Don't ask me, I never got a diploma or a cert. I'm just an old electrician that hacked my way into a job.
That said, having an electrical background is an excellent way to get into the business. Plus, most maintenance guys won't mess with one of their own. And if need be, I can still be the electrician.
In this business, you will find that ability trumps education most of the time (basically, if the guy is dumb or lazy, then no amount of paper is going to make up for that).
Back in the day, it mattered less whether you had a degree or not. I worked with a farmer, a draftsman, and of all things, a preacher that were very good programmers.
Nowadays, colleges are beginning to catch up with the industry. But you had better do your homework before signing up at a school. Be sure that it is properly accredited (start here:
http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/), and back check any promises as to their placement success stories.
(I got my start after hacking my way into a Series Six PLC one night and fixing it. After they chewed my butt out the next day for pulling that stunt, they gave me the job). That translated into a job starting up Midwest Conveyor equipment at Saturn, which then translated into a job at Saturn.
GM (which is who we are now), is very egalitarian when it comes to hiring engineers. I don't think that this necessarily comes from good will per se, but more from the thousands of dollars -per second- that downtime costs us. We simply can't afford to have someone who can't troubleshoot and fix things quickly. So if you can do the job, you get the job. You can even show up in a clown suit if you like, just keep the line running.
Of the five "engineers" in our group, four of us have no degree. The one that does, is our "noob"
having "only" 13 years of experience at Bridgestone. Hardly a noob...
He is very sharp, but it takes quite awhile to learn all of the various pieces of equipment that go into a car plant.
But when things pick up, which they appear to be at the moment, (based on the number of recruiters that have contacted me in the last month or so), companies will pick up anyone who can "fog glass" to cover shutdowns and such. There's your chance.
As for where to go for your education, be very wary of technical colleges that offer a "quicky" degree. Most of these aren't going to provide you with the education that you will need to actually do the job. And I don't think that many companies are going to be fooled either.
A formal four-year degree is a better choice as far as schooling goes since there are a lot of companies that will not consider anything less than an engineering degree or a very impressive amount of experience (to give you an idea as to how long I've been at this, I used to fly kites with Ben Franklin).
The more technical, the better. And be careful of putting all of your emphasis on "higher" languages such as C or Java, the techniques that you learn with these languages often don't translate well in the PLC world. Or as I once told a GM section head (and got into a fair amount of trouble over it), "think PLC, not PLC++".
Currently, there are a couple of Noobs working for contractors at the plant. One with a four-year degree, and one without. Both are doing as well as can be expected based on their experience, and I help both of them out when I can (last week it was troubleshooting DeviceNet with one of these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oeu710LgyJk). I can't predict if either of them is going to make it, but based on how they are doing so far, I don't see why not.
Both of them are showing the ability to listen and pay attention when we try to show them how something works. That alone counts for a lot. I really have little patience for someone who won't listen (nor is it my responsibility to train contractors, but someone gave me a chance, so I try to pass it on).
Good luck.
