Hello Douglas Adams, This looks like one I should answer, since I've been a university professor, an industrial research scientist, and a software engineer working on contract.
There's a simple answer for software contracting -- people tend to be hired for a project based on reputation and experience; degrees count for little. Having a scarce skill counts a lot. For more permanent employment, it depends on where and for whom. There are major programs in colleges and universities accredited by the appropriate agencies; such degrees are generally recognized where that matters, and credits are usually transferrable, within some time limit, often seven years. There is a federal agency accreditation for distance education which attempts to set some standards, but regular universities only rarely accept such work for credit. Some government agencies at several levels don't ask questions about where one took a course, and distance learning institutions compete with little private colleges for the book in a box trade. Good enough for government work is the order of the day. Larger industrial companies generally hire professionals with masters or doctorates from accredited universities and technical staff with an accredited bachelors. There are occasional professional ladder engineers with only a bachelors. Back in the 60s and 70s Tulane's engineering school had trouble getting students to stay long enough to graduate; they kept getting job offers they couldn't refuse. One dropout, before he left to head up computing for an installation, made major modifications to the mainframe operating system that enabled me to run bigger problems in limited memory, but made the computer center director more than a bit edgy. The little package reduced the operating system to a console and one disk drive, from which it could reload the resident monitor on program exit. Took almost no memory at all, but didn't have any error recovery capability. I wrote bugless programs back then, of course. <G> Big companies may hire hourly semi-skilled people without much regard for formal credentials, often by in-house exams or from people furnished by a temporary service who show a good fit for a job. For instance, the large oil company where I was employed in Houston hired clerks and secretaries for a few weeks through a temp service, with a clause that said the employee would not be penalized for accepting a permanent job. I believe the temp house would get a agency fee in that case. This way the company could get a reasonable idea of the employee's skills and reliability before making any commitment. We also had one lab technician who had been moved to the professional ladder and put in charge of a large service laboratory. This gave him pay and rank, but he didn't expect to be moved up to senior professional level. Smaller companies are less formal and very hard to predict; there who you know may be at least as important as what you know or what's on your resume. If you just want to learn, say office software, the Cajun Clickers Computer Club has non-credit courses taught by people who teach office software for a living or consult with firms that do a lot of office data processing. If I were a kid looking for a good stable job and didn't have the budget and grades for a good college, I'd try to find a job, paid or not, in a shop running Linux or Unix and volunteer to help computer operators do backup and programmers find bugs until I got offered a regular job. Would also take a course or two at night at an accredited college or university working toward at least an associate sheepskin. There was a time when little distance learning institutions filled a niche not filled by larger institutions. These days fully accredited universities offer at least a few courses by extension, though I think personally, as one who designed a successful Computer Science degree program, that it is very hard to do as well at a distance than with personal contact with fellow students and instructor. Often the contact with other students is more important to learning time with the instructor. I would ask your brother what he wants to do with his training. If he has ambitions of a regular academic program somewhere, he should not expect ITT courses to be accepted for degree credit. If he wants a quick entry on a resume, might help, but not as much as a favorable reference from a former employer. If he thinks the program he is taking will teach him what he wants to know, fine. State and community colleges are less expensive, by and large, and offer transferable credits, although not necessarily for all courses -- an important point to check before registering. Just want to lean? One way is to look for a low level job with opportunity. We had a computer operator and programmer at Tulane Medical School in the 70s who started as a janitor, but showed interest and talent, and many people coached him to the point he could move up to technical staff. Don't even know if he finished high school. At Loyola, I taught a police officer in the night program who dropped out just short of his degree to become chief in a small town. He picked working at the city computer at night right out of the police academy, volunteered to help operators and programmers and became proficient. As he became more senior, he switched to day work at the computer center, and did well in the university night courses. The town needed someone with adequate computer background to be allowed to use the national database and hiring him as chief filled two jobs, and improved on his NOPD pay. Choppy At 11:47 PM 1/5/02 -0600, you wrote: >Hello everyone. I've been reading all the e-mails sent to this list, and >I'm assuming a majority of you are well informed individuals with opinions >I can trust. Here's my dilemma. My little brother has attended ITT tech >for one quarter so far and he's having second guesses now, which is >understandable because they're kind of expensive. I was wondering if >anyone could give me their opinion on how widely accepted a degree from >ITT-Tech would be. If any of you are in a position to make hiring and >firing decisions, I would extremely appreciate some insight into how you >view a degree from ITT-Tech. Thanks in advance for any opinions >offered. I'd like to give him advice or ease his worries, but I'm still >in the process of getting an education myself and lack the real world >experience to give him a learned opinion. > >Cordially, >Douglas Adams ================================================ BRLUG - The Baton Rouge Linux User Group Visit http://www.brlug.net for more information. 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