Assuming that you've followed all the experts' advice in getting ahead on the highway to your career dream. You've dressed for success, arrived early, worked late, kept up in the latest developments in your field, showed management how you saved the company money, taken training courses on your own time, and networked with professional trade associations - and you are still being passed over.

You may need to look at your educational level. In many fields a degree is a definite requirement to get beyond a certain level. You may be wondering just what is so important about a degree; you learned everything you need to know in high school or on the job. And what about all those seminars and training classes you've taken?

A college or university degree symbolizes many things, among them commitment to a voluntary goal and critical thinking skills. Consider first the commitment to a voluntary goal. Even if you enjoyed the experience, you went to high school because the law required you to. No law states that you must attend a college or university. The average bachelor's degree takes four years to complete. Voluntarily sticking with the required reading and term paper writing, in addition to suffering through finals weeks, show a substantial amount of fortitude.

Critical thinking skills are, unfortunately, not usually developed in high school, where accumulating facts is more the goal. In college, however, students are expected to state their own opinions and support or refute the experts by working out those opinions. Students' worldviews are broadened through exposure to a wider variety of new people and new ideas than are available in high school. In addition, the depth to which material is covered in a university setting is much greater.

An associate of arts degree shows that you have fortitude and have developed some critical thinking skills, but the material covered in your major is only at an introductory level. It also signifies that you have covered all the general education requirements necessary to major at the upper-division level in a particular subject. But you don't learn the material in-depth until you have taken those upper-division classes.

The concentrated exposure over a long period of time to the theoretical aspects of your field is very difficult to acquire on your own, and the degree to which the theory is discussed at the graduate level far surpasses that at the undergraduate level. Advancing in some fields, such as the sciences, may require you to get a doctorate degree.

If you decide a degree would help you in your field, you still need to determine how you are going to get it at the same time you are working to make ends meet. Perhaps you also don't live near a university campus. Distant learning and the Internet offer solutions to both these problems, enabling you to earn a certificate or degree without leaving your home. With some of these programs, you can register for and begin classes at any time during the year. To check out universities with distant or online programs, just type "online degree programs" or "certificate programs" in the search field of any search tool, or call a particular university of your choice.