Which is best, you decide, let the numbers speak for themselves

 

This question has to be as old as the hills themselves, from ancient Greece with Aristotle and Plato to today's modern families that school their children from home or I.T professionals trying to climb that career ladder, to discover the real cost of self study versus instructor led training read on This question needs to be addressed by applying cold, hard logic.

So we need to find out which is more effective and conductive to learning along with which method produces the best results in the long run and of course in today's climate which is the most affordable and less costly in respect to time taken.Lets do some maths, so get your crayons out.

1. Having spoken to lots of people that have come onto our courses and speaking to people in I.T in general we determined how long it takes on average to self study concluded that it can take anywhere between 4 and 9 months of at least 2 hours study per day.

So lets take the average duration of time between 4 and 9 which is 6 months. 6 months x 30 days per month = 180 days180 days of straight study with no breaks

2. Not allowing for a single day off from study, we are calculating that you will study solidly for 6 months of at least 2 hours per day minimum

180 days x 2 hours per day = 360 hours of study360 hours of study which means that you have to find 2 hours every day to sit down and work through the subjects come rain, sleet or snow.

3. Now lets put a monetary value to that time. The minimum wage in the UK at the present moment is £5.73 *(source http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/nmw/#b)

So lets take our figure of 360 hours of study and multiply that by the minimum wage of £5.733

60 hours x £5.73 = £2063

Taking the minimum wage as our multiplier self study will cost you £2000 of your time, remember that we are basing our sums on minimum wage, if you take a wage of £8 per hour (£18,720 annual wage the cost to you is even greater almost £3000), if you are currently earning £25k per year, self study will cost you nearly £4000.

What do you benefit by coming on the one of our courses?,If you really want to break into networking but have little or no experience rather than spend up to 6 months or so trying to make the wood for the trees come onto one of our courses so that you can reduce the amount of time it will take you to make sense of what is going on, and what you learn on the course will give you skills and the motivation to complete your studies in a shorter period of time without having to struggle to understand all of the theory that would have taken you months to figure out on your own.

Another consideration is that going down the self study route is how do you know what you have learnt is right and importantly why things are the way they are so you do run the risk or not really knowing if you are doing something the right or wrong way, another benefit of coming to us is that once you have attended one of our courses you can always come back on the free retrain which we offer to consolidate your knowledge and hone your skills prior to taking the CCNA exam.

Not only are our courses great for making short work of understanding the complex topics for new comers to networking we also benefit people who have considerable knowledge and experience that use the courses again to consolidate their knowledge and prepare for the exam along with learning a few new tricks along the way.

Both types of students; the ones with lots of experience and those with little experience or knowledge do gain practical experience which we offer in abundance on our courses, almost half the time you spend on one of our courses you spend working on the equipment in the classroom, valuable practical hand-ons on which is backed up with theory, demonstrations, and our famous and grueling break-fix sessions pioneered in the industry by us along with thorough explanations at the end of every lab session.

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We find that students who come on our courses reduce the amount of self study time down to around 6 weeks after the course (We recommend no longer than 6 weeks after the course to attempt the exams), so lets do our sums again based on the minimum wage of £5.73

6 weeks x 7 days = 42 days

42 days x 2 hours study per day = 84 hours

84 hours x £5.73 = £481

So now self study after the course will cost you £481 as opposed to £2000

In conclusion you save yourself a lot of money, a lot of time that you will never get back and time that could be otherwise better spent with other activities or with family and friends (Having self studied half of my MCSE I know from experience the personal cost of self study) and above all you learn from the best networking school in the industry

You do the sums.