Certification Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 22) An IT education ain’t cheap, and the costs don’t stop at age 18, 22 or 55. To learn more about financing your IT education, search the term “finance” at CertScope to find past CertMag articles, tips, tricks and resources for paying for your IT training. Graduate degrees in IT are financed differently — general master’s degrees are paid for via the same means, but doctoral degrees tend to be supported by the university itself. “Almost invariably, as you go up in the degrees, almost all of your education is covered by the funds the university provides, and so that’s sort of a scale that one has to be aware of,” Vouk said. “Every single one of our computer science Ph.D. students, unless they’re students working in industry and just do it part time, are all supported for a certain period of time. That makes getting the degree much easier but, of course, the demands are much higher, and it’s a different population. So, in financing your degree, the question is what you’re after.” Employer-Funded NCSU feels students entering the workforce should make it a priority to find an employer that will finance their ongoing education. “Being supported by a company to continuously update your skills is important because, otherwise, you’re doing it on your own,” Vouk said. “And we do it as a university — we allow our employees to go take courses in various forms.” He also said graduate studies are funded by employers much more often than undergraduate studies at NCSU. “I don’t think that industry feels it needs to fund an undergraduate program,” Vouk said. Perhaps it should — there’s been a steady decline in the number of computer science graduates and interest in computer science degrees in the United States since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. According to survey results published this year by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, after peaking in 1999 and 2000, interest in computer science as a major fell 70 percent between 2000 and 2005. In the fall of 2005, 1.1 percent of incoming freshmen indicated computer science as their probable major. According to the Computer Research Association’s 2007 Taulbee Survey, after declining for six years, the number of new computer science majors in fall 2006 was about half of what it was in fall 2000 (15,958 versus 7,798). The number of bachelor’s degrees awarded by doctorate-granting computer fin said. “Because if the employer just says, ‘Yeah, well, you’ve got the certifications — we’ll just ignore them,’ the employee thinks, ‘What am I doing this for?’ and ‘Well, I have these new skills. I want to use them.’ They’re chomping at the bit and may decide to go elsewhere.” Griffin’s advice for aspiring IT professionals looking to finance their education (either to begin a career or develop one) is to be resourceful and plan ahead. “If you’re going to try to do it on the cheap, you can go on computer boards and find out about vouchers or discounts,” he said. “If you need to get a book, the library is an OK resource, and maybe one of your fellow co-workers would have a book you can borrow.” He also advises students to take certification tests while still in school rather than waiting and spending more to learn the skills a second time around. “I talk to students who are taking classes, and I ask, ‘Well, have you taken that certification?’ They say, ‘After I graduate, I’ll take the certification.’ I say, ‘Why are you doubling your efforts? If you’re studying it, why not take the exam on it?’” The College Experience Starting freshman year of college, the means by which incoming IT students can finance their education are fairly standard: through parental support, personal funds gained through employment, financial aid, student loans, grants or scholarships. Some forms of financial aid do not need to be paid back to the institution providing them. “These avenues are general for everyone in a university,” Vouk said. “Computer science, like other departments, will have scholarships or some kind of fellowships for students, which are given either to the needy or those who have outstanding grades or show outstanding academic potential. They may have IT-related names, so it could be Cisco fellowships or scholarships or IBM fellowships or scholarships, but they still follow the university rules about financing students.” 22 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE September 2007 http://www.CertMag.com
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