College Education vs Autodidactic Education

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As per the necessity of acquiring certificates, let me use one of the more basic certificates as an example - A+ which is an IT certificate.

The A+ certification costs $168 per test and there are two tests, meaning $336 for the total costs of the tests. The textbooks available for it currently costs up to $80 on Amazon for one of the more expensive ones. That's a total of $336 + $80 = $416 total. At Rasmussen College, they divide an A+ textbook into two classes each worth 3 credit hours, meaning 6 credit hours total. It is about $500 per credit hour, so that is $500 per credit hour times 6 credit hours equaling $3,000 for the chance to rush through an A+ certification textbook and not even take the exams, whereas the price of studying autodidactically plus price of exams is $416, so which is a better financial investment?

Of course there are many more fields of study than just IT. Some, like Accounting, have government mandated college credit hours prior to taking the CPA exam. However, obtaining certification in order to increase ones likelihood of future employment need not revolve around investing in overpriced credit hours. It's a matter of studying the materials of subjects for examinations not requiring college credit hours. Going after those and obtaining them is far less expensive and less time consuming than enrolling oneself in a 2 to 4 year contract and paying more than necessary for the opportunity to rush through reading assignments while filling out busywork. Studying textbooks on one's own allowed the freedom to actually learn rather than merely rush through to meet the financial deadlines of an "institute of higher education".

Yeah, sure! A+ certification is something I had debated about in the past, and forgot about. I mean, I could take the class, but I really am not much of a class-goer. Or, I can buy the book and study on my own. Then, I got distracted and moved on. But, if anyone has the self-discipline and inclination, why not? Save some bucks and learn a bit more in depth. Then again, no one will stop one from doing that anyway if one takes the class. Also, for the class, there will be a focus of what's on the test. On the other hand, A+ books probably come with all that.
I suppose it depends on the subject, though.

I've taken a few classes now that didn't have a textbook. They covered newly emerging fields where the subject matter is not yet that clearly defined and there aren't standard textbooks that provide an adequate and up-to-date coverage. The classes instead consisted of conversations with researchers who have been involved in the area. That portion of my education could not be obtained for $1.50 in late charges at the public library.

I began studying C++ Fall semester 1998. I kind of pre-studied without realizing it at the time. I checked out a couple of library books week before and skimmed and read the parts that caught my eye. I stayed ahead of the book. I stayed up with the lab assignments (which can be tedious and pointless and I tend to perfectionize) with the help of a good lab partner. I remember sitting at a bus stop waiting for the college shuttle bus, and it occurred to me that I maybe knew enough about looping to do a diamond. And that afternoon, I really worked on doing a diamond, inputting the length, inputting the character you want. And it worked! Next semester I branched out to probability problems. If a basketball player shoots 47%, what's the chance of him or her having a relative dry streak (0, 1, or 2 shots out of 10). And I did the birthday matching problem. That is, I kind of used the class as a base and I branched out and did a bunch of stuff on my own. At times, it was a pretty substantial assignment and I may have made it more, so I would come back to the class, I made the class the priority. At one point, I wrote a C++ that impressed one of the best students in Assembly. A lot went well.

And then I faced the wall of "human resources." You have nontechnical people hiring for technical positions. The fact that I have a portfolio of programs on a lap top doesn't count. In fact, it's putting them on the spot, potentially embarrassing them.

In 2000, looking for a job in C++, it almost seemed like a federal law "must have 2 years experience." In fact, I'm sure they more assiduously follow this than they do many actual laws! Look, HR people have professional associations, they do things largely all the same, it's almost considered "unprofessional" to do them differently. They have been very successful at turf building and turf defending by taking a kernal of valid legal concerns and exaggerating them. It's like the last scene in the original POSEIDON ADVENTURE, you have all this, swimming through the part underwater, the character played by Shelly Winters dying, the character playing Ernest Borgnine's wife dying, the minister arguing with God and then dropping exhausted to the grate below, all this, and at the end you get to one inch of steel vs two inches of steel. Well, the "human resource" people are the one inch of steel! They are running a closed club.

It was single path. That might sound technical, trivial, but it's of the hugest consequence. They were only looking for people with corporate experience. Not programming experience, corporate experience.

And it's not just clean intelligence and pristine programmer. A lot of it is kludge-ware, you're ping-ponging back and forth with a complex system and that's okay, that is a way to do it.

I even say one ad (not in computer science, but showing how ridiculous the whole thing is) wanting a job applicant who is a "self starter" and then later in the ad "a team player." Hold on, wait a second, time out. It is usually one or the other. It's different mindset.

PS I prefer to think of myself as a human being, of course I do!