A word of warning about test-out degrees.

[irnbru]

In today's market, you pretty much need two things to get a good job:

1) Experience
2) A degree

...

In many companies, even if your experience is awesome, your resume is not ever sent to the hiring manager because you're screened out.

This is also my experience. As has been flagged up in another thread, a large number of people here are working toward a degree primarily to achieve the 'tick in the box'. Like so many things, not having what everyone else might appear to have, reduces competitiveness. It's a foot in the door in a real sense in that, as burbuja describes, it's a simple (and lazy) step for HR to screen out non-degree holders.

In the UK, especially in the public services, there are fairly transparent and well-articulated guidelines for writing job specs. In particular, there is a catch for automatic requests for graduates in that equivalent experience should also be considered. Once applications are received, however, it's very easy to sift out the non-graduates. Private companies and organisations can obviously apply their own recruiting procedures which usually tend to the simpler (efficient!), i.e. no non-grads.

So, while getting a degree on top of a job and a family can seem like a herculean achievement, enough people are at the same level to make all that effort seem almost inconsequential. This will be common sense to most people in the forum who have been working for years. A degree is not a magic bullet; it's a tick in a box on a paper application which translates into a quick nod in an interview. It is probably worth much more if currently employed in an organisation as it demonstrates some strong personal characteristics, i.e. if you've already got a job, it will probably 'impress' more. Such is life