I went to DeVry. And then I went on and got my B.Sc. from University of Phoenix. I really had no idea what I was going to do when I graduated. In the last week before graduation, I started talking to a headhunter for an HR company that contracts workers to Microsoft. The day before graduation I got a job as a tester. I was kind of bummed, I had actually hoped to graduate and take some time off before heading into the work world, but I had student loans to pay back, and a job in hand and a company with name recognition, it all sounded too good to pass up. After driving for about 18 hours I arrive in WA state. We connect with our company, we had been promised (my friend and I both got jobs) some money, which we collected so we could afford the cheapest of hotels until we started getting paid. In two days we go to orientation and find out that WA is a right to work state, meaning we have a contract, but can be terminated at any time, and without cause, this seems pretty grim to broke students. We start our jobs as testers, the pay is about $35k a year, more money that I had ever been paid. Every day I was worried I would get fired. By Christmas I still had a job and was 6 months into work, I was starting to feel pretty comfortable with my situation, so I took a week off and went home for the holidays. I came back to find out my team had lost a project and was letting me go. I had a week to find work. In two days I had a new job. Fast forward 10 years. I had worked my way through a bunch of different jobs in the computer world, at Microsoft and outside at small dot coms. I have been a tester, developer, production support, dba, database engineer, service engineer. I think someone asked me once about university of Phoenix, it was more in passing than anything else, like, how is the weather in Phoenix, doesn't rain like it does in Seattle? My first job as a tester wasn't a swing for the fences, I just wanted to get to first base (to stay with the baseball analogy). After that it was about the work, what I had on my resume, the years I put in, the references I could supply, and the people I worked with. I quickly found out, that though there are thousands of people working in IT in Seattle, your employer will look at your resume and is sure to know at least one person you worked with at your last, and be sure that they have already spoken before you set foot in their office. More doors have opened for me because of my work ethic and the people I have worked with providing informal references, than have closed for where I got my education.

Having said all that, I was probably one of very few people in my graduating class that actually went into technology and went on to higher levels of success. I also know that I have been denied jobs for not having a masters degree.