I am a 20 year old living in Australia and I currently have no relevant education past a high school certificate.
I have been thinking about doing a Bachelor of IT (Network Design and Management) at University of Wollongong.
http://coursefinder.uow.edu.au/information/index.html?course=EC3CFFBE
I am relatively unsure of if uni is the way to do this or if other programs would be better worse, I really have no idea.
Networking just like anything else is only a field of study.
If you want the full experience you'll have to go balls deep and learn to love it. You'll need to spend countless hours messing with stuff regarding it just like a mechanic would offer to change the brakes of all the cars in his neighborhood for free just so he can get experience;
NO DEGREE CAN DO THAT.
Thanks for the reply and advice!
Have since talked with my brother and I'm going to start with some windows server courses and he has some old Cisco routers that he said he would give for me to practice on as well.
The value of a degree is really variable when it comes to fields like Networking. If you are interested in a career in Networking you have to dive in. Get your hands on switches and routers, get a few vendor specific certifications. Tinker, study, go overkill on your home network.
If you want to contact me off forum for more advice I would be able to ask you a few questions, gauge where you're at and what would be a good path to undertake.