How long does the IT bachelor's degree realistically take if you're working full-time?
I'm currently juggling a 40-hour work week as a help desk tech and just enrolled in an IT bachelor's program. I've got 18 transfer credits from community college, so I'm not starting from scratch. My advisor says I need 120 total credits to graduate, which puts me at about 102 left. At 6 credits per semester that's theoretically 8.5 more semesters, or just over 4 years.
The problem is I'm already struggling to carve out 2 hours a day for coursework after work and family obligations. Networking fundamentals wasn't bad — I finished with a 91% — but I've heard the database and programming courses are a completely different level of difficulty. My first mock exam for the intro programming course put me at 67% and that was a wake-up call.
I'm also trying to figure out whether to stack certifications alongside the degree or wait until I finish. I already have CompTIA A+ and I'm thinking Security+ next. Not sure if doing both at once is overkill or actually a smart career move given how much hiring managers seem to weight certs in IT right now.
If anyone's gone through an IT bachelor's program while employed full-time, I'd love to know how you paced yourself. Did you ever take summers off or push through year-round?
The database course took me about 15 hours of outside study per week on its own. Don't underestimate it. I dropped from 9 credits to 6 that semester just to keep my GPA above 3.0, and I'm glad I did.
I finished mine in 4 years and 3 months while working 38 hours a week as a sysadmin. The trick was taking lighter elective courses during busy work seasons and harder technical courses when things slowed down. Never pushed more than 9 credits in a semester — that was my hard limit and I stuck to it.
Year-round is the way to go if you want to finish faster. I took one summer class each year and shaved a full semester off my timeline. Summer sessions are 6 weeks though, so the pace is brutal if it's a hard technical course.
I did Security+ during my third year and it actually helped with a cybersecurity elective — about 40% of the content overlapped. Definitely worth stacking if you can manage the load, just don't try to cram both in the same 8-week window.