Having completed highschool and taken a year of vacation then 2 years of a CS degree at a local college the decision I made was to drop out and get on with life.

Since then I have gone through 8 jobs and from helpdesk support to Senior System Administrator in a mixed environment for 6+ years now. However to get where I am it has taken almost 80% of my non paid time to get and keep up to date on current technology. With this much time dedicated to systems related endeavors it has definetly lost some of its charm.

In hindsight colledge provides a time and an environment to make the learning and maintenance of knowledge the specific focus while also providing time to aquire a part time job in which you can gain the experience necessary to step into a higher responsibility position. Another benifit of this method is that financial aid and grants are available which greatly reduces the longterm cost of learning.

Almost all of the technology worth learning to become very competitive and useful to the industry are available through the internet and higher learning institutions now. This being the case college is a great way of accelerating the not soo enjoyable parts of a technology career while providing some fun and flexibility along the way that I have found to be sparse in the full time employment market.