SPeaking as a sysadmin who found his way into the career without a degree, I can say that your best assets are:
* experience troubleshooting
* experience just making things work
That's not to say a formal education isn't a tremendous asset, too. I'd certainly be making more money and probably have more job opportunities if I had that paper to show, but the 4 years I did complete in computer engineering school tought me little that I actually use on a daily basis. It's the reasons I flunked out that save me (building beowulf clusters in random labs, building web applications for student organizations, etc.)
I'd call myself a sysadmin rather than a network admin, but I've gotten plenty of experience designing networks and troubleshooting network problems over the years. I've never seen any (successful) admin who just did one or the other.
Finally, although the BOfH has been mentioned, and I'm sure everyone realizes it's a joke, I should mention this:
learn to really help users and you will go far
It's true. At the end of the day, the systems aren't here for the admins - they're for the users. We just have to set rules to make sure that the finite amount of resources we have serve as many people as possible. When your users look to you as a valuable resource, your management WILL notice and you WILL be rewarded.
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