Should I go to College?

Should I complete a bachelors or associates degree based on my plans?

  • Total voters
    54
GeorgeC said:
No need for debt, a good job will pay for your masters.
You're already on your way to your ratings, maybe get your A&P while you're at it.
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I will NEVER need a masters. xD
That would be a massive waste of time. No one will ever convince me to do that.

I don't want to be an A&P. I want to be a professional in areas I like. If I do that well, then I will be able to pay a professional to take care of A&P stuff.
 
forseth11 said:
I am busy by choice. I am busy now because I am trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can because I can learn quickly as I am young. If I continued as a regular college student with a part time job and just did school, I would have a fair amount of excess free time. I lack this free time because I choose to instruct more, training more, study stocks, have a social life and build connections, enjoy life, work on business learning and ideas, and read self improvement or business books.
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Exactly! ;-)
 
PNWPilot said:
I have never hired a software engineer just because they have a Bachelor's in CS.
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No one does, that's not the situation you might need to care about. What does happen, increasingly, is that you won't get hired because you don't have the degree, no matter what your other credentials are or how good you are.

But it sounds like the OP isn't interested in working for anyone else, and also isn't interested in keeping as many options open as possible if that doesn't work out, so, best of luck. Hopefully you'll be one of the big success stories we all hear about, not one of the many others that no one hears about.
 
forseth11 said:
The only way I can do that is to do it slowly (my current plan). The concepts don't change for sure, but do you have to learn that in college, or can you learn it via books, practice, other classes, etc.

I absolutely agree with both of your pieces of advice.


[other responses snipped]
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You can learn from books or other sources, and today there are many universities/colleges which you can do essentially entirely online. What you do need is a structured approach that lets you build concept on concept and makes sure you cover the whole range of material. For example, how much exposure have you had to formal language structure? Discrete mathematics? These are key portions of the curriculum.
 
You sound like most 19 year olds. Here’s my take.

Do none of the above, except finish your CFI. Enlist in the Air Force for six years; be a boom operator or other Career Enlisted Aviator job. It’ll provide your fix for flying.

Come out the other end with GI Bill, maybe a degree completed using Tuition Assistance.
 
deyoung said:
No one does, that's not the situation you might need to care about. What does happen, increasingly, is that you won't get hired because you don't have the degree, no matter what your other credentials are or how good you are.
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I wouldn't say 'no one does'.

An acquaintance of mine got his EE in the late 80s and worked in california in the avionics industry through the 90s. Cashed out his company stock in 2000 and moved back to his home town to pursue some business ideas he had always worked on. One of them included a chain of coffee-shops. Well, scroll forward 10 years and all his savings and a pile of bank money had gone into building and crashing those various businesses. The last of his stores was located in the office-park sector of town. One of the regulars at the store happened to be a partner in a local engineering firm. The abridged version of the conversation between the two:
Customer: Bill, aren't you an engineer ?
Barista: Yes, EE. But I haven't done anything since I moved back.
Customer: Bill, we are hiring engineers. Get your resume to me by the end of the week.

Now he is not with that engineering firm anymore, but the degree itself was the key to a re-entry into a career that will eventually allow him to retire.

I also know folks who scrambled to get a bachelors so they were eligible for promotion in various government jobs (or even eligible to test for certain positions). Yes, education is a racket, but unless you can dribble a football or luck out with your first business idea, a technical degree like CS or EE is one of the few certain pathways to economic stability.
 
deyoung said:
No one does, that's not the situation you might need to care about. What does happen, increasingly, is that you won't get hired because you don't have the degree, no matter what your other credentials are or how good you are.
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I admit that my environment is unusual. I'm often competing for software engineering talent against Google, FB, Amazon, and Microsoft. They all have very large engineering presences in town, not to mention others like Netflix, Oracle, Hulu, Uber, Disney, HBO, etc with significant engineering investments here. If the candidate with the right experience and compatible skill sets appear on the radar, they will not be on the market for very long, degree or not.
 
TCABM said:
You sound like most 19 year olds. Here’s my take.

Do none of the above, except finish your CFI. Enlist in the Air Force for six years; be a boom operator or other Career Enlisted Aviator job. It’ll provide your fix for flying.

Come out the other end with GI Bill, maybe a degree completed using Tuition Assistance.
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Haha xD. I did finish my CFI. I am working on my CFI-I. I don't ever want to join the military.
 
forseth11 said:
I do not want to ever work as a software developer for a living unless I have to. That is my final fallback plan. I would much rather do the following first:
  1. DPE and Business
  2. Corporate and Business
  3. Instruct and Business
  4. Airlines and Business
  5. Airlines
  6. Software development and business
  7. Software development
Thank you for your input by the way!
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As a business owner, I would caution you to not fall in love with a specific business idea, but fall in love with the numbers. Too often I hear from younger entrepreneurs, and they are all bright eyed about a concept. Maybe it's a franchise idea they saw somewhere on vacation, or the latest thing they've come across, but they have no idea if the idea makes money. Most successful business owners I know are most excited talking about margins. If numbers and margins sound boring to you, a business owner might not be your thing.
 
There is no 'right' answer. Any path you take will likely land you on a path you hadn't thought of. I'm kind of a Mike Rowe fan; don't follow your passion, bring your passion to whatever you do and good things will happen. (see MR for more on this). I started out as a chemist (hospital specialty), switched from working in hospitals to working for the medical device industry in a technical/chemical role, switched to marketing, then sales, got right-sized out of a job, stayed field support for a new company, back to marketing, then sales, then back to field support, then manufacturing engineering, then software development, and stayed there for 20 years. WTF???? Never saw any of that coming and had a ball doing almost all of it (sales sucks...for me but was a good learning experience and I appreciate having done it). The driver for me was to do the very best at every job I did and, from that, came new and unexpected opportunities that lead to more new and unexpected opportunities.

Re AS vs BS, I'm really old school here. I didn't go to college for a job, I went to college because I loved to learn. I came out of college with a job but that wasn't what drove me. If you like to study, just for the sake of learning, then a BS or more is the way to go.

If you're as unfocused as you seem (not unexpected for a young pup so this isn't a dis), flip a coin and just f'n go for it. If there is something in that mess of a list that is pulling you, then go that way. If you still can't decide, join the Navy...they fly some really cool planes AND can fund your education after you get your **** together!
 
Doug F said:
There is no 'right' answer. Any path you take will likely land you on a path you hadn't thought of. I'm kind of a Mike Rowe fan; don't follow your passion, bring your passion to whatever you do and good things will happen. (see MR for more on this). I started out as a chemist (hospital specialty), switched from working in hospitals to working for the medical device industry in a technical/chemical role, switched to marketing, then sales, got right-sized out of a job, stayed field support for a new company, back to marketing, then sales, then back to field support, then manufacturing engineering, then software development, and stayed there for 20 years. WTF???? Never saw any of that coming and had a ball doing almost all of it (sales sucks...for me but was a good learning experience and I appreciate having done it). The driver for me was to do the very best at every job I did and, from that, came new and unexpected opportunities that lead to more new and unexpected opportunities.
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I could not agree more. Life is a journey. You have no idea where you will be in 10 or 15 years. If you had told me when I was 25 what I'd be doing more than 30 years later, no way would I have believed it. Attitude, smarts, and effort will open a lot of doors. Smugness and a sense of entitlement will slam them even faster. The world owes you nothing; you have to earn it.
 
We have an entrepreneurial institute at our college. Many students in this institute think they are going to write a mobile app or come up with a miracle widget and strike it rich. Most have no idea that a successful business will require specific knowledge (engineering, science, finance, etc.) relevant to the product or business, raising capital, leading teams, and/or working and communicating with manufacturers or partner businesses. And that they will need excellent writing and speaking skills. (They think the world will come to them.) As one might expect, the success rate is very small, because it is challenging, but not impossible, to build a novel business.

I know far more successful entrepreneurs either college educations than without, especially in STEM related fields.
 
PNWPilot said:
I admit that my environment is unusual. I'm often competing for software engineering talent against Google, FB, Amazon, and Microsoft. They all have very large engineering presences in town, not to mention others like Netflix, Oracle, Hulu, Uber, Disney, HBO, etc with significant engineering investments here. If the candidate with the right experience and compatible skill sets appear on the radar, they will not be on the market for very long, degree or not.
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In today's market, right now, I agree with you---I've been trying to hire a developer and a network engineer, in fact, and it's been challenging. That could always change, of course. In any case, there are some employers who won't look at an application without a degree regardless. Maybe you don't need to care about those, sure, but why reduce your options unnecessarily?

And of course without a degree your skill set needs to be especially sharp; for this discussion I assume it is, but I have interviewed lots of people recently whose technical skills were not quite where they thought they were...
 
Cluemeister said:
As a business owner, I would caution you to not fall in love with a specific business idea, but fall in love with the numbers. Too often I hear from younger entrepreneurs, and they are all bright eyed about a concept. Maybe it's a franchise idea they saw somewhere on vacation, or the latest thing they've come across, but they have no idea if the idea makes money. Most successful business owners I know are most excited talking about margins. If numbers and margins sound boring to you, a business owner might not be your thing.
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I am not going after any particular idea. I have focuses of course, but I do not have an emotional attachment to any of those focuses. I am going where my business would be most needed even if that means doing something I didn't even think of before. I LOVE numbers, and I would love to talk margins and numbers all day. What ever I do go with, my business's mission can be adjusted, but not changed for what ever service or product is provided.

I had this great opportunity yesterday where I got to sit in and participate in a business meeting regarding the sale of a large multi-million dollar property and businesses. There is someone who contacted me a little over a month ago because he flew and he ran multiple businesses with a focus on technology and software development and he knew I was a CFI and had three years experience with software development. Anyways, I hope to start working for him part time in the next coming weeks, but we talked for a long while. He gave me about 3 hours worth of business advice and lessons which are invaluable since he found out this is what I was going after. So before his meeting, he called me and asked if I wanted to check the place out and see them do their stuff. At first I was just listening, but after 2 hours, I started giving input and asking questions. I hope to keep this mentor, and learn everything I can.
 
I think the first thing you should do is reject your father's monthly stipend for a while. I think you said it was $700/mo.

If you don't miss it, great, continue with your "plan."
 
Ravioli said:
I think the first thing you should do is reject your father's monthly stipend for a while. I think you said it was $700/mo.

If you don't miss it, great, continue with your "plan."
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I had my plan way before it began. It actually just began this month.
 
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