for this field by colleges

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blackhand1001

Limp Gawd
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I am a 20 year old student who does computer work for business's and regular people on the side. A lot of jobs for network administration list computer science degree as a requirement, yet all the 4 year schools seem to think that computer science equals programming and neglect anything regarding active directory, unix administration, troubleshooting computers. I spent two years at my local community college who actually had an excellent networking program that went over active directory, windows itself (I knew most of this already but its good that the classes atleast apply to what I want to do), troubleshooting hardware, cisco networking, network security, wireless networking and juniper networks. The problem I am having is that all the schools I look at don't seem to offer a path that continues on this. I know how to do a decent amount of programming, but none of this is helping me towards getting a job in network administration, mostly of Microsoft networks like Active directory and just managing and installing machines as well. Its a shame that these kind of programs only seemed to be offered at trade schools and 2 year institutions like community colleges. Is there any suggestions that any professionals in the field can give me to point me in the right direction.

I am extremely eager to learn new things and most of my knowledge is self taught. I started my business fixing computers in high school and it has mostly spread through word of mouth (I have had more than 100 different clients (several repeat business where they have me work on additional machines over the years). I have plenty of experience but I need something to get on my resume like a degree or some kind of training even though I have most of the knowlegde and experience.

Edit: I have an associates degree in networking, forgot to include this earlier.
 
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Yes I am seeking my mcitp and have taken and passed cisco. I still find many jobs that want a 4 year degree.
 
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I am a sys admin for a small factory, along with the daily admin and troubleshooting stuff, the more I know about programming, the better I am liked. I know VB.Net and make custom frontends/apps for data acquisition out in the plant, and the higher ups love being able to track the extra data. My company has a corporate programming team, but they are always focused on programming for our larger app, not the smaller data acquisition stations.

In a standard office sys admin, maybe programming should not be such a high demand, but in any production environment where data acquisition is essential, programming knowledge can benefit you and the company tremendously!

I would not waste money at a trade school, I went to a local trade school and it was a COMPLETE waste of time and money. If you are not going to pursue a Computer Science degree or something similar, start getting your certifications. CCNA/CCNP for networking, any slew of MCITP for Microsoft certs.

IMO, the MCSE is pretty old and outdated. I would go for your MCITP in Server 2008 Administration to start.
 
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sethmo said:
I am a sys admin for a small factory, along with the daily admin and troubleshooting stuff, the more I know about programming, the better I am liked. I know VB.Net and make custom frontends/apps for data acquisition out in the plant, and the higher ups love being able to track the extra data. My company has a corporate programming team, but they are always focused on programming for our larger app, not the smaller data acquisition stations.

In a standard office sys admin, maybe programming should not be such a high demand, but in any production environment where data acquisition is essential, programming knowledge can benefit you and the company tremendously!

I would not waste money at a trade school, I went to a local trade school and it was a COMPLETE waste of time and money. If you are not going to pursue a Computer Science degree or something similar, start getting your certifications. CCNA/CCNP for networking, any slew of MCITP for Microsoft certs.
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Yes, I know programming and am willing to learn more, but I do not want to be a programmer. Unfortunately most schools, at least around here seem to think computer science=programming and do not have classes in them that train you in administration. I want to primarily deal with Microsoft networks. I know how to do shell scripts, batch files and write code that outputs data from a database (c++, VB.net). I also learn extremely fast when given a program that I have no experience with by simply messing with it in my free time and learning how it works.

I am seeking the mcsitp cert as well. I do very well with Microsoft style tests and could practically write them myself. I am very knowledgeable on the exact names and technical terms that microsoft uses so I should have no problem obtaining this cert
 
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I agree...I recall back (way back..lol) when I was in school, computer science was more "programming". There wasn't much for "network stuff, servers, etc".

If I were to take a guess as to why...I'd say that we don't see this in big school systems simply because of how fast things change, how fast things evolve. Schools are typically a bit behind anyways...rarely on the cutting edge even with slower evolving topics. Imagine it takes a while to come up with course materials, have books selected and available, teachers with experience, etc.
 
The IT field (frequently called Computer Information Systems in colleges) definitely needs more quality education options for people who want to start in the field. Too much if it is done by career schools which cost way too much or don't educate you well. A lot of community colleges in my area have solid programs with concentrations in networking, programming etc along with general education courses resulting in an associate's degree. Networking teaches you all about computer hardware, operating systems, networking, security and server management. I may be lucky with the schools in my area because I'm just south of Boston.

Most employers in my area look for some sort of education along with experience and certifications. They don't ask for bachelor degrees often unless it's position requiring computer engineering or programming.
 
Computer Science isn't the degree that you want if you want to get into IT. CS has nothing to do with hardware, software, and networking support and management. It's more about designing systems. For example, if you wanted to design new routing or encryption algorithms or a new kind of CPU or graphics chip, then you might go after a degree in CS.

I was seeing a girl who has a degree in CS and she couldn't even install a hardrive or change BIOS settings or troubleshoot a boot up problem.
 
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There are mainline universities that offer bachelor's degrees in Computer Information Systems which is more geared towards IT. TBH it doesn't take a 4 year degree to learn how to administer a network - all the theory can be learned in 1 year and the rest is hands on experience and self learning with the actual systems you'll be working with. And Computer Science degrees don't really prepare you to be good software developers either.

With that said a Computer Science or Computer Engineering background is still great (maybe overkill) for IT admins. Learning to administer a router or operating system is easy when you've written routing software or operating system components during your coursework ;)
 
^I definitely agree with what you said here.

Can anyone recommend a good school for Computer Information Systems in Central New Jersey area, I live in Monmouth county. I don't min commuting as long as its not ridiculous.
 
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I'm on my lunch break and for the heck of it I did some Googling. This was one of the first things I found, and it's online based learning. Bachelor of Science in Applied Science and Technology (BSAST) degree, Information Technology concentration through the Thomas Edison State College, Trenton, NJ. Link
 
You won't find many places that teach such things because most IT is hands on work, unlike the majority of your University classes. It's a darn shame too, because you either have to find a community college or study for certs on your own...:/

As someone in an earlier post said, you can learn Administration in a year, it doesn't require a 4-year degree for that.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't places out there that don't teach IT classes, they're just few and far between.

Anyways, hope you find what you're looking for - and always enjoy!
 
Yeah, I am with you on it being hands on work. I know my stuff but unfortunately I don't have much official job experience with employers other than some self employed work. I run my own side business including setting up several doctors offices networks from scratch and other offices as well some with and without AD and terminal servers. I have also helped hundreds of individuals with problems like slow computers, virus's, bloatware, hardware replacements, broken laptop screens, etc. (unlike many my solution to many software problems is not just reformatting the machine and starting over) It just sucks that many employers still think that college degrees automatically make someone a better system admin.
 
Most of the time I don't find that to be the case when I job search.. consider signing up with recruiters who are hired by companies to fill positions. Network with like minded people in your area at clubs and meetups. Check out the IT Resume thread and talk to faculty from your school about finding a part-time job or internship.
 
I got an associates in network administration and a bachelors in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Toledo. Basically the credits from the 2 year degree counted towards the four year degree...took a bunch of business classes, some higher level IT classes and other required courses to round it out.
My first 2 classes (freshman year) were lecture from a book, no computer. Basically memorizing acronyms and stuff like that. I all but fell asleep in them and really was not challenged. Luckily all of my other classes were hands on: XP and Server administration, some Cisco (only because the teacher brought his own gear in to show the basics)
I got my A+ certification and did not have to take 2 classes (basic hardware and operating systems)
At my current job I do desktop support, work on the servers, printer and copier maintenance, network infrastructure, and phone system stuff (it basically runs itself).
 
If you're really good at IT stuff, you need to realize you're probably never going to learn anything new doing CIS/CS stuff.

This is the problem I'm having now. The classes and teachers are too far behind to even have relevant information. The problem is education doesn't pay nearly enough to warrant someone who is actually talented to take time away from their career to come teach it.

If you want to keep up and actually have cutting-edge experience and know-how, you need to be doing your own thing at home or at work. And at least in my experience, you learn far more doing your own stuff. Build your home network completely off used Cisco gear, set up a domain, etc...
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I agree...I recall back (way back..lol) when I was in school, computer science was more "programming". There wasn't much for "network stuff, servers, etc".

If I were to take a guess as to why...I'd say that we don't see this in big school systems simply because of how fast things change, how fast things evolve. Schools are typically a bit behind anyways...rarely on the cutting edge even with slower evolving topics. Imagine it takes a while to come up with course materials, have books selected and available, teachers with experience, etc.
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When I graduated from ITT two years ago they're Server courses were still on Server 2003. When I took the initiative to use 2008/7 in my capstone project all the professors were overly amazed. Though they had no real reason to be.
 
timberdoodle said:
I'm not sure what this thread is about, sometimes you have to hunt to find the school that offers the major you want. The college I went to offers a bachelors in computer networking.

http://www.wit.edu/computer-science/programs/BSCN.html
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Basically somebody unsure about what different degrees are about and having trouble find the correct one for the field they want.

CS is more geared toward programing. You are learning the science behind computer and how they work, not how to work on them and do IT work. You just need to find the correct path. Yes a lot of places put down the degree part but only because somebody in HR think that looks good to want everyone to have a degree.

When you pay $30 - $50K a year for classes you aren't going to learn how to install windows, you are going to learn how you would develop an OS. That said depending on the school you might get some stuff on that.

I have a BS in CS. While most of my classes were on programming, I did have a class on networking, database administration and network security.

If you were to learn something like AD administration or anything like that it would have changed during your time in school a few times. that is what small 2 year degrees or schools for getting certifications are for.

you shouldn't be frustrated by not being able to find a big name 4 year school offering degrees in IT, you should be frustrated with HR people who don't know what they are posting a job for.
 
Jbort1984 said:
just dont go to itt for any of the degrees you want the college is a joke
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I don't mean to derail the thread, but I graduated from ITT Tech back in September, and I and the other top student in my class have jobs at this point. Turns out that one of my current co-workers actually graduated from ITT in December.

There really wasn't any problem with the instructors or the course work or the learning materials. I found that the instructors were very knowledgeable, and I have actually been able to use what I learned at work. The one gripe I had about the place was that they seemed reluctant to kick people out who clearly had no business being there. As a result, they would graduate with C's and then go into the world looking for jobs and then wonder why they couldn't get one. Fortunately, Career Services did seem to stop working with fools who clearly didn't know what they hell they were doing, but it would go a much longer way if they would just get rid of people who had no desire to further themselves and slogged through the program with mediocre grades and poor attendance.
 
The company I am currently working for is growing at an exponential rate. I've reassessed my ongoing education goals accordingly.

If you are committed to going the microsoft admin route, I would strongly suggest that you start learning powershell.
 
Mackintire said:
The company I am currently working for is growing at an exponential rate. I've reassessed my ongoing education goals accordingly.

If you are committed to going the microsoft admin route, I would strongly suggest that you start learning powershell.
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+1 on the Powershell. It will get more and more used as time goes on. You can do a crapload of stuff with Powershell if you really know how to use it.
 
Wrench00 said:
Rumors be that Windows 8 Server is going console.. Powershell is a must..
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doubt that, what you are probably thinking about is the core install. which can be done with server 2008 and 2008R2 where you don't get the GUI and have a limited set of roles that you can install.
 
Lord Nassirbannipal said:
I don't mean to derail the thread, but I graduated from ITT Tech back in September, and I and the other top student in my class have jobs at this point. Turns out that one of my current co-workers actually graduated from ITT in December.

There really wasn't any problem with the instructors or the course work or the learning materials. I found that the instructors were very knowledgeable, and I have actually been able to use what I learned at work. The one gripe I had about the place was that they seemed reluctant to kick people out who clearly had no business being there. As a result, they would graduate with C's and then go into the world looking for jobs and then wonder why they couldn't get one. Fortunately, Career Services did seem to stop working with fools who clearly didn't know what they hell they were doing, but it would go a much longer way if they would just get rid of people who had no desire to further themselves and slogged through the program with mediocre grades and poor attendance.
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First thing you have to understand is that ITT is a private for profit company. They wont kick students out because it would be a direct loss of money. I hugely agree though. They have school all year round. Their theory is to get kids in and out and make as much money as possible.

I took both night and morning classes there. If you can go at night. The professors at night seem to be part timers who actually WORK in the field. I found that they were much more knowledgeable than their daytime counterparts.

ITT has all the tools you need. Its you to you to USE them. The one I went to had nice labs, and equipment and textbooks. Ever class I took I did the latest and greatest. When we had our class on exchange everyone was using 2003. (fuuuuuu) I went out and got 2010 when it was in beta and applied the course to it. They turned out to be really different, but the professor knew that and graded me accordingly. Same with our server classes. Everyone was using 2003 while I was on 2008R2.

The one thing that bugged me is that their course starts out assuming you know NOTHING. My first day in class was literally.... this is mouse.... this is a keyboard. I wanted to put my head through a wall. I really didnt learn much of anything NEW until I was 60% of way through the entire program.

Their job placement is good too. I was offered a job making $55k right out of college. Its hard to beat that. Though not everyone gets that opportunity. The CIA also came to the school on numerous occasions looking for students. That would have been a good opportunity, but they had just visited the quarter before I graduated.

Be cautious though. ITT does have Bachelors programs. If thats what you're going for you have to stick it out compeltely. You will have a hard time switching schools. If you want to switch schools there are only a handful of them that take ITT credits. DeVry being one.
 
This is a field that moves to fast for traditional college to keep up in my mind, you need to use trade schools or just learn it
 
I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret that has only been alluded to here.

IT work IS a trade skill!

We essentially do little more than complicated plumbing and electrical work. Sure there is some engineering here and there, but for the most part you can apprentice your way into any part of the field, just like plumbers, electricians, woodworkers and smithies.

Generally 4-year degrees are pointed in highly refined areas of the field, very few offer a broad spectrum of all aspects of what we do (hello virtualization!). Unfortunately many businesses do not get this (those that require a degree) and I find that the ones that do don't really value the IT field highly (i.e. overhead instead of investment).

The companies that I've enjoyed working for have always valued experience more than college level education, with one exception - management. But generally IMHO, if you want to keep your hands dirty, a traditional degree that focuses on programming (although it doesn't hurt) offers little value to IT work. Programming is another field entirely.
 
jadams said:
First thing you have to understand is that ITT is a private for profit company. They wont kick students out because it would be a direct loss of money. I hugely agree though. They have school all year round. Their theory is to get kids in and out and make as much money as possible.

I took both night and morning classes there. If you can go at night. The professors at night seem to be part timers who actually WORK in the field. I found that they were much more knowledgeable than their daytime counterparts.

ITT has all the tools you need. Its you to you to USE them. The one I went to had nice labs, and equipment and textbooks. Ever class I took I did the latest and greatest. When we had our class on exchange everyone was using 2003. (fuuuuuu) I went out and got 2010 when it was in beta and applied the course to it. They turned out to be really different, but the professor knew that and graded me accordingly. Same with our server classes. Everyone was using 2003 while I was on 2008R2.

The one thing that bugged me is that their course starts out assuming you know NOTHING. My first day in class was literally.... this is mouse.... this is a keyboard. I wanted to put my head through a wall. I really didnt learn much of anything NEW until I was 60% of way through the entire program.

Their job placement is good too. I was offered a job making $55k right out of college. Its hard to beat that. Though not everyone gets that opportunity. The CIA also came to the school on numerous occasions looking for students. That would have been a good opportunity, but they had just visited the quarter before I graduated.

Be cautious though. ITT does have Bachelors programs. If thats what you're going for you have to stick it out compeltely. You will have a hard time switching schools. If you want to switch schools there are only a handful of them that take ITT credits. DeVry being one.
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Oh yeah, I know it's a for profit school, but with what higher education has become in the country, basically every school is, and ITT isn't the only only who does things like this. Some schools purposely accept out of state students over those from within the state so that they can charge higher tuition. While it's still better to have a degree rather than not to have one, it's gotten to the point that the degrees aren't worth what people pay for them.

Luckily, I didn't have to take the first Intro to PC class as I tested out of it. I did the same with the first math class and I got another class transferred from a community college I went to some years before. With that and being so broke the whole way through on top of getting the student success award and having 5 grand taken of off my loans, I was able to get my degree for less than half of the total tuition cost. ITT in my state doesn't have a bachelor's program, so if I ever want to go back for a Bachelor's, I'd definitely go to Devry. It's located nicely in Center City Philadelphia, and my favorite instructor from ITT also teaches there. One of my friends from ITT goes there now and according to them they take all of the credits. The CIA came to the campus a few times, but I wasn't interested in moving to DC. Verizon and Boeing came a few times as well.

I'm going to wait and see how far I can get without a Bachelor's. If I hit a wall and can't get any further without one, then I'll go back, but if I can get where I want to get with what I have and my experience, then I think I'll be fine with not increasing my debt.
 
SpaceHonkey said:
I'm going to let you in on a dirty little secret that has only been alluded to here.

IT work IS a trade skill!

We essentially do little more than complicated plumbing and electrical work. Sure there is some engineering here and there, but for the most part you can apprentice your way into any part of the field, just like plumbers, electricians, woodworkers and smithies.

Generally 4-year degrees are pointed in highly refined areas of the field, very few offer a broad spectrum of all aspects of what we do (hello virtualization!). Unfortunately many businesses do not get this (those that require a degree) and I find that the ones that do don't really value the IT field highly (i.e. overhead instead of investment).

The companies that I've enjoyed working for have always valued experience more than college level education, with one exception - management. But generally IMHO, if you want to keep your hands dirty, a traditional degree that focuses on programming (although it doesn't hurt) offers little value to IT work. Programming is another field entirely.
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agree 100%
 
Xeth said:
There are mainline universities that offer bachelor's degrees in Computer Information Systems which is more geared towards IT. TBH it doesn't take a 4 year degree to learn how to administer a network - all the theory can be learned in 1 year and the rest is hands on experience and self learning with the actual systems you'll be working with. And Computer Science degrees don't really prepare you to be good software developers either.

With that said a Computer Science or Computer Engineering background is still great (maybe overkill) for IT admins. Learning to administer a router or operating system is easy when you've written routing software or operating system components during your coursework ;)
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It's definitely great. As has been said, IT is mostly hands on experience with systems and real world issues. A CS/CSE background is solid for IT - understanding the theory and fundamentals is of great, albeit indirect, utility. Plus, with a CS degree and practical IT knowledge you can do just about anything. An IT specific degree leaves you with fewer options (even though they might be your *preferred* options, the smartest thing in this economy is to have as many options as possible). I don't know about other schools, but at my school where CS was in the college of engineering, people tended to look down on the plain info science & technology degrees because their programs weren't nearly as difficult and rigorous as the computer science program. My CS degree allowed for specialization, whether it was algorithms and data structures or networking and operating systems (to name a couple tracks).
 
SpaceHonkey said:
IT work IS a trade skill!
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Too many folks are still buying into the "best and only way to get ahead is to go to college."

Folks complain about the high cost of attending universities, cost of books and, lack of job opportunities that pay high enough wages to make it worth it. Universities were NEVER meant to be job training centers!

I recommend going to trade schools or community colleges to learn a skill that you can make money with and then go to the university (if that's your interest).
 
Magnus said:
Too many folks are still buying into the "best and only way to get ahead is to go to college."

Folks complain about the high cost of attending universities, cost of books and, lack of job opportunities that pay high enough wages to make it worth it. Universities were NEVER meant to be job training centers!

I recommend going to trade schools or community colleges to learn a skill that you can make money with and then go to the university (if that's your interest).
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Yeah, but now we're in a bad cycle. People bought in to the college = success theory and now employers do too. No degree? We'll hire the person that does. So you have to get a degree just to be at parity with others. It's BS.
 
blackhand1001 said:
A lot of jobs for network administration list computer science degree as a requirement, yet all the 4 year schools seem to think that computer science equals programming and neglect anything regarding active directory, unix administration, troubleshooting computers.
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Computer science is NOT just programming. I'm so sick of this misconception. This major teaches you how to think.

The main benefit of majoring in computer science/engineering is not learning how to code in assembly and C ... instead, it's because it teaches you how to:
1) Analyze problems (what's the problem? what are the requirements? what am i given?)
2) Come up with solutions (what are the tools i should use? which of my solutions is the best and why? is there a case where this solution won't work and does it apply here? how well will this scale? what are the drawbacks to this solution and how long is it expected to work?)
3) Solve them quickly

Call me biased, but this is why the network administration jobs prefer CS/CE -- they've seen 9 times out of 10 that the CS/CE candidates fare better in a networking architecture/administration role than others because they had the 3 points above drilled into their head for 4 years. That's not to say someone like you or even someone without any degree can't succeed in the role -- it's just much harder to get your foot in the door based on this numbers game.

Consider this similar to SAT scores when applying for a great college. Sure, there may be some students that will do very well at MIT with a lower SAT score, but it's far more likely that those who get perfect SAT scores will succeed there.
 
just2cool said:
Computer science is NOT just programming. I'm so sick of this misconception. This major teaches you how to think.
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Sorry. Can't agree with that at all.
CS degrees are absolutely geared towards programming. Some colleges sprinkle a little bit of business management in them, but they mostly consist of classes about programming and programming related concepts.
Introduction to C
Object based languages
statistics
Data structures and algorithms
Distributed software
etc

Every major at a college is supposed to teach you how to "think"
And BTW, you shouldn't need a 4 year degree to know how to think.
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
Every major at a college is supposed to teach you how to "think"
And BTW, you shouldn't need a 4 year degree to know how to think.
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I disagree. In fact, I'd say most people with a 4 year degree haven't really learned how to critically think either.

It's a hard skill to pick up, and one that most people fail to see the value in. And then they whine when those of us who CAN apply logic and think critically get all the chicks.

Haters gonna hate.
 
I have a BS in computer science. It was a programming degree, might have taught me how to think and how to learn how to learn program (which is what they told us) but for the most part it was 90% programming. Had a class on OSs and how they worked and even that had us programming stuff to understand round robin and other queue types.
 
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