Is getting an IT degree better than getting an IT Certifications?

Is getting a college degree in IT better than getting several different IT certificates? This has been a widely debated topics among developing IT individuals over the past years, should they go for a college degree in the IT field or just go for IT certifications instead.

Firstly, from Wikipedia, “an academic degree is a college or university diploma … which is usually awarded in recognition of the recipient having either satisfactorily completed a prescribed course of study”, while, from Wikipedia, a “professional certification … is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task”. Although they are somewhat similar from the above definitions, they have some major differences. For an individual to complete a college level degree, it will require an average of 39 months, while a bachelor’s degree will require an average of 54 months. On the other hand, to earn a certificate, it requires an average of 27 months (Link to data will be provided below). Plus, from RigtFit Degrees, we see that the average cost for degree from a public two-year community college is about $2400 per year. Calculated with the average time we have above, we can see that a college degree can run you about $8000 to actually get. They went on the say that a bachelor’s degree can cost anything from $12000 to $60000 to complete. With a simple job title search on indeed.com for IT positions, entry level pay started at $30,000, which is not bad, but not good either. Now, for the certificates, from pcworld.com, we can see that Microsoft offer certificates that cost $125 each to acquire and their pay rate ranges from $47000 - $70000. On the same site, we see that CompTIA certificates cost ranges from $239 to $258 and their pay rate ranges from $40000 to $80000. Plus there are many more certifications individuals can obtain for less the cost of actually getting an IT degree.  

They say that time is money, and with the certifications giving us the appropriate qualifications within a shorter period of time and for less amount of money, what other path should we take. However, not all businesses accept certifications alone and not all businesses accept degrees aloe as well.

-          Definition:

o   Degree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_degree

o   Certification: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_certification

-          Data

o   (Time): https://completionarch.collegeboard.org/completion/time-to-degree/average-time-to-certificate-an-associate-degree-or-bachelors-degree-us

o   Cost for degrees: http://www.rightfitdegrees.com/campus-degrees/how-much-will-college-really-cost-me/

o   Cost for Certifications: http://www.pcworld.com/article/209227/it_certifications_that_matter_for_helpdesk_tech_support_pros.html