Returning to college...

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CCNA/CCNP/MCITP/etc are a more practical, direct route to a job.  You also don't need to spend anywhere close to 3-4 years training, rather than getting on the job experience.
 
But if coding floats your boat, go nuts.

What, the Jedi Academy wasn't enough for you?

Do what you enjoy (and are good at/show a talent for). Network guys and coders are different beasts, although some people combine both, so you should be able to clearly look at the two camps and work out which you'd be happier doing. If you're good and if you're passionate them both should provide access to good employment options. Hell, tech support is still a thriving industry (which feeds into the network/server admin graduate roles) if you want to try and get paid while you learn your way into a good job (and don't mind an endless pile of teaching requests like showing admin how to do a mail merge).

What does your soul burn for?

The rough part about IT is the customer service aspect. No thanks.

Ah man, you are just going to leave the BA in Linguistics. Noam Chomsky is super pissed right now.

Ah man, you are just going to leave the BA in Linguistics. Noam Chomsky is super pissed right now.

IT jobs are hot right now (especially here in Silicon Valley, clouds need IT), not sure how long that will continue.

@Hunkulese: You being serious? (just wondering if my sarcasm detector is working or not).

If you haven't coded before and/or don't understand the basics of OOP by now then you may want to stick with networking. I am not saying you couldn't do it, but it is kind of late to start and the problem I have seen nowadays is that companies are very picky with coders. But it also depends on how much money you are asking. Companies looking for in-house programmers are smart -- they look for work experience over education. You can't imagine how many people I have seen turned down or fired with 4 years of college for supposedly learning how to program to have someone with 2 years of work experience kick their ass at the job.

Now I am not saying you won't get a job, but you can't come out of college and immediately ask for $60k anymore. You'll need to find a company looking for junior positions that is low paying, but gets you the work experience. I never went to college, but my 7 years of straight work experience with different jobs trumps a college degree.

Also, here's some advice if you do plan on going to the programmer route. Choose a language and learn it. Trying to learn JAVA, C++, and Perl all at once is not the way to do it. You spread yourself too thin and won't learn the nuances of a language. You may do somethings in one language which could be really really bad in another, but may not notice it because you didn't spend enough time testing things. For instance, in C# you can declare a variable inside of a loop all day long and it won't hurt a thing. You do the same thing in JAVA and now you have a loop that is causing windows to assign more and more memory to it. Also some languages require you to manage how to pass parameters into methods. VB6 you always want to pass reference objects ByRef and for the most part Value types ByVal. C# it doesn't matter because .NET handles it for you and will always pass the reference for reference types and the value for value types so you don't have to manage it. If you don't declare it in VB6 though, it will always pass the parameter ByRef. If you don't know exactly what that means, you will soon enough =)

• C++ is great, but definitely takes someone with a knack for programming to handle it. Especially if you are talking about learning unmanaged C++ because you have learn how to manage your memory.
• JAVA is great to now when looking for jobs as there are tons available. Personally though I hate it. C# has tainted my view of JAVA because it is based off JAVA and JAVA makes me sad when trying to work with generics and seeing how archaic and practically useless compared to the stuff you can do in C# with generics.
• Perl, if that's what floats your boat then sure. I personally have not touched it. I decided to learn Python when I was dabbling in dynamic languages. Dynamic is awesome, but I still prefer statically typed languages.
• SQL -- You have no choice! You must learn this if you are planning on working for a company that builds business applications. If you are thinking about game development then probably not as important unless they are running SQLite. Not everyone knows SQL and there are different flavors depending on the server running(MSSQL, ORACLE, PostgreSQL, MySQL). Depending on the language you choose you may want to learn on a specific flavor. If you go the C++ route I would go ahead and try MSSQL. JAVA and Perl would probably benefit more from learning MySQL. I have not used Postgre so I can't offer any advice. I only had to deal with ORACLE a couple of times and wasn't too fond of it. Especially considering what it costs. Everywhere I have ever worked was on MSSQL and it handled everything perfectly fine.

I really hope that helps you out.

Note: I didn't really mean it's too late to start. It's late and I am tired and not sure how to make read better. You're going to school so you'll learn it there. I think what I really meant is that most programmers that land the really good jobs are ones that had a passion for it when they were a kid and have always done some form of programming. Every programmer I have known has been doing it since High School or started when computers were showing up in homes in 80's. I have not seen a full-time programmer that just decided to go to school one day and learn it. All those people come from head hunters that have a contract for 30 days and then they are gone.

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How do you travel with linguistics? What kind of demand could there possibly be for a linguist abroad. Were you doing linguistic anthropology or something?

@Jrinswand said:

How do you travel with linguistics? What kind of demand could there possibly be for a linguist abroad. Were you doing linguistic anthropology or something?

There's a pretty surprising demand for native English-speakers to talk English at school kids all around the world.

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I've only just recently finished my degree course so not really in a position to suggest anything to you. I can only tell you that should you decide to pick up a programming language, focus on it until you are comfortable with it before learning another or you'll just confuse yourself with the similar if not identical syntax.

Good luck! I'm sure whatever path you decide you'll come out better for it.

@TyCobb said:

If you haven't coded before and/or don't understand the basics of OOP by now then you may want to stick with networking. I am not saying you couldn't do it, but it is kind of late to start and the problem I have seen nowadays is that companies are very picky with coders. But it also depends on how much money you are asking. Companies looking for in-house programmers are smart -- they look for work experience over education. You can't imagine how many people I have seen turned down or fired with 4 years of college for supposedly learning how to program to have someone with 2 years of work experience kick their ass at the job.

Now I am not saying you won't get a job, but you can't come out of college and immediately ask for $60k anymore. You'll need to find a company looking for junior positions that is low paying, but gets you the work experience. I never went to college, but my 7 years of straight work experience with different jobs trumps a college degree.

Also, here's some advice if you do plan on going to the programmer route. Choose a language and learn it. Trying to learn JAVA, C++, and Perl all at once is not the way to do it. You spread yourself too thin and won't learn the nuances of a language. You may do somethings in one language which could be really really bad in another, but may not notice it because you didn't spend enough time testing things. For instance, in C# you can declare a variable inside of a loop all day long and it won't hurt a thing. You do the same thing in JAVA and now you have a loop that is causing windows to assign more and more memory to it. Also some languages require you to manage how to pass parameters into methods. VB6 you always want to pass reference objects ByRef and for the most part Value types ByVal. C# it doesn't matter because .NET handles it for you and will always pass the reference for reference types and the value for value types so you don't have to manage it. If you don't declare it in VB6 though, it will always pass the parameter ByRef. If you don't know exactly what that means, you will soon enough =)

• C++ is great, but definitely takes someone with a knack for programming to handle it. Especially if you are talking about learning unmanaged C++ because you have learn how to manage your memory.
• JAVA is great to now when looking for jobs as there are tons available. Personally though I hate it. C# has tainted my view of JAVA because it is based off JAVA and JAVA makes me sad when trying to work with generics and seeing how archaic and practically useless compared to the stuff you can do in C# with generics.
• Perl, if that's what floats your boat then sure. I personally have not touched it. I decided to learn Python when I was dabbling in dynamic languages. Dynamic is awesome, but I still prefer statically typed languages.
• SQL -- You have no choice! You must learn this if you are planning on working for a company that builds business applications. If you are thinking about game development then probably not as important unless they are running SQLite. Not everyone knows SQL and there are different flavors depending on the server running(MSSQL, ORACLE, PostgreSQL, MySQL). Depending on the language you choose you may want to learn on a specific flavor. If you go the C++ route I would go ahead and try MSSQL. JAVA and Perl would probably benefit more from learning MySQL. I have not used Postgre so I can't offer any advice. I only had to deal with ORACLE a couple of times and wasn't too fond of it. Especially considering what it costs. Everywhere I have ever worked was on MSSQL and it handled everything perfectly fine.

I really hope that helps you out.

Note: I didn't really mean it's too late to start. It's late and I am tired and not sure how to make read better. You're going to school so you'll learn it there. I think what I really meant is that most programmers that land the really good jobs are ones that had a passion for it when they were a kid and have always done some form of programming. Every programmer I have known has been doing it since High School or started when computers were showing up in homes in 80's. I have not seen a full-time programmer that just decided to go to school one day and learn it. All those people come from head hunters that have a contract for 30 days and then they are gone.

Good post duder.

Although you are a bit harsh about the "it's too late to start" thing. I didn't really find a passion for coding until I took a required coding class for my physics degree and found that I loved it.

@Hunkulese: Cool, I feel the same way.

@NickL: Yea. Just re-read my post and it did come off a little dickish. Did not mean that and sorry to the OP. And holy crap I was out of it last night -- sorry for the insane/incoherent sentences in a few places. Hopefully no one struggles too much understanding what I meant. lol

Why not combine your two degree qualifications and go into something to do with speech-to-text technology? That's pretty damned cutting edge right now, if you're into that sort of thing.