Opinion on College Degree

[J0E24]

Hello all! I am starting up college after being in the Army for the past 3 years. To start off i am going to a junior college to save money and since i sucked at high school.

Now, I want to go to school to learn how to program: websites, applications people would use and everything. Just pretty much anything to do with programming languages, and a little bit of like hacking. My father did the security side of things.

With that being said. and with my understanding of everything, i would assume i should go for the Computer Science degree plan.

Now after meeting with a Veterans affairs person at the junior college he asked me what my interpretation of what a computer science degree person would do in the real world and i told him, system analyst, programming of websites, or programs/applications and stuff like that. He told me i was completely wrong and what it sounds like what i wanted to do i should be doing the degree, Business administration : Computer Information Systems. He said going this route would save me on math and blah blah blah.

After going to Cal Poly Pamonas website and looking at Computer Science, BA (CIS), Computer Engineering Degree plans, Computer Science still seems like the route i would want to take. it has computer programming language classes, Operating systems classes and software engineering classes, so pretty much everything.


What i am trying to ask for the people who have actually read this. What is the Real world Difference between the 3 degree plans? What would i be doing at Intel, Google, Youtube, Yahoo, Dell. Whatever in each degree plan. If someone could help me out that would be amazing because i feel lost on which degree to even go with.

 

[yumri]

firstly which ever you go with you will be going to get a masters thus going for the at it for at least 7 years thus make sure you really like it. I say this as anything below a Master's degree and your employeement might and probably will be only temp jobs and contracts not full employement.

MOSTLY what ppl with only a Computer Scients BA degree do is computer adimistration between the user and the servermaking it work either by making the hardware work for them and/or making the software work for them drawing up the designs and/or plans for it to work not doing the actual programming but knowing the programming well enough that they can direct a team of programmers in the correct direction so the programmers can make the program work for the users. IE the manager not the worker.

Business adiminstration : Computer Information Systems degrees will help you get the feel of which certiticates to obtain to get the job of programming, computer repair, computer maintance, operating system design, etc. like that which you desire but the degree itself is almost worth less without the industry certs bacing it up because each system is very differnet for example a Red Hat system will not take the same commands as a Mac OSX server will in which neither will take windows commands ... this is without middleware to make them do that of course.

So it really depends on what you want to do after you get the degree(s) in the IT feild(s) but most likley you will need more than just 1 degree and at least 1 Master's degree in it too.

Businesses have a large pool to pick from for workers so if you dont have it most likely someone else is already quailfied and/or over quailifed for the position that you apply for.

 

[J0E24]

So in your opinion, from what i said i want to be doing, it sounds like i need to go with computer science then? And from what you put down thats what i seems to me, atleast.

 

[yumri]

well if you go with a computer science degree you will also need to get a list of other degrees and/or certicates to do what you want to while with the Business administration : Computer Infomation Systems degree you will need to get less other degrees and /or certicates either way you are going to need more than just 1 degree to get where you want to be if you also want steady employement by the same employer