Have I disqualified myself from future federal loans/higher education?

After graduating college with a Bachelors Degree, I quickly realized I wasn’t happy in my field, and thought the best way to exit was by getting a Master’s degree. My Bachelors is in Business Management, and is not really specialized enough (I often told people I learned absolutely nothing in college because the program was so unspecific). So about four years ago, I made the endeavor into a Masters degree in a field I thought I’d be interested in, with the hopes it might someday pay off and get me out of the field I was in. To be honest, I didn’t put enough thought into it, was really prepared for how much work would be entailed, went to a super expensive school simply because I got accepted, and really didn’t have a goal in mind. With no goal and a ton of work on my plate (on top of my full time job), my motivation to complete it went south very quickly. I failed a class or two, was put on academic probation, and eventually lost federal loans due to my grades. By that point, I had all but made the decision I wasn’t going to complete this degree, and just never signed up for another semester (which I would have had to pay out of pocket for anyway, which was out of the question financially).

Fast forward to now, I’m still in the same field that I despise, I’ve hardly grown career-wise, and COVID has really decimated the industry. My line of work is only now starting to come back, and it’s super competitive now with people basically fighting over scraps. I’ve decided that at this point, I can’t do this forever, and need to make a change. I’ve always been very into technology, have often thought how fun it would be to be a developer, and over the last month have been slowly teaching myself how to program (since I have a ton of free time being unemployed and all) to see if I actually enjoy it. I’ve been trying to think, if I do try to make a career of this, what would be the best way to learn and legitimize myself, once I bring my skills to the level they need to be. Thus, I have been debating the benefit of getting some sort of Computer Science degree.

This endeavor would be much more thought out than my Masters Degree. I would do the research required, and get into a program with a clear career path. I’m potentially thinking another Bachelors degree from my local state school (where I got my undergrad degree). The school is fairly affordable (about $4000 a semester) and I’d imagine some of the courses I took from my undergrad would transfer over to this degree (at the very least, my liberal arts work). But before I even begin looking into the specifics of how long the program would be, and what would be the best course of action, I need to know if I’d even be eligible for loans again/how badly my Masters endeavor might have screwed me over.

Any advice/insight?

Submitted November 01, 2020 at 02:37PM by getmeoutofstaffing https://ift.tt/3mIfrf8