Are degrees still relevant in IT, in 2021

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Hi All

I know many of us have a BSc on here, coupled with vendor certifications, so I wondered, what are your thoughts on this subject?

I gained my degree with the OU, BSc IT and Computing over five years part time. I really enjoyed it and how the OU fits around your life as I was working full time. That said, it took a crazy number of hours from me in my late 20s, so is a big commitment there. Fortunately for me, I completed it not long after baby 1 of 3 came along. I'm not sure how I'd cope if we had the kids at that point.

Only after my degree did I get into vendor certs from CompTIA, Microsoft and VMware. These were like a breath of fresh air as I only had to study for one exam at a time, and if I'm being honest, much quicker to get, yet carried a lot of weight in the industry, so for me, certs definitely had a bigger impact on my career and how handy I was in my role at the time. I say that because while my degree was great, I learned things like SmallTalk, a defunct object orientated language that helps you to understand the principles, but is of no use to me or anyone else for that matter today.

While some jobs require a degree, so there is no doubt, doctor, lawyer, vet etc etc IT I find is more of a grey area where it may or may not benefit your career. I think we all know someone who is massively talented and has neither certifications or a degree just to complicate matters further.

I hope you are keeping well
Jim

 

Thanks both, interesting points. I know employers often look for a way to whittle down the number of applicants for a role, so can rightly or more likely wrongly use something like a degree or a certification, to turn 100 applications into a smaller more manageable number. I think if Google are saying their certs are best, and you wanted to work for Google, we have our answer for that one example.

Its hard to say if my degree got me to a further stage or not. I totally agree with the comments on people staying in education as jobs are getting harder to find. I worry people get false hope with degrees, and still struggle to find work. I know several people who did Physics or chemistry degrees and work in IT, which makes me think, what a waste of time that was, to learn totally unrelated subjects you'll never use and now have 40k+ student debt.

I think software/development/programming definitely suits a degree more than say infrastructure work. I think IT certs are probably the king when it comes to infrastructure. Not saying I'm right just thinking out loud

 

Personally I believe that degrees are still relevant in IT; but not all areas of IT sees, requires or needs degrees to be relevant.

There is no one single right way to enter IT, just like there is no one single way to progress/climb the IT ladder. It's all down to individual countries, areas (with countries), sectors, organisations, and even departments.