The problem is, I can't find a way to make it work. To really commit to it I'd have to do it in person and it would be hard to balance with a full time job and I would need to work to just pay for life. Otherwise, I could take an online only degree which would allow me to work but I know that bench time is really important. I'm not sure how it would work with a fully online degree.
There's also the costs. I'm having trouble finding programs under 80k, and coming out of it I would be starting at the bottom of the ladder not making as much. I do have an option to attend at my country of birth, in Eastern Europe, for much cheaper but I don't think it's easy to transfer that outside of the EU.
I just don't know how to make it work, if I can. I would at least like to have a degree of some sort, even if it's computer science (easier online) but it's still an expensive one. I don't have anyone that can really give me great advice on this so I would appreciate any advice from you all.
Here are my thoughts: 1) You don’t have to study your career path. You will almost certainly make more money in software than as an EE. I do electronics as a hobby, and I’m pretty happy with it. I worked full time while taking two classes a term. You already have a career in software. I’m here to tell you: you probably won’t be learning much you don’t already know. I didn’t. Why do you want to go to school to study ME/EE? If you want it, go for it. But if you’re just wanting to complete college, play to your strengths.
2) School is expensive. I cheated by going to a church college that subsidizes tuition. I have since stopped being a church-goer. I’m still proud of myself for getting my degree.
3) My wife is going back to school in mid-forties. It’s not too late.
4) You’re younger than you think. If you’re not too tied down, tear up your life. You’ve got lots in front of you. I had a wife and a newborn (still have both) and a full time job.
5) US university programs strongly bias toward kids coming out of high school. They are a quagmire of bureaucracy. Ask lots of questions about the program, find out what you can skip, what you don’t need, etc. I managed to get out of an internship requirement due to my 15 years in the industry.
Good luck, and I’m proud of you. Education is a worthy goal.
This is a summary of my actual experience doing a technical certification in Australia (and mirrored by others who have done proper degrees too), if youre not going to a top shelf institute or dont vet every teacher for every subhect, i can wholeheartedly say, fuck further education in 2025.
The difference between mechanical and electrical engineering is huge. Why do you want to do either? In your last paragraph you are also considering computer science.
You need to decide which degree you actually want and why. What will you be able to do with a degree that you can't do now?
I can only speak for the US but I would look at college curriculums and look at the actual classes you need to take. Many public universities in the US have partnerships with community colleges where you can take many general education classes from the first 2 years and get the credits to transfer.
I have an electrical engineering degree and there were labs in some classes but others had none.
Maybe when you get to that point you can work part time or with flexible hours and go to those classes during the day a few times a week and work during the night.
All of this means you are going to have a big change in your life. That could be cheaper housing, cheaper vacations, less time for a personal life, etc.
Just my two cents as a mid-40 years old (maybe I'm jaded), and don't take it the wrong way. I just don't want you to go fully commit to ME or EE without having tried a tiny bit of the college courses. Sometimes, we have ideals that we want to do, but when we actually go and do them full time, we realize we don't enjoy that activity as much as dreaming about the idealized version of such activity...
You don’t need all the money at once, $80k degree is $20k/year - and only if you do it in 4 years. You are allowed to take longer (and spend less per year). If you’re working while you do the degree, the yearly cost isn’t a very big problem. Find out how online degrees work, don’t use that as a reason to not try. Apply for grants, loans, and scholarships. Some grants and scholarships are need based, and you may be easily able to demonstrate need if you explain your situation. Some grants and scholarships just go to people with interest and promise, and you don’t know if you don’t apply.
Many employers offer tuition assistance, as well as some amount of time for school. If your employer doesn’t, consider looking for one that does. You might have to work there for a year before being eligible.
If you want a CS degree instead, you can easily do that online, and it’s not very expensive, and you can do it on nights and weekends.
If you want to change careers after receiving the degree, you might indeed be back on the bottom of the ladder, but that’s not a good reason to avoid it. Imagine staying at your current job for 30 more years vs doing mechanical engineering - which would you rather? Also your growth may be more limited without a degree. While you might take an income hit temporarily, you can also advance faster and end up making more money later.
I’m pretty sure going back to school while working full time can be quite difficult depending on your ability to sacrifice social life and free time for 4 years. Full disclosure, when I thought seriously about doing a graduate degree after working for 7 years, I opted out. The school even offered a fellowship, but I had 2 kids and a house already and the fellowship didn’t even cover the cost of health insurance for the kids.
TBH I don't think going back to the school is a good idea. They have weird rules that you have to follow as a customer; You have to take a ton of BS courses to make the degree. It's just BS considering that they just have a monopoly of degrees and you have to go through one of them.
If you want to go into EE, maybe try finding some embedded job?
He talked to his desired 4-year college admissions team and told them he hoped to transfer in. He got their advice on the overall process, and the classes they recommended he take at the 2-year institution vs. leaving to take at the 4-year. He did the leg work to research the local options, sent them briefs on each, and they recommended which one would fit most directly into their transfer application process.
n=1 but he did exactly what they said and ended up getting the 4-year degree he wanted from them with a minimum of drama along the way.
Online but same degree as offline, good AI offering that is recent and around $10K.
Georgia Tech is also a good one.
The university of Helsinki has similar things [1].
Germany and the Netherlands have affordable degree programs open universiteit/open universität are the keywords. Not sure if you need to learn the language.
I hope this seeds your creativity a bit so you can look for a solution that fits you.
[1] https://www.helsinki.fi/en/admissions-and-education/open-uni...
If you're already working in software development and you plan on continuing that, then I don't think the net benefits would outweigh the negatives you outlined (high cost, possibly leaving job to have the time to commit in person).
I think a better approach may be the online classes and/or self studying (computer architecture, etc). You can always follow multiple universities syllabi and do it yourself.
You can skip some time if you can demonstrate you know your stuff.
I had just been laid off during a recession, and figured if I didn't go now I probably never would finish my degree. I applied for loans and used the extra I got beyond tuition to help pay my rent while I went, and for a year of it I had a part time job making just over minimum wage working as a software engineer for a department in the college faculty, which also counted as my internship, and that helped a bit as well.
It was a little weird going back at first, being a decade older than almost all the other students, but I got over it pretty quick and it was all pretty normal.
I went to a state school and it still took me about 10 years to pay off the student loans I had accumulated during that two.
If I had tried to go the online only route while workin full-time still, I don't think I would have been able to stick with it. Also taking a break from the work grind to focus on school was pretty necessary to get back into school again, especially at first, as I was suddenly expected to remember everything from my classes I took almost a decade ago (like Calculus, I forgot almost all of that).
Not sure if it would be worth it for you or not, as school tuition, at least in the US, has just been skyrocketing in costs since I graduated (even before I graduated, it was a bit of a sticker shock for me going back too...kind of wish I had just stuck with it the first time around, would have been way cheaper).
Also met a guy at a hike yesterday who was in architecture for about 4 years, then sales for 10 years, and then went back to school in his late 30s to study dentistry for 4 years and is now a dentist. So another example of someone who was able to make it work somehow. I don't know his financial situation, though.
This is true. Don’t compromise. To get the value of a degree you need to be studying full time for something like 8-9 months of a year for 3-4 years.
To make the community college idea concrete, the first 2 years of engineering are fairly standard. Take these and then transfer:
- calculus (2 semesters) - chemistry and labs (3 semesters) - physics and labs (3 semesters) - engineering stats (1 semester) - intro sequence in your field (circuits or statics/dynamics, 2 semesters)
Bonus if they have differential equations or linear algebra, but they usually don’t.
Get a requirements list for your major from the state school. Know every course. Make sure every class transfers from community college. They should have it in writing which courses are equivalent. Don’t trust that the counselor will get it right for you. Don’t take any course that doesn’t explicitly have an equivalent course number.
Start with an associate at community College. It's way cheaper, maybe even free.
I wonder why there isn't a program for self-taught students that provides validation for their efforts, like exams and access to local labs, but no classes. I believe a lot of older adults would like to go back to school but don't want to be in an environment that hasn’t even been remotely designed with them in mind.
I recently applied for a demotion in my company and got turned down because I didn't match "the profile". The manager then told me the profile for the job, which was basically python, SQL, and Tablaeu. They then told me that other candidates had "real world experience like internships" (this is an entry level data analyst role). I told her examples of my on the job for each one of those, including my certification as a Tableau Data Analyst and building Tablaeu dashboards. I guess "the profile" also includes being young. I might have a disability, but I'm not stupid. I can see what's really going on. Fuck that shit.
Don't know if this will work for you, put I discovered my school (UVic in Canada) was able to allow in grad students without a completed undergrad based on an exceptional portfolio and 15 years of experience in the field. I did a combined CS/music degree (technically a Masters of Music Tech), and am now in a interdiscplinary Phd (principal faculty CS, secondary music).
Stuff is way different once you get into grad school. You then have a chance to find a supervisor who is onboard with your life situation and this makes all the difference in the world. It's critically important you find supervisors and teachers who get your situation. There are those who are actively a pain in the ass (they have some kind of axe to grind or resent having peers in their classes or whatever) and others who love mature students and will be accomodating if you're handing in great work. I have two fantastic supervisors in the second camp and had various other profs like that as well. Of course, you need to hand in top shelf material to make that work.
So... an option is to do undergrad CS courses online at your own pace, build a great portfolio, and try to go in at a Masters level. I think this is, for adults, far more practical than trying to do an in person undergrad. And if you have non CS courses in your transcript, consider interdisciplinary work.
It's very hard for me to quantify how helpful the degree (and in progress degee) are because I'm so far into my career, but definitly being able to share that I have finished a Masters and am into a PhD is a huge credibility indicator for many types of consulting I do.
I would at least like to have a degree of some sort, even if it's computer science
You pay per semester rather than per course, so the faster you do it, the cheaper it is.
Miguel described how to do it here: https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/cs-degree/
To maximize speed, do a bunch of prerequisites via Sophia or Study.com and transfer them in. Check beforehand which transfer credits WGU will accept.
There's lots of info on Reddit and YouTube about the most efficient way to do the prerequisites.
When I did my CS degree at WGU, I was 15 years older than you are now.
(I had a previous degree but in an unrelated field and from a foreign country, so the only transfers I was able to get were the ones for courses I did specially for this, on Sophia and Study.com)
For an EE degree, U Colorado Boulder has an express entry Masters in Electrical Engineering on Coursera. No Bachelor's required. $15K USD or so.
If you just wanted an MS in CS, poke around Coursera. Ball State, Colorado, and I think Clemson all offer Master's degrees without Bachelor's being necessary.
If you need a BS in CS for whatever reason, Western Governor's University is regionally accredited (better than nationally) and is both inexpensive and as fast as you want to make it. $6-7K USD per year. Personally, I consider Southern New Hampshire's offering to be more rigorous, but it's also more expensive. There is also a BS in CS from University of London on Coursera, but I haven't really looked deeply at the curriculum.
Email me at willhslade at gmail dot com for more of my thoughts.
Full Bsc Degree costs around 20k€ I believe. Sometimes the money I paid for the module is biggest motivation to do the work needed, sometimes I enjoy the courses. First year (cyber) did take very few hours with my current work experience. I am in second (full time equivalent-) year now and it's getting a bit more interesting, but still nowhere near the hours I expected to put.
Their math materials are awesome - I wish I would have taken maths over cyber. (But would have much less of a life because I would need to put much more effort)
Edit: I should add maybe: I am self taught working in a DevOps position and am older than you. I left school after 10 years, and I don't have the high school requirements to study in most universities in Europe.
If you're earning a decent or better living as a SWE, push yourself to develop that. Do online courses and/or or side projects to learn a new technology, languages, or frameworks if you need to expand your skillset. So much is out there for very little cost.
A degree is a piece of paper that often helps you get your first job. Nobody really cares much about it after that.
Edit to add: there are many times I wonder about paths not chosen. I think I would have loved being a machinist or some other sort of metal fabricator. That's just based on a fascination with it. I'm sure the daily grind of those jobs is often not fun. At some point you have to stop thinking "what if I had done..." and live your life.
And - you probably are too off path for "I am going to pick school for the prestige credentials", you already have 8 years of SWE in your CV, it is fine if your uni will be something random in Europe that works under Bologna Process.
So - focus on schools that seem to be teaching well - or possibly, if you have becomming an academic in your sights, ones that would support that well. Also, I have several friends in their 30's and 40's doing university courses targeted at working people - they have weekend courses every other weekend and otherwise self study. They will end up with proper diploma and everything.
If you want to learn on your own (or remotely), you can easily buy a lot of the EE bench equipment. And there are affordable services to do things like fabricate your printed circuit board designs.
If you can't handle the cost and time investment of a Bachelor's degree, and you really know your stuff in a field, sometimes you can do a Master's degree, which is much more focused.
There's a chance your employer has a program to reimburse tuition. If you have demanding work, and take a demanding class, together these will probably take up all your time, and require careful self-management so that you can do well at both, but it can be done.
Just make sure whichever school will grant the degree accepts CLEP tests, not all do.
Also community colleges often have in person classes scheduled around working people's schedules, like 6-9 pm. So you can do some pre requisite classes that way for cheap.
Also you might think about planning to complete your degree over 6 years instead of 4 years. That would only be like 2-3 classes at a time instead of 5. Would be easier financially each year and easier to schedule.
In 2009 the economy sank and I was laid off. I was able to go back full time for a while. I was already enrolled and everything, I just started taking 4-5 classes a semester instead of 1, I was also able to take them during the day for a while.
$80k over four years is a certain amount, $80k over more years is less. I think I paid less per than $20,000 for a year's worth of classes. Some people got Pell grants and financial aid, although I just paid for it cash.
I've had friend that worked as janitors for four years to get degrees from good/expensive schools.
Even if that is the case, which it might not be, you'll still receive the skills and experience you are after. Personally, I say go for it, however of course adding moving on top of any situation may constitute a dramatic increase in leverage, so. Know your personal tolerances and work sustainably!
If this country is in the EU, and if you live there now, you may have the option to go to college for cheap in _other_ EU countries (maybe even if you don't like there now; I'm not sure that the residence requirement is universal). I'm very out-of-date (finished 20 years ago) but for instance in Ireland I think university fees for EEA students are 2k/year.
Seems to me that if you can optimize your living costs then you can save more, get a lot more freedom to pursue whatever you want
How's your interest in embedded and robotics, versus thermodynamics and stress of materials?
What about the electrochemistry of wafers and ultraviolet lithography, versus circuit simulation and logic gates?
Also, consider the possibility that you could land an EE job after obtaining a degree, and then your job becomes doing in-house software development because you're the best at it among your coworkers.
I'm an EE with some loud opinions about the state of higher education for electronics, but I'm sure there's a path for you.
I mean I'm sure mechanical/electrical jobs exists but from my admittedly limited view it always seems like it's the opposite move so interested.
Also 80k is ridiculous if it's in the US , maybe it's the specific university you're looking at ?
I have a masters in computer science (my 20s) and am finishing a business degree for my 30 - which was less intense and allowed me to work full time.
My goal would be to embark on an phd going into my 40s - where I again would be at a place to give myself into full time studies.
I strongly believe in continued education.
Not any answer to your question, merely a perspective.
There are also American campuses in China but the price is near same same as USA!
On a similar thought, you can also do an English degree in Asia or east Europe too but for USA they may not be recognized but it’s an interesting path. I debated heavily doing an English degree program in China because it’s very very affordable, and like you I need to do it in person to pick up the language and do school work.
Tl;dr I’m assuming you’re American, if you are Temple University may fit the price for doing it in Japan and they have a computer science course, among many and a full no credit transfer to four year would cost 35~40,000 total outside rent, food, etc.
There is also opportunity cost. Assuming once again you’re from the USA, 120k/yr is the norm and most degrees are four year programs. You are giving up 560k in your prime for this, and maybe more.
I’m in the same age group, no degree and debated this as well. I’ve tried to balance remote work and WGU, and I just can’t. Work nor Uni is hard or demanding but I just feel tired and once I get off a pattern by missing school for work or other life events it’s hard to catch up and double down.
— Another is self study with WGU, one semester is about 6 months and many people can graduate in 6 months, but, online.
Giving yourself permission to get a degree...permission to live your actual values...permission to make yourself happy...those are the hard part. Good luck.
They typically pay doctoral students, albeit not very much (~$30-40k), which could lessen the financial burden. With a little creativity in your application, you could certainly write a convincing case for why 8 years of software engineering is superior to an undergraduate degree.
Also, I would very strongly encourage you to take one or more intro classes on the side before you jump in full time. It’s critical that you don’t delude yourself about what you’re actually getting into before you fully commit.
They lie, in the most vile of ways.
It is not a matter of commitment in nearly all cases, now this may be somewhat different in the EU than in the US, but the fundamentals remain the same. The university organization is incentivized to take your money and provide nothing in return but a promise that they never intended to honor. That promise was that if you know the material you'll pass the coursework, and you just need to persist and learn.
College/Uni in most places today have their programs designed to fail you, while you pay for the privilege (in part), but mainly they target the student assistance programs most governments in socialized countries have alongside student debt fueled revenue.
They are incentivized without any means to hold accountable, to do everything that they can towards that result, and they do so in sometimes very clever and sophisticated ways, but quite evil especially in the part where they try to make you think it is your fault, and not a structural defect they arbitrarily imposed on you.
Every program intersects with certain general classes that become weedout classes, and they require that they be passed, and those classes are skewed through structure so that the odds of you completing it are astronomical towards failure, and they do not disclose these structures upfront.
Some of the ways they do this include, setting up exams where you have two that must be taken, and the exam is structured to have the questions causally dependent upon previous questions answers. They do this quite a lot in physics based paths that are required for any engineering upper coursework.
They take advantage of undisclosed means needed to calculate rounding and get the correct answer. For example significant digits.
Any engineer worth their salt would say its simple, you don't round at each step until the end; so you don't introduce rounding error that propagates. Except doing this would cause you to fail because the actual expected method of rounding on the test is not provided, and the questions are causally dependent not independent.
To pass a course under such a structure you would need to only get 1 question wrong, and that question would have to be the last one of either test (just once, not both tests). Dominoes otherwise. You get the test back and you failed, "you just didn't study hard enough", is what they'll say. "You weren't commited enough", "You just aren't engineering material", while the real reason is because they deprived you of it arbitrarily indirectly through structure.
In these cases, and other words, you have to get a perfect, or you fail, and you are grouped with others that may have taken the course multiple times (and dragged the coursework grades down through grading on a curve). This is just a single example where they used multiple component elements together towards purpose depriving you of your future while breaking the fundamental promise.
There are other ways too that they do engage in this activity as well besides these, either through structure imposed by the software used such as Pearson's autograder where they randomize the question pool per student, innocuous but how do teachers know the question bank is bad? They get a signal when multiple students voice issues. No single pool, no signal.
Or material which is tested on but is not covered, or through a simple resource drain. There are many ways to do this.
The latter is probably the most common overall, and people overlook it all the time.
The coursework requires a certain finite amount of hours, in terms of lectures, and in the homework/project preparation. They may provide some unit numerical number for scheduling but that is not reflective of the time you must spend to pass the individual section for the course.
If you are told a 4 unit course will require 12 hours of work a week because 10-12 unites is full time (40h/week), and in reality that 4 unite course requires 60 hours, and you've signed up for multiple 4 unit courses, because you need to pass within a certain expected goal time, do you think you'll be able to make the time to actually complete the coursework while maintaining academic honesty?
Any amount of required work above 40 hours a week becomes impossible to sustain over a time period beyond a few weeks. Its the number one driver of burnout, and when you get burned out you fall prey to trauma loop/torture structures that are embedded.
Many courses are at least 16 week courses. Incidentally this is also why the refund period is setup right around the 2nd or third week just before the first exam. So they can keep your money and claim it was your decision to not move forward.
Importantly, not all University and Colleges are like this, nearly all are though with few exceptions. The exceptions are in the prestigious universities where its almost impossible to get in, and the tuition is naturally much higher.
Any community college, state funded, non-private, etc, will have these issues.
I spent my 20s and 30s trying to get a degree through sheer pigheadedness and overwork, and when you can do the work and still not pass you eventually realize the system is rigged.
Where no rational or reasonable person would disagree given objective reality; leaving only the delusional and the crazy saying to the contrary, or blinded (worse, because blindness leads evil people to evil acts) by avoiding pitfalls through sheer luck, and not skill or talent.
For engineering, if it were untrue that a person who is capable of accurately doing math and reasoning well above the coursework would pass, and yet I'm a prime example where I have passed the honors versions of Math with electives in practical applications (physics) up through Abstract Algebra including Discrete Math, Vector Calculus, Differential Equations; with honors. Yet no pass.
7+ attempts culminating in 3.5 years for that class alone with different professors in different college districts, for Mechanics of Solids (covers basic kinematics, 1st college course in the physics sequence), structured as previously mentioned shows if you cannot progress in a pipeline, you cannot ever achieve what is promised, and no amount of faux due process where everyone is in it together against the student or legal action can correct it.
They stopped the bi-annual cross-district engineering contest because I won it twice in a row, perfect labs, but fails in each class. Even had a recording of one of the professor talking with another professor about how to reduce their workload, and how it was the way all NEA members were doing it, to the detriment of the students. It was dismissed as speculation despite impeachment testimony.
The colleges don't collect the metrics needed to hold the professors and academic administrators accountable. The real pass-rate for some of those classes is 0% for any first time, and 5-12% for repeats depending on the professor, skewed heavily towards what the professor decides. I know of students that slept with the professor to get the insight into how to pass so they could go on to become professionals. Just absolutely horrible.
In business its either Economics, or Communication required GEs. In engineering its the physics sequence.
The social contract at most universities today is broken, and there is no credibility, and no means to correct. According to them, the reason you don't pass is because its your fault. Gaslighting is another more appropriate word for this.
Regardless of the school you go to, look into community colleges and associates degrees. Talk to the schools you're interested in and find out what will or will not transfer in. Some schools are very picky, so don't waste two years on a EE-related associates when they only let you keep your english and history classes. But if they do let you transfer those in, spend a year knocking out those courses at a cheap (maybe even free) community college before going to a university for the engineering program.
$80k is high, but not insane unfortunately in the US. It goes higher. Your best quality-for-cost option is probably going to be Georgia Tech. It's about $6k (plus a bit more for some lab fees and things) per semester, so you're looking at around $48-60k for a 4-5 year program. This is for in-state students. I'm not sure given the current issues in hiring how Atlanta is, but it has had a pretty good job market over the years. Move to Georgia for one year, you'll qualify for in-state tuition. I believe this tuition is also available for green card holders, but I'm not certain.
GT also has (had?) associated programs with other universities in GA, often in lower cost of living areas for similar tuition costs. You'd attend those schools and get a GT engineering degree, some required you to transfer to GT main campus after your second year. I'm not familiar with how these programs currently work or if they still exist but they did a decade ago.
Downside of GT is that they're very picky about transferring in credits for math and science courses. They're less picky about the english and history and other courses that are required. So the community college/associates degree thing only takes you so far there but you can probably knock out 6-8 courses at a community college and transfer them in.
For other state universities, like with GT, you'll want to consider moving to the state for a year or so before attending to establish residence in the state.
For private universities, you can look into them but three things: They're very picky on admittance (because so many people try to get in), their costs are much higher though they offer discounts based on your income/wealth, they're often in higher cost of living areas. Even if you get steeply discounted tuition costs, the cost of living will still give you a high annual cost for attendance.
MS/PhD - Everyone suggesting this is delusional. You cannot start these programs without a bachelors unless you've somehow demonstrated exceptional ability in the field already. From your post, you've done nothing with either mechanical or electrical engineering so these are non-starters for you.
Online - This is an option. However for engineering degrees you'll be missing out on all the hands-on work. If you're an unusually dedicated student (this is more common with older students though), you can get some of this with a home lab but it won't be the same. Get internships and coops to make up for your lack of hands-on experience. Speaking frankly, I would be very disinclined to hire a student with an online engineering degree and no internships or coops in the field (I would hire them into an internship or coop program, though). The lack of hands on experience would suggest they're all theory and no practice, that's not a useful person to hire and would make you less competitive if up against candidates from an in-person program with a decent reputation.