Well I certainly understand the motivation having only a high school diploma to my name. I'm manager of a computer programming department at the company I work for and have learned my job skills by my own reading, research, etc. I've always had the ability to install a program or programming language, read the help files and be up and running in a matter of hours. The college level programming classes I've taken were in languages no longer really used so they're about worthless. Generally colleges and universities are a bit behind the times in state of the art hardware and software.

My lack of a degree is not really a hindrance in my present job but should I ever go out into the job market again, a degree could be essential. Have over 100 college credits but in various subjects that don't fit well into an actual degree. It's very tempting simply to buy one from some fly by night place just to have the piece of paper. The alternative is to go back to school, take a bunch of courses that apply very little to my chosen profession and spend way too many hours away from my family.