Should I get a degree?

[eduffield]

I'm 27, and a professional programmer. I've been doing it for my whole adult life.

I'm looking to go to college and first get my BS, then MA, then Ph.D. I really love reading about biology, and I think it would suit me to be a professor, and/or do studies. I do well currently for myself, but I also have carpel tunnel, and I don't think I can actually program forever.

I need a few questions answered to figure out if this is realistic.

1.) If I graduated with my masters and started teaching at 35, is that too old to begin being a professor?
2.) Will I be able to hold a part time / full time job and goto school?
3.) I'm guessing from reading that programming might be useful in doing studies for data mining. Is that true?

Thanks for any help!

[Darwin420]

Check out bio-informatics...that is a great new discipline where you could apply your computer skills to the biology world.

[JackBean]

I don't think, it's so new, but yes, that's probably, what are you looking for, eduffield.
But, as you already know programing, it would be maybe better to get BS in some regular biology and just MA or PhD take as bioinformatics.

[mith]

computational genomics, bioinfomatics, systems biology etc etc