I'm seeing a lot of broad generalizations about education, which is really just a re-hashing of the cert argument that gets incredibly annoying and repetitive.

Here are my thoughts, such as they are. Take them with a grain of salt.

1) I take issue with an industry that charges $6,000+ for a certification from a private company complaining about how expensive degrees are. Yes, Bachelor's and Master's degrees are massively overpriced.

But to a beginner, especially one coming from a less-than-wealthy background, $6k may as well be $60k, and there currently aren't nearly as many options for financing or offsetting those costs, aside from hoping your employer has a training budget for you.

Those certs are also way more narrowly focused than many Bachelor's or Master's degrees, and you also run a much higher risk of those certs running out of favor in the community than you do with a Master's. CEH used to be the go-to cert for ethical hacking...

2) Don't bitch about lack of qualified employees when you have a training budget that wouldn't pay for the coffee budget at a SANS course. Unless you're doing some *incredible* in-house training, if you're not investing in your employees' education, you'll get what you paid for.

3) Don't bitch about a lack of qualified candidates for a job when your junior position requires 2-4 years of experience.

4) Don't bitch about not being a qualified candidate anywhere if you're not actively trying to improve your qualifications to the best of your abilities.

5) Don't bitch about a lack of diversity in the workplace if you require $10k+ worth of certs and a $50k degree from your candidates. You're weeding out based on someone's economic status or their ability to obtain a job that is willing to pay that cash for their training.

6) Don't bitch about certs or degrees. It's annoying and elitist. Create realistic job requirements. Stop being elitist about some mad expensive letters in someone's LinkedIn bio.