[Raptor]

Well as stated at the beginning of this, I have made decent money and turned down an income of 120K a year because my wife at the time didn't want to sell our house in Cambridge and move to Bursnville, she was more content with me driving that far each day. The position required me to be that close to respond to network issues quicker. When I turned it down, I left my Job at 80K because I didn't want to deal with people I had once hired being above me. The owner of that business was not a friend or relative or otherwise and Network administration and Unix administration requires a lot of knowledge. It doesn't have to come from school if you can back up what you claim. 4 years after I started working there, I went and took the Cisco Certification tests and had no trouble passing them with almost perfect scores. They were not needed and none of the people I worked for as a consultant after that or was ever employed by cared about the Certs. So paper is not always required. I started a welding and machine shop when i was 22 that in it's first year did 335K in business, owned it for 3.5 years and sold it. Point of that is that you can have high goals and not need a degree to attain them. I quite going to Dunwoody for welding after the first year as it wasn't teaching me anything beyond what I knew and the degree didn't matter.

Of course I don't think everyone in the same situations would do the same, but I do stand by the fact that a degree is far from a requirement to get a good high paying job without laying on your back scraping your knuckles. It also doesn't preclude you from making a very good living. I would venture a guess that the majority of successful CEO's in this country did not hold any degrees before they started their companies.

I would actually say getting a degree is a bit like following a recipe for performance with a DSM. You can do it with the right amount of time and money, it is clearly defined and well proven to work if you follow through and when you are done, you will be about the same as everyone else who also followed the "recipe". The guys that break records and turn heads are at the front of the pack from pioneering ways to go faster, creative people with proper motivation etc. Similar to those who invent products, start companies etc.