Introduction and Some Questions (long)

[owner66]

Hi All,
I have been lurking for the past few days and I have some questions and need some help with a plan.

I am currently in general IT with approx 17 years experience as a lead engineer / sales engineer / mentor at a small company and am not getting any younger . I say general IT meaning routing, switching, MCSE, Hyper-V, cisco ASA, VOIP, wireless, firewalls, and some experience with PHP/mysql. Most of the training I receive is "self-study/go to Promertric and take the test" training. I earn a pretty good living at what I do, but as I move closer to retirement I believe I would like to get into management. I believe that as a manager I will not have to keep up as much with the younger crowd and will be able to concentrate more on, well, managing. I have been asking around at some of our larger clients and the consensus is that I will have a much better chance with a degree.

SO, I searched for online degrees and came up with the Big 3 and this forum. I have spent the last few days trying to put together a degree plan for the Excelsior BSBA since I believed, based on their advertising, I could easily navigate the site, gather all of the required information, and have test out plan that day. I went through the dated 4weeks site and 123collegedegree. This was a VERY frustrating experience. While I was assembling the plan, I was searching on this site and came to realize that TESC seems to be the more popular school, with tons of great input.

Regarding credits, I have my transcript from a CC I attended in 84 (yes, last century). I have History 101 and Calculus I. Interesting story on Calculus. I took it in highschool at the CC in 12th grade. I passed with a C+. I then had to delay entering CC after graduation so I was not sure I was fresh enough on Calculus I so I took it again and due to family issues, I failed it with an incomplete. Not sure if those credits will work or not, I recently helped my daughter pretty heavily in Algebra so I don't think it would be a huge deal to re-take. On the professional cert side, my MCSE is from 2000, so I doubt that is useful, but I would like to take as many technical electives as possible.

I need to get a plan together for TESC and information on what order to do things. I believe I would like to do BSBA General Management or BSBA CIS. Looking at the degree plans, they seem to be very similar up until part II B. Area of study. I am not interested in making a large financial commitment up front. I do not know how long this will take but I am shooting under 2 years for sure.

I read through the post http://www.degreeforum.net/excelsior-tho...rt-bs.html
I am looking for similar information except I don't have the existing credits.

I would like to start taking CLEP/DSST/? tests using self-study, as well as look at getting English out of they way. Do I just start taking tests, or do I apply at TESC? About how many classes would I have to take through TESC, I read I have to have around 24 hours because I am out of state?

thanks for your help,
ds