Advice: Finish Degree or go Technical?

In My Humble Opinion
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Here’s my situation. I have a 3 year degree from a Canadian university, (Bachelor of Arts). No major, its a Generalist degree and I have a pretty crappy GPA to boot. The option exists to go back and upgrade to a 4 year honour’s degree with a major. I’m not sure if I can transfer to other institutions or not and see what credits they will take, or if I’m excluded because a degree has already been conferred… but I can return to the original institution.

I’m thinking that upgrading the arts degree isn’t going to make much of a difference toward my job prospects and I have no interest in any sort of Masters of PHD programs, so I was thinking of getting some type of technical diploma (no clue really in what… maybe Business, etc).

After graduating the first time round I got suckered into going to a technical school for a diploma in Network Engineering, I finished the program and did get my MCSE, but I couldn’t find any work whatsoever. I had the misfortune to get my MCSE right when the dot-com bubble burst. So now, my MCSE is basically worthless because it would cost me another $10,000 or so to upgrade to the current MS track.

For the last two years or so I’ve been doing crappy part-time jobs and then teaching english in Asia to pay bills.

So now that its time to come home and get on some sort of career path, what do you recommend? Upgrade to a more respectable degree or get some kind of technical diploma in a viable field?

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hi Jack - just a few of my thoughts:

I’m not so sure the problem is with your actual degree or the class of your degree: so, the class may not be all that you would like it to be, but, you still did enough work to have it conferred, you know? What does a degree say about someone?

Why spend the time and money upgrading to something that your heart doesn’t really sound that keen on?

Also, look at your motivation for getting another technical qualification: would you be doing it because you love the subject - or are you seeing it as a potential way to “make a good living?” dot com crashes and massive lay offs aside :wink: You mentioned your qualification in engineering, but are you even sure what type of tech work really grabs your interest?

I don’t think it’s so much what people could recommend, but rather more of what you would like to do as a career? I’d suggest doing one of those “answer 120 questions about you” type of things that are usually on offer in careers centres: it can be suprising what the results show - and can help you think about new career directions, and once you get those ideas, you can work on focus and going after your career. Well, in theory anyway :wink:

Best of luck

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If recent trends continue, any technical job that can be done remotely runs the risk of being outsourced to someplace overseas.