The company I work for has an awesome tuition assistance program, however the snag is it has to be an accredited place, you must maintain a C average, and you have to at least be awarded a certificate of completion.

Has anyone used this type of tuition assistance? Are any of these places like the official red hat training "accredited" enough. Sucks that I'm doing IT work but I can't say take a CCNA(I know I can do it on my own) boot camp to help get the cert because they don't have a college class on it

Any advice would be appreciated

"Certifications" are not "college credit." They are, at best, "vaguely similar to continuing-education points," but without official recognition even for that. Remember: vendor certifications are, fundamentally, a product, and nothing more.

Never mind. I strongly suggest that you do take full advantage of this assistance program, as your employer certainly intends. There's a world of knowledge beyond "how to hack so-and-so's Linux," and it sounds like you've been offered access to that world under very generous terms.

P.S. If the company would benefit from you getting a vendor certification, you should expect them to pay for it. Although it would not fall under the auspices of this particular program, perhaps your manager has a "professional development" line-item in his or her budget, and would approve.

You can do a self study, buy books online or use whatever free ebooks, articles, blogs or any type of resources you can find online.

Then book for the exam.

Your investment is your time, hard work and the money you pay for the exam.

CCNA exam might cost $300 I think, not so sure but should be on that range.

Anyway you can register at PearsonVue for Cisco, then search for CCNA exam you should be able to know the price.


Good luck!!!