BI and studying
As a BI person, expect to study all your life, that applies to IT in general as well, whether you are a consultant or not.
As a consultant, expect to study all your life, whatever field of consulting it is.
If you are both (a BI person and a consultant), expect learning to be a daily experience.
What about part time degree studies?
The IT industry in general has often emerged as a saviour for people who wanted an opportunity to prove their worth, people that for some reasons did not study prior to entering the job market. It may be some life crisis when they were young, or lack of maturity, or lack of finances. Unlike other well paid professions, it is not regulated, people often get a co-incidental foot in the door, and work their way up to become respected, well paid and fulfilled.
While it provides excellent opportunities for tertiary graduates, life stories of professionals abound, of people who found in IT the opportunity to work themselves up. Part of this is perception, the public loves an underdog, and the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are often popularised.
But here is no doubt many professionals get overlooked for promotions (or are not hired in the first place by high flying companies) because they lack a degree. This post is not about the worth of a degree or not, this topic is explored (often in comments) in many places all over the internet. This case is for the guy that has a foot in the door, who feels that having a degree will help him or her.
A typical story
A story looks something like this: Peter worked for a few years, made a name for himself as he is motivated and smart. Earlier in his life, he had wanted to study, he started but chose the wrong course, and then fell around until he had to start working to support himself. He quickly proved his IT skills, and got transferred to the IT department. After a while he shot for a better job and the rest is history. He is highly skilled at development, and or highly skilled at databases. He became quite interested in databases, and his eagerness to learn business has helped endear him in BI. However, Peter’s career is hitting a ceiling, he sometimes feel people less deserving gets promoted or hired ahead of him, often only because they have a degree behind their name, and Peter has not. He often got encouraged by the Zuckerberg’s and Gates’s of this world, and had conflicting thoughts about studying or not, but eventually realises it probably will help his chances. Peter mostly wants the paper, but as a person that does not want to appear cynical, at least he verbalises the intention that it would be great to learn something along the way. It would also be great to gain international experience, and lack of a degree is often a show stopper for a visa.
Peter could be Susan, his career path may look different, and the reason he doesn’t have a degree may differ. Most Peters enrol for Computer Science or Informatics, and more than half of Peters never finish.
Peter believed a few myths about Computer Science or Informatics.
Computer Science Myths
Because he a senior developer, Peter thought it would be easy. Well some concepts might be, but will still take time.
Programming courses are assignment heavy. Theoretical computer science straddles maths, and for that reason is tricky for some.
And both theoretical and practical components can be tricky to apply to contribute to your career.
What should Peter do?
By all means study, but consider something else.
IT and BI, in the career space, touches a lot of disciplines. Study the discipline you are, or are likely to come, in contact with, and that will complement your experience.
If your work straddles modelling, then Statistics, Maths, Applied Maths and (especially) Operations Research are good choices.
If you work in local government, consider Geography, in the medical industry, consider biological sciences.
Economics, Accounting and Business Economics may be useful to some.
The ability to progress past the first ceiling often hinges on having multi dimensional knowledge, and having clout with (and useful background of) the actual business.
Last piece of advice
Don’t choose a set course (some institutions refer to these as streams) just because it sounds cool. This is particularlu true of you decide to push through with Computer Science in spite of what I said.
I knew someone who chose Artificial Intelligence (AI) for it’s futuristic appeal. There were so many prerequsites that the guy could not have one module of choice, and some of these were complex.
The degree would have been called B Sc (Computer Science) (Artificial Intelligence stream). Well actually after 5 years it was B Sc (Computer Science) (Artificial Intelligence Stream) (incomplete – 19 modules out of 30 complete).
B Sc (Computer Science and Geography) with no comments would have been easier, and read better on a CV.
Computer Science is a great discipline, but there are other choices. It is always great to connect with something that computers are actually being used for. My personal advice in most cases, is that you’ve probably already got the computer science covered through, augment it with something else that interests you, and makes you interesting.