Certifications/Licenses are more important than College Degrees

[invalid]

Management jobs won't hire you unless you got that Six Sigma cert or PMP cert
Finance jobs want that Quickbooks cert or Series 7 license

Quickbooks is bookkeeping. Pretty much lower level accounting.

Finance is broad. If you are referring to investment management, then the CFA or maybe the CRM is what they are after. Series 7 was what stockbrokers went after but that profession has pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird.

Consulting/Management typically wants the B-School credential - MBA.

 

[Bubba T]

Semantics but 150 is basically the equivalent of a Masters. Most folks have to go back and get a MACC to get all the credits to sit if they didn't double major or something in undergrad.

Well, they aren't basically the same because they are two different degrees with different sets of requirements. I double majored in Accounting and Finance but that doesn't mean I have the equivalent of a masters degree just because I have 150 credits. Someone with a bachelors degree can go back to undergrad and get another bachelors to fulfill the requirement. Someone with a bachelors in accounting could go to community college and get 30 credits to sit for the exam/get licensed. There are different avenues one could take to get licensed

 

[CrimsonTider]

This is incorrect. In order to be licensed in any of the 50 states, you must have 150 credits, of which must be a specific number of upper level accounting and business credits (this will vary by state) and at least a bachelors degree. How you get to 150 doesn't necessarily matter as long as you meet the specific course requirements and have at least a bachelors.

It takes 120 hours to get a bachelors most masters in accounting degrees are 30 hours

You’re correct that you don’t have to have a masters but it’s set up where it makes sense to get masters and most take this track

 

[invalid]

Well, they aren't basically the same because they are two different degrees with different sets of requirements. I double majored in Accounting and Finance but that doesn't mean I have the equivalent of a masters degree just because I have 150 credits and someone who got a bachelors and then a masters has 150 credits. Someone with a bachelors degree can go back to undergrad and get another bachelors to fulfill the requirement. Someone with a bachelors in accounting could go to community college and get 30 credits to sit for the exam/get licensed. There are different avenues one could take to get licensed

Fair enough.

 

[Booker T Garvey]

Facts

all facts.

 

[Smashius Clay]

You don't need a degree for the PMP, but you need to have 60 months of experience managing projects and documented 7500 hours of project management experience. You can get it working for a small web shop, but you'll be hard pressed to find a major agency that's going to hand you a project with a big time client without a degree.

Also there's the fact that a lot of employers want people to "pay their dues" so to speak or their HR software automatically filters out people without degrees and sends a rejection letter off the bat. So while you can get a job, there's definitely a ceiling to the size of firm you can work with without a degree.

 

[EndDomination]

Literally everything that actually pays well beside like Doctors and Lawyers, can be obtained in a shorter - cheaper route than college.

We have several students every year signing up to get certifications mainly in IT, CS, Data, Finance and Accounting.

I tell them, making 40K and upwards in salary for 4 years while young >>> attending college and leaving confused starting from the beginning with no experience.

This is just a bit of hyperbole, you're not touching engineering disciplines, consulting disciplines, banking, private equity, even urban planning and development, without at least a Bachelors' degree barring extraordinary talent and massive backing.
Accounting and Finance aren't taking on degree-less people w/ certs, and even in CS, the autodidact focus has waned over the years, irregular and sloppy code at the base of development is going to be a bigger and bigger problem, and there's always an advantage to the formally trained.

 

[Smashius Clay]

irregular and sloppy code at the base of development is going to be a bigger and bigger problem

So true. We totally revamped our hiring procedures because of this. CTO was tired of cowboy coders throwing any old thing into prod without planning properly.

 

[AlainLocke]

Not true...if you go to a top 25 school in the country... you'll get a job


If you get an engineering or a computer science or computer engineering or a statistics degree...

You'll get a job

And all those certs you need...

Your company will pay for it....

Your company will pay for your Master's

Certs ain't gonna save you from not going to college

Unless you are highly skilled and technically sound and you out here making apps and etc and businesses

 

[New Username]

That and professional organization affliation

 

[Ya?]

You still need a degree BUT with certs/experience and established set of skills.

 

[Originalman]

Guys it depends on the field and geographical location of the job.

 

[MMA]

This is just a bit of hyperbole, you're not touching engineering disciplines, consulting disciplines, banking, private equity, even urban planning and development, without at least a Bachelors' degree barring extraordinary talent and massive backing.
Accounting and Finance aren't taking on degree-less people w/ certs, and even in CS, the autodidact focus has waned over the years, irregular and sloppy code at the base of development is going to be a bigger and bigger problem, and there's always an advantage to the formally trained.

Agreed on the accounting and finance side it bridges a gap between furthering in their careers. In the CS side that is a complete lie from a employee standpoint. Majority of boot-camp learning's are earning 60-80K right out and more throughout the years, yes their foundation isn't has good as someone who had to learn math/physics etc. But a lot of our youth doesn't have the time nor the resources to go through 4 years of school, setting themselves up early is working out.

 

[EndDomination]

Agreed on the accounting and finance side it bridges a gap between furthering in their careers. In the CS side that is a complete lie from a employee standpoint. Majority of boot-camp learning's are earning 60-80K right out and more throughout the years, yes their foundation isn't has good as someone who had to learn math/physics etc. But a lot of our youth doesn't have the time nor the resources to go through 4 years of school, setting themselves up early is working out.

I legit have a hard time believing this, but it may just be my vantage point. My automatic assumption was that the high starting salary reports were propaganda for the bootcamps themselves. Your average CS grad is starting at that outside of Silicon Valley and the Polytech/Ivy grads.

 

[EndDomination]

That and professional organization affliation

I think a combination of the three is a GOAT combination, not sure why we're making this a competition between cert and undergraduate degree.