How much did a university degree help you?

[Gereem]

I know some users of this forum are self-learned internet marketers and others had other computer backgrounds, but I wanted to ask this question to see what kind of response I get.


Aside from the university/college experience of meeting people, studying with like-minded people, and having the prestige of having a degree, how much did your degree actually help with your current internet marketing business?


If you have majored in marketing, how did that help you with internet marketing? And if it did help, how much did the content of the degree help you make more money on a scale of 1 to 10?

If you majored in something other than marketing, then what did you major in and on a scale of one to ten how much did it have a positive effect in helping you make more money through internet marketing?

If you could have your ideal education and would have been able to receive a degree doing it related to making more money on internet marketing, what kind of things would you include in your ideal course outline? (ie. web 2.0 graphics design, sales copy writing class, SEO optimization, marketing 101, etc.)

[Shannon Tani]

I have a B.A. in a liberal arts field. I suppose that the actual content of the classes that I took didn't have much of a direct effect on the money that I make online, but learning to write well was a very good skill to learn.

And this skill is what has made me money.

Love,
Shannon

[jkiley]

I have BS and MS in Computer Science. I am a software developer. I could have written my application (look at the signature) without proper knowlege of software development.

But I want to say that they waste too much time in University by making you take classes that you don't need. I didn't need history/music/chemistry/etc. I guess they do that so that they can make more money. But all the computer science classes...oh yes...helped big time!

[John Rogers]

Almost nil. I didn't major in marketing. Hindsight being 20/20, it probably would have been a better investment of time. I majored in business administration. What I studied may have been somewhat useful had I gone to work in the corporate world. Just maybe.

John

[Shannon Tani]

Originally Posted by jkiley

But I want to say that they waste too much time in University by making you take classes that you don't need. I didn't need history/music/chemistry/etc. I guess they do that so that they can make more money. But all the computer science classes...oh yes...helped big time!

I believe that they do this to make you a well-rounded and intelligent person, not to make more money. At least, that was the point at my college.

Love,
Shannon

[Matthew Iannotti]

How much did it help walt disney's owner/ Bill gates/ Patrick Arnold....ZERO..They have no degree..


It does help, as long as it is relevant to what you are doing online.

[Ofthemix]

I've gone to school for a lot of different things. In college, I went for video game graphic design and then later switched my major to accounting. I dropped out of college when I realized that, at the time, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to be. Now I refuse to go back.

I'm well convinced that, in most cases, college is only worth the money for people that want to work for someone else for the rest of their lives. You can learn just about anything on the face of the planet from books and other resources. Why pay $100,000 for something I can get for free?

When I was going to college for video game graphic design they made me take an HTML course. I was so not interested in learning it that none of it stuck. Now that I've gotten into internet marketing I've picked up studying html again. I know more now, studying on my own, than that class taught me(largely based on the fact that I didn't pay attention in class).

As was mentioned before, some of the richest people in the world never went to college. That's not saying that college doesn't help some people in internet marketing. Is college necessary though? I think not.

[zerofill]

I never went to college...because I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

[Marcus Paul]

Originally Posted by Ofthemix

I'm well convinced that, in most cases, college is only worth the money for people that want to work for someone else for the rest of their lives.

Exactly. Entrepreneurs learn through experience. They don't need to "prove" their credentials with some piece of paper that says you attended a school for four years. They only need to know what they are actually capable of getting done.

My sister has a Ph.D. but I have more business sense then she ever will. And I make more money.

[TyBrown]

I think college is quite silly. If there is something you want to be like a doctor, accountant, lawyer, teacher, etc. that you have to get a degree for then I say go for it. I think the system is still silly, though, that future doctors have to take a P.E. class and a future science teacher needs to take several language classes. Call it trying to graduate well-rounded kids or call it trying to earn more money, either way it seems ludicrous to ask someone to pay thousands of dollars for classes that are not targeted at their goals.

I'm all for education but I think the college system is, generally speaking, a lousy system for education. I'm not a Kiyosaki fan but one area that I agree with him is that the overwhelming purpose of college is to manufacture employees.

[futuremills]

B.A. degree here...doesnt help at all

[Will Edwards]

I have a BA(Hons) in Humanities and it didn't help me one jot - but I am glad I did it. Having said that, if I were starting out again, as a fresh-faced youngster, I would forget all about education and also forget getting a job; and instead, use the time to build an online business. You could build one, that would set you free for life, in the time it takes you to get your degree.

Will

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by Gereem

Aside from the university/college experience of meeting people, studying with like-minded people, and having the prestige of having a degree, how much did your degree actually help with your current internet marketing business?

It honestly didn't help me with anything, IM or otherwise. Quite the opposite.

If you majored in something other than marketing, then what did you major in and on a scale of one to ten how much did it have a positive effect in helping you make more money through internet marketing?

I majored in Occult Science. It's worthless. Having this degree actually scares employers, so I stopped putting it on my resume about 16 years ago.

what kind of things would you include in your ideal course outline?

Economics to an MBA in marketing. No question.

[Kristy Taylor]

But degrees are slowly changing...

One of my degrees is a Bachelor of e-Journalism, specifically designed for today's journos, those of us who write on-line. It covered journalism (of course), webpage markup and design, graphic design, website semiotics, keywords and seo, and marketing ourselves on-line (plus more).

So would this degree be helpful to Internet marketers? I don't think I need to answer that question...

Ta
Kristy

[John Romaine]

I have a degree in street smarts.

I grew up in a housing commission area, in and out of numerous hostels and refuges, subjected to an abusive step father surrounded by alcohol gambling, domestic voilence and at times barely enough money for food.

I dont need a degree to learn what I know. Especially dont need a peice of paper to be more motivated, driven or focused.

Certainly not bagging those with educations, just sharing my experience.

[Josef_Benjamin]

Zilch...considering i went to college for a full year before I decided to go into business for myself (at the time, i was doing damn good in forex market - but hated the hours).

Went to school for a business degree, but the instructors didn't have much business world sense. You can tell who's teaching for a paycheck and who's teaching because they love to do it because they are retiring off profits made.

Not to sound arrogant, but I have enough experinece to go to that college today and show each one of those business majors how to make real money running their own business online or off.

[Manfred Ekblad]

Originally Posted by Gereem

Aside from the university/college experience of meeting people, studying with like-minded people, and having the prestige of having a degree, how much did your degree actually help with your current internet marketing business?

Not much. But I had to study some stuff which I would never have studied otherwise. So the 'help' I got was about broadening my perspectives.

Originally Posted by Gereem

If you majored in something other than marketing, then what did you major in and on a scale of one to ten how much did it have a positive effect in helping you make more money through internet marketing?

Informatics... on the scale 1-10 it would be a 2, but if you include the total experience of studying at the university it would be an 8.

Originally Posted by Gereem

If you could have your ideal education and would have been able to receive a degree doing it related to making more money on internet marketing, what kind of things would you include in your ideal course outline? (ie. web 2.0 graphics design, sales copy writing class, SEO optimization, marketing 101, etc.)

I wouldn't want an education that taught me any specific technologies. Instead: sales, marketing, psychology, econometrics, human behavior and other fun stuff like that

[devilishsaint]

well i had just completed my masters in marketing and currently i'm a web developer i don't that this degree has contributed much to what i am doing. But it had given me a sense how to promote my websites and business. I personally think that your attitude really play vital role rather then degrees.

[Jackbgd]

Originally Posted by John Rogers

Almost nil. I didn't major in marketing. Hindsight being 20/20, it probably would have been a better investment of time. I majored in business administration. What I studied may have been somewhat useful had I gone to work in the corporate world. Just maybe.

John

Oh... how bad to hear this... I'm just starting my studies in Business Administration. But I hope it also depends on where you study? It's not the same everywhere I guess.

[Gereem]

thanks for so many replies and so many different perspectives! I really appreciate it!

[sid17]

I have I.com degree but it does not help me.

[John Hixson]

I did a B.A in humanities and unlike some here I think it helped a huge amount. My main business model is that of a writer (mostly writing newsletters and client responses for offline companies, but some online work too) and the degree helped me a huge amount.

Skills in essay writing have been a tremendous boon in helping create articles, webcontent and the like - teaching me how to get complex points across quickly and easily. It also taught me how to research effectively. The majority of my degree was research based, I only had about 5 hours 'face time' with my lecturers a week, so I quickly had to learn the skills needed to research complex and often ill covered subjects quickly. Especially my dissertation that was based on a historical event that we have little evidence over and few historians have written about.

It taught me the importance of deadlines and planning in a way that school never did.

My degree has been invaluable in my life so far (6 years since I left uni), and thats not forgetting that those 3 years were amazing. Made great friends, did a lot of learning, drinking and skirt chasing and generally had an amazing time. Wouldn't trade my time there for the world.

[Ian Jackson]

Originally Posted by Shannon Tani

I believe that they do this to make you a well-rounded and intelligent person, not to make more money. At least, that was the point at my college.

Love,
Shannon

Hi Shannon, you are an exception

I still have a day job in the offline world (a benefit and a curse!) and where I work - in motor sport engineering, we employ graduates. Besides number-crunching, what they get taught in no way sets them up properly for the workplace.

They get taught to press keyboard buttons. They have no experience of the fundamentals or basics of engineering; they "design" parts with no knowledge of tolerancing or construction methods. Proper, good engineering died when computers took over; no youngsters I know could even hold a pencil, nevermind DRAW a real engineering drawing, or do simple mental arithmetic. Forget trying to get them to understand problems...

All a good thing really, as it's encouraged me into online marketing and to develop web skills in what is now the "IT" age; we are (sadly in many ways) no longer in the industrial age.

As a "mature" student, armed with a degree from the university of life, I completed half a Mech Eng with the Open Univesity... then discovered Internet Marketing !

[digitalboyz]

i'm BSC(Hons)IT in Software Engineering holder.The knowledge i learned from university don't really help me in my working life.But at least i have some basic knowledge about IT.

[alvinhuang]

This question is interesting as it can really cut both ways.

I did a BA in business and majored in marketing and finance. Interestingly enough my 1st love was finance and marketing came in only later. I discovered internet marketing while still in university. And boy was I glad, I leveraged leveraged the power of the internet to grow the investment club's (when i was president) paying membership base 9 times and also managed to hook up $100,000 in sponsorship.

Sure learning the technical aspects of IM - wordpress, seo, managing autoresponders etc had to be learnt on your own.

And while having the degree and majoring in marketing didn't help my IM business directly. I would say studying marketing in university did lay the proper fundamentals and gave me a better holistic view of the big strategic picture for IM. In fact, the IM systems and principles that the big name g.urus talk about do have their fundamental roots based in standard marketing principles. It's all just a matter of twisting and adapting them to another medium called the internet.

For example,

CRM (Customer relationship Management) = building relationships with your list

Upsells, downsells, continuity programs = understanding the life time value of a client and maximizing returns

Alvin Huang

[GuerrillaIM]

I decided to leave school early. Not having a degree hasn't held me back at all really apart from when I wanted to work for IBM as they only take degree students onto selection.

Since I left school I have done lots of training covering a range of topics like NLP, sales and software development. I much prefer just going out and learning the actual skills I need without having to turn in reports and essays and study unecessary topics.

[marciayudkin]

Aside from the university/college experience of meeting people, studying with like-minded people, and having the prestige of having a degree, how much did your degree actually help with your current internet marketing business?

If you have majored in marketing, how did that help you with internet marketing? And if it did help, how much did the content of the degree help you make more money on a scale of 1 to 10?

If you majored in something other than marketing, then what did you major in and on a scale of one to ten how much did it have a positive effect in helping you make more money through internet marketing?

I majored in philosophy in college. You might think that this is one of the most unpractical subjects in the world to study, but in fact it has everything to do with my success today.

Why? Because I learned how to think critically. I learned how to understand difficult topics. I learned how to explain my thinking clearly. This gives me a huge advantage over the average person, no matter what I am tackling now. And it makes my information products stand above the pack as well.

I never took a single course having anything remotely to do with business. I only took one writing course (which was completely useless). But learning to understand and explain Kant, Hume, Heidegger (ugh), Russell, Wittgenstein, Descartes and many others turned out to be a very, very practical investment of my college years.

Marcia Yudkin

[cscarpero]

I have a business degree. Helped very little. Everything I know about im, I learned after college.

[bobcath]

Psychology hons, helped to some extent when I went on to work in offline marketing.

That said, like most of the others I suspect the time would have been better spent building an online business, easy said in retrospect, but perhaps will assure younger members that a degree, whilst useful in teaching you research skills, essay writing, organisational and language comprehension skills, will only be useful in your internet marketing pursuits if you have the other necessary attributes to compliment your knowledge.

By this I mean motivation, perseverence, the ability to learn by your mistakes, focus and keep to going forward!

Bobby

[John Hixson]

Originally Posted by bobcath

Psychology hons, helped to some extent when I went on to work in offline marketing.

That said, like most of the others I suspect the time would have been better spent building an online business, easy said in retrospect, but perhaps will assure younger members that a degree, whilst useful in teaching you research skills, essay writing, organisational and language comprehension skills, will only be useful in your internet marketing pursuits if you have the other necessary attributes to compliment your knowledge.

By this I mean motivation, perseverence, the ability to learn by your mistakes, focus and keep to going forward!

Bobby

True, but if you lack those attributes you are unlikely to make it as an internet marketer so what is better - to discover you lack the skills and wonder what to do next or discover you lack the skills and have a degree to fall back on.

Or looked at the other way, a degree can help enhance already present attributes, it can put in place other skills and best of all it can give you 3 of the best years of your life. I had a truly amazing time in uni and even if I hadn't gained anything tangible in relation to my current status (though I feel I have gained a great deal from my uni experiences) I would still do it again if I had my time over.

University is an experience I would recommend to ANYONE who has the ability to do so. The friends, skills, experiences and qualifications will last with me for the rest of my life.

[seogirl]

I did my engineering in computer science. I don't understand the kind of syllabus Indian education system provides under engineering courses. No offense, I love my country, but one thing I would like to change here is the education system and syllabus. The degree has just managed to give me an upper edge and a stamp of an engineer. Apart from this, technically my degree has not really helped me to get through any situation. I would say that my work life is entirely different from what I used to study in college. I was so scared of holding that "Let us C" book and was not at all a programming person. I don't know a single thing beyond inheritance. Seriously. But today, I can handle my PHP scripts, HTML, CSS and understand the code well. I do template redesigning on my own for most of my sites and I do it pretty well I can say. But none of this skill I acquired or even explored within myself during college.

[JaniG]

i left university in my 2nd year, so i could focus on my Internet Marketing business.

I found that nothing i learned directly helped me with internet marketing.

But i guess some things that i learned in Communication Studies, has contributed to my content writing and marketing in general.

Because you need to be able to communicate with your market and get them to take action

... and because i took communication studies, i already have an understanding of how Humans work, and how to best communicate with them.

Jani

[Desmond Ong]

Since Jani chipped in, I decided to chip in some opinions too. ;-)


Here's what I learned in university:

-Networking with different kind of people (useful when you network with other marketers in offline events)

-Meeting and able to communicate with people from abroad

-How to use PowerPoint and Excel effectively (this is useful for me though since I am making videos through PowerPoint + Camtasia)


I studied economics, marketing, accounting, psychology, mass communication, computer studies and cultural english.

The only one useful for IM is psychology and maybe a little part of computer studies.

[kwncy]

im still seventeen. and i stopped in school for almost a year now.
but i've learned a lot in the internet about graphic design.

i am not saying that im not goin back to school though.

[bryansmith123]

Whatever you learn in college is to improve your knowledge but those will never related to working environment. So Degree is just for prestige i hope.

[SimpleUser]

I haven't got a degree and I didn't want one.

I didn't see the point in being stuck in a 2-4 years ridged course structure when this industry (Internet/web/design/development) moves so fast.

I got a job straight out of college and in those 2-4 years that I would have been in Uni I had exposure to not just a myriad of technologies and methodologies but I also gained valuable real-world business experience and made many contacts within the industry that help me to this day.

I don't think not having a degree has ever held me back or stopped me from achieving what I want to achieve - if you want something badly enough you will do whatever is needed to fulfill that - be that studying a course for x years or rolling up your sleves and getting stuck in.

[BIG Mike]

Personally, I think the degrees I've earned and the subsequent experience gained over the years helped and continues to help me every day in creating and running various online business ventures.

Is a degree absolutely essential? Nope - but I think it can give you an edge if you already have one.

I'm a firm believer in education...whether it's formal through a university or informal through seminars, ebooks or whatever, you're still going to spend the time learning that you would at university anyways.

It's not a matter so much of where or how you learned it, but how you are able to apply what you've learned successfully.

[Leanne King]

I've got degrees in Law, Criminology, Psychology, Economics and a few other bits and pieces. They helped me to work 14 hours a day, 6 days a week and wonder where my life went

Did they help with IM? Not really What they helped with I think is the ability to research, analyse and disseminate information and they helped me to get in the right mindset to persist and be determined.

[Audrey Harvey]

Honors degree in veterinary science, and now I write exclusively pet related web content. My degree taught me nothing about business, but it taught me a heck of a lot about my niche. So, in one sense, it's been great for my IM business, but on it's own, it's not enough. I've gained the rest of my education right here in WF.

[RenaissanceMan]

LEARN to write! Everything else can be self-taught. If I ever was going to go back it would be to master English.

[Kirahster]

I have a Degree in Biochemistry and I do not use it today. I do not regret getting it. I think that getting a degree teaches you a lot of skills besides the actual subject knowledge.

I would like to go back to college and do something related to math and computer but not to get a job, just because I love to learn.

[Daniel Flower]

I have a degree in Marketing Management. I would say that it gave me a good background of some of the marketing principles - like why people buy, advertising principles (e.g. single minded proposition etc), doing marketing research. but the 'specific' internet marketing techniques weren't covered at all. It's through my own learning and 'doing' that I know how to build a mailing list and market products to them, put together a sales page, write an eBook etc. However my degree did help me a lot with writing, presentation skills, organisation.

The other thing you have to remember is that internet marketing and the 'rest' of the business world is very different. I remember speaking to my lecturers about IM and on the whole they didn't really understand it fully, even those who taught marketing related subjects. I actually think internet marketers are many years ahead of their offline business counterparts. For example most business owners know about relationship building yet it seems to be mainly IMers and larger business that concentrate on it.

I'm very glad I did my degree though and wouldn't change it for the world. University is about so much more than the academic stuff!

[Gabriel_C]

Hi, I'm new here. College, University, whatever you want to call it, of course can help you when pursuing an internet marketing career. But, really isn't necessary as there are so many courses you can take offline as well as online without going to College. I became interested in Internet Marketing 1 year ago and it has been a fun and sometimes frustrating but mostly fun learning experience. I never went to College, I have never taken any courses. I have learned a whole lot on my own researching on the internet. I might take a course soon just to refine my skills. But I know what they're going to teach me I already know. Luckily for me I've always been a pretty decent writer even though I totally sucked at everything else - so article writing not a big problem here - and that's what I'm focusing on right now is writing articles. I'm getting a little tired of it I must admit, so I'm thinking of hiring a freelancer to write for me lol

[dorim]

I went to college and grad school, I have a Masters in Anthropology. I worked at a job I liked for a few years then the job phased out and I went back to school and got an accounting degree and worked for a few years at a very good rate of pay, but the stress of getting to work on time on icy winter roads and always having to be dressed up to go to work wore me down so I learned different ways of earning online. I quit my job and I've been making a steady income online, not as much as my full time job, but I'm confident my income will increase as time goes by and I learn more.
My accounting degree has helped me with the business aspect of my IM business and I am able to do my own accounting and taxes. I'm grateful for the years I spent in college and I made some wonderful friendships that I'll always have.

[Debbie Allen]

I have a 4 year degree in nursing (which allowed me to work as a Psychiatric nurse and Nurse Educator) and then I continued my education in Organizational Development. Although what I learned may not have been directly related in every way, I do think it has helped very much. However - I wish I had started sooner.

With that being said, I believe with effort and time, kids straight out of high school could build successful online businesses - as long as they had the right mind set and desires. It seems that this is a profession that you have to grow into. Of course, an education is always an advantage no matter what field you're in.

[Darth Executor]

Degrees don't help anyone unless they want a job. The bottom line is:
* If you want to get a job, have a degree.
* If you want to keep a job or run a successful business, get an education

A degree is a piece of paper. The education is what's actually useful and whether you have the piece of paper or not won't change that.

[Searchlabmedia]

It helped me get better season tickets for the USC Football Games!! Fight On!

[FrankPinch]

I have a degree in business management, i would say it helped a little, but the formations are really focused on creating 'workers' for big companies, not small businesses owners. The reality is so different. Still some good came from it, like business process optimization... You just need to scale it down!

[shermancox]

I have 2 masters degrees....one in computer science and one in divinity with an emphasis in preaching...my web work has been totally over preaching and my degree has taught me a ton about that particular area. however, I think that the degree has given me more confidence than anything else. I probably could have gotten to exactly where I am now by simply doing it without the degree...but I do believe it was helpful...

The computer science degree has been helpful some...but really more so to get a job to work for someone else. I think that the best reason to go to school is for networking opportunities. But as far as learning...dependeing on the school...they are teaching you as if you will continue to get a PhD rather than to actually do the job that you will be asked to do in the real world.

But then again there is something to be said for well rounded individuals. In any case, I do wish I had taken some marketing courses....

[JMichaelZ]

I have an MBA, I learned all the stuff that was in the books, but it wasn't much use for running my own business, just if I wanted to be an employee for somebody else.

I think that good subjects to learn about for internet marketing would be how to find a profitable product to sell or create and how to write - both informative content and marketing copy. Neither of which I learned about in University.