Ian McGregor ⋅ Durham, NC IBM ⋅ 17 years experience

Brent - No and it depends.

As someone who has hired people with degrees ranging from a high school GED to Ph.D.s, I would say that when evaluating resumes and interviewing I place more value on prior experience and a person's attitude. I think the bigger hurdle is getting past the employers who will pass over resumes that don't have a Bachelor's at minimum, but for everyone else, I doubt they would check to see whether a particular program was accredited or not. That being said, a well-structured resume that emphasizes your experience and successes up front can circumvent any bias regarding an Associates degree. Concentrate on telling your story and focus your resume on the results you have had. Many employers will care less about what you learned in school if you can show you are a person who gets the job done and gets excellent results.

Pursuing a Bachelor's degree is a different story however, because accreditation will be a large part of which prior courses get counted towards the degree program, so this will really depend on the requirements of the school you are applying to. They will evaluate your prior studies based pretty much solely on the accreditation of the courses you've had, which means they may not count all, or any, of the courses you've taken for your Associate's towards your Bachelor's. Each institution, and even individual departments, will have a list of courses they've accepted from other schools, so my best recommendation would be to look on the websites for the schools you want to go to and see if they've accepted credits for classes from your Associate's program before. If you can't find it on the website, call the admissions dept. and they should be able to help you out.

If you run into any problems, I'm happy to discuss it more offline.

-- Ian McGregor
imcgreg@us.ibm.com

patrick hamblin ⋅ Owasso, OK U.S. Army, Specialist ⋅ 8 years served

An accredited degree is a must. After leaving the service I completed my aerospace engineering ASBE from Wichita State University. Working in the industry for 8 years now I can tell you that you must get that 4 year degree at a minimum and ensure it is from an ABET accredited school. The job positions in engineering are extremely good now with no signs of slowing down. Well worth the extra work.

Tom Cal, CFA ⋅ San Francisco, CA Army Veteran, Investment Manager ⋅ 25 years experience

In regards to utilizing the credits for a Bachelors Degree, direct the questions to schools in which you are interested.

The selection a college is one of the most important carrier decisions you may make over the next 10 years. Give it a lot of thought, and use the power you have as a consumer.

Which schools are you thinking of attending? Are you planning on taking classes on campus or remotely? For-profit or non-profit colleges?