Are you educated?

[TheGreenMan]

Pretty self explanitory question haha, just wondering how many of you folks have formal training in web design or if any if ya went to school for it?

The reason I ask is because recently ive been thinkin about doing just that, going back to school Although ive also just thought about self teaching, as in reading a bunch of books and such. Seems much more cost effective, just wondering if it would be AS effective.

As for me, like I said, im thinkin of going BACK to school. I did for a bit but never got to finish because of some life issues. Now ive got some debt to work through and I can go back in a few months if I want. So, its an option soon.

Interested in your own stories and opinions!

-tgm

[Kay]

Yeah, I'm educated but I'm not rich. Figure that out for yourself!

I did an MSc in e-Business, partly out of interest and partly in the hope of improving my online business prospects. I did the course over three years (distance learning with a well-respected Scottish uni) and it cost in the region of £5-6K. I don't believe the course helped me very much, although I had the satisfaction of success when I'd completed it.

There was a lot of stuff that simply wasn't very relevant for me, like Supply Chain Management, and website security issues, etc, etc. I would have been better off learning some quick and dirty Photoshopping, SEO, and maybe even how to make videos.

If you have the discipline to self-teach, then you might be a lot better off doing that. You can cherry pick what you want to learn and brush aside what someone else thinks you ought to learn.

I don't really regret doing the MSc, but if I'd invested that time into doing what I really wanted to learn then I would be a lot better equipped now to handle this interweb thingy.

After the MSc, I enrolled on an online art course, it seemed fine to start with but they moved the goalposts and some of it was mind-blowingly boring for me. I wanted to specialise in graphic design and creating images for websites, but they had me doing stuff like creating drawings of things that didn't interest me. I fell at the first hurdle. Waste of money!

Everyone is different, of course, but especially if your funds are limited then choose carefully and spend wisely. Do what specifically interests you. I mean, does anyone care if you have letters after your name? It doesn't impress anyone and it doesn't mean that you are more able to pursue the career you've chosen for yourself. Therefore I would advise you against going back to school and instead to spend your money and your time on learning what you really want/need to learn.

Good luck!

[Clinton]

I have no training in anything web related. I get along by the seat of my pants. CSS is still a big mystery to me ...as is most HTML for that matter.

[grynge]

I have very little education, apart from what I have learnt myself. You could say my early education was street based. I learnt everything I know about making money from having none and wanting a lot of it. As I get older I realise there is a fine line between being happy doing what you are doing and having more money.

I started out viewing the pages source and copy and pasting stuff I liked. Then when php started to become interesting I used to copy the source but I would find the code wouldn't behave as I expected, so it took a little while to work out that it was server side code and only parsed through the outlay of the website. I then borrowed every book/pdf I could find on programming in php/java/mysql/html/css/perl and have just learnt snippets from that.

[TheGreenMan]

The way I see it, I have 6 months before I can even think about going back, and imo I can learn alot in that time. I guess we'll just see what happens. Im not too find of the school setting anyway, and feel alot of the schools here in the US are all just business anyway lol. At least where I went, it seemed like no one cared or even knew what they were doing haha. I might be better off on my own anyway! Plus, no risk of collecting more debt!

[benitez17]

I have an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering and minimal training in web design. I try to avoid it or outsource it whenever possible.

[DomainMagnate]

I studied Computer Science at the top university in the country, but it actually wasn't very helpful to what I do. I don't even code anything myself now, whenever I need some programming or even simple php coding done I prefer to pay someone else than to mess with it myself.

Now come to think of it I could've spent the time much more efficiently than studying all kinds of stuff I'll never get to use. Although I started my business while being a student, so it may have contributed in an unexpected way.

[crabfoot]

Computer Science - my cousin did that, he ended up as an educational advisor.
Education - I'm a chemist, I'm a microbiologist, I do electronics for a hobby. I can speak French well enough to be mistaken for Swiss, I understand a lot more German than I acknowledge ...

Computer specfic - I studied robotics engineering. Not very useful in www terms, because robotics programming is all varieties of BASIC or LADDERS for PLCs - nothing web-like in that. It fitted with my desires to become the guru of automated chemical analysis, it failed because it never happened.

I am a scary programmer if you want low level stuff in C or assembler. I understand Java better than I should, but ask me to build a site for you and I would have to decline - CSS is a very deep pool.

[ClaytonL]

I've got a bachelors in computer science and an associates in web development from a state university. I would say that I was dissapointed with the education that I received. I feel like I wasted time and money by going to a university. I can fluently code about any web language except flash and I can design some pretty good looking websites, but that was mostly self taught before I even started school.

[ScottJ]

I'm really really good with Frontpage all self taught by building & breaking I have no web/coding skills but they would be really handy, in saying that computing when I went to school would be of no help, it must be a subject that needs to change/update itself a lot every few years. I'm not sure its necessary as there are so many talented people out there that can work for fixed fee's and keep pace with changing technology but looking back if I knew php I would have broken a lot less sites and avoided a few embarrassing situations if I knew slightly more.