Maximum PC

I would like to change my career path. I am 36 years old and although I enjoy my current career I am finding that computers are consuming me more each day.
I would like to put this to some use. Which is the best way to get the education and job? What are the salaries?
I was thinking of going to school at ecpi, it is a technical school. Also, I have seen ads in maxpc for UAT. I am in the raleigh area and there are excellent tech schools here such as NC State. Although I am not sure I want to spend another 4 years or more going back to school. However, I am fearful that an employer looking at my background may pass me up if I don't.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Does anyone have a comment about this?

A couple-

1) What do you currently do? Any overlap you could leverage?

2) Another four years? Do you not have a degree now? If you did, you could simply grab a second degree in an IT discipline and it shouldn't take you more than two (academic) years.

It's never to late to jump ships! What aspect of IT interests you enough to make a career of it? Most IT pros start in the programming or hardware/software realm but they usually grow into other areas like networking, security, management, databases etc.

I have a four year BS in Liberal Arts and a MS in Biology. My background is in the sciences.

I like setting up networks and repairing pcs. I have built several computers for home use and then networked them. This was fairly straight forward though. In the past I volunteered for the United Way in this area doing more of the same, but I had to give it up.

I work with HPLCs which some run rudimentary databases and are networked, but its been hard to break into it at my company since they don't need any more people to do this.

Part of my problem is that I can't afford at this point in my life to take too much of a pay cut.

It would be tough to transition and maintain a salary in the 45-50's for the first few years. It's a real tough market right now so competition is pretty eager to work for less.

Psychonaut,
I talked to my wife who also has a MS in microbiology to bounce some ideas off her.

Have you considered bioinformatics, stastitical analysis? Granted both are more software/math based.
I work for a research lab that's affiliated with the Univ of Va. and I am constantly in touch with techincal people in the life sciences.

one of the rising positions I have seen is: cluster administration for bioinformatics.
Here are a few links:
http://biobrew.bioinformatics.org/
http://bioinformatics.org/project/?group_id=273

It seems to me with your advanced degree you could take a few computer classes or even work on a major certification such as RHCE or MCSE.

I think you will have a much easier time if you were to change sectors and check out what edu and gov is offering. From my understanding private industry (life sciences) like to pigeon-hole people and its difficult to break into a new field within the same company.

Thanks MarkMark69. I had thought about this a while ago... the bioinformatics career. I was concerned with how much more schooling would be needed. At my *ahem* age, I felt I couldn't go through with any more. I really enjoy the hardware and network side of things though and my math is a little weak.

DentedCan, I appreciate the candidness of your input. I had the feeling that this would be the case. I recently inquired about a system admin position that wanted 3-5 yrs experience and a LOT of other knowledge, which I didn't have. That position was pushing 70K.

Sorry for getting back to this post so late, I monitor all of them, but this one slipped through the cracks.

No worries psychonaut. I'm not trying to dissuade you at all. If it's something you want badly enough, you'll achieve it. The road won't be paved with rose petals though!

Best of luck in whatever direction you decide for yourself.