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I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

• miguelrochefort 6y ago
  Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.
  • brighton36 6y ago
    why bother getting the degree?
    • rootusrootus 6y ago
      Not the author, but I will say that in my experience having the paper has helped open a lot of doors, especially early in my career, that I otherwise would have had to push harder to get through. It gives you a bit of default credibility. Perhaps unjustified, that's a matter of opinion, but it's definitely real.
      • brighton36 6y ago
        Just seems like a competent GitHub serves the job better, at lower cost...
        • rootusrootus 6y ago
          Hardly. The only people who care about your GitHub are technical people. Most of the gatekeepers at any decent size company are not going to care one bit about GitHub, but they will recognize the degree. By the time you get to the hiring manager the degree doesn't matter. It's getting to that level that's the obstacle. And frankly, when you have more experience, GitHub is also useless, because your network matters 1000x more than your portfolio.
          • brighton36 6y ago
            That I get. Habitus is important. But, here, there was no transmission of habitus, due to the online courses.
            • rootusrootus 6y ago
              > Habitus is important. Agree, though I think the value will depend significantly on the person. For some folks this will be the majority of the value, others it'll be wasted on.
              • brighton36 6y ago
                It really seems like an a society, we should just offer habitus reform schools in deficient precincts..
        • jacurtis 6y ago
          There are still a lot of jobs unfortunately that won't even look at your impressive github account if you don't have a degree. I built my career for 10 years without a degree. It is doable. But having a degree (got it at 32) made life A LOT easier.
        • Jochim 6y ago
          The first people to look at your CV probably don't know what Github is. The degree is a checkbox for recruiters/HR who are looking to match a job spec before passing you onto the engineering team.
    • miguelrochefort 6y ago
      - To be able to work abroad. - To be allowed into graduate school. - To stop having to explain why I don't have one.
      • macintux 6y ago
        The older I get, the more I worry about ageism, and whether the absence of a degree might make that worse.
        • brighton36 6y ago
          Degrees certify habitus.
      • burger_moon 6y ago
        Thanks for writing this is up! I've been thinking about enrolling at WGU for their CS degree and was just chatting about it yesterday. I'm also self taught but with only half a degree completed. I think about moving abroad especially for retirement reasons. Having that paper makes all the difference. Without it it's much harder to live anywhere outside a home country permanently.
      • OldHand2018 6y ago
        These are all excellent reasons. People that want to follow in your footsteps should also think about why they want to do it and to only do something like this if it makes sense for them. My brother in law did a degree at WGU too, but not in CS. It was to finally get the job he wanted and had always been qualified for but was unavailable without the degree. And yes, he made up the cost in less than 6 months of his new job. It was 100% worth it.
    • cstejerean 6y ago
      Working in software I've only found 2 cases where a lack of a degree got in my way. Getting a work visa to some countries is going to be much much harder without a completed undergrad. And continuing education with a master's level program will be very difficult to do without a completed undergrad. This is what finally motivated me to go back and finish my undergrad.
    • macjohnmcc 6y ago
      I don't have a degree. I feel that not having it has cost me some opportunities. Someone once said that when someone has put in years to get their degree they want the candidates they interview to have done that work as well.
    • caymanjim 6y ago
      I've had a successful career without a degree, and while I'm unaware of any opportunity I've missed out on, there's no way to be sure. No one's ever mentioned it at an interview, but there may very well be interviews I never got because I didn't have the credential. At this point, it's not worth the time or money for me to get a degree the traditional way. If I could have done it in six months for a few thousand dollars, it would have made sense earlier in my career.
    • avl999 6y ago
      OP is Canadian. If they want pursue an opportunity in the US- a degree is a requirement for the TN Visa (technically you can get the visa with "equivalent experience" but that is much more cumbersome and unpredictable where as the process is a breeze with a CS degree). Since he mentioned in the article something about "overseas opportunities", I am guessing that is part of his consideration.
  • simonebrunozzi 6y ago
    It's a very comprehensive and detailed post. Thanks for sharing it.
  • TuringNYC 6y ago
    I'm very impressed with your tracking of effort on each course. How did you track the hours? If you were doing two courses at a time, how did you split your time tracking?
    • chrisdhal 6y ago
      He specifically says: "During my time at WGU, I focused on a single course at a time and made sure to complete it before starting a new one."
    • miguelrochefort 6y ago
      I've been tracking every minute of my time (to a 15-minute resolution) for the past 24 months using Google Calendar. It's part time-blocking, part time-tracking. Here's what my "Study" calendar looks like: https://i.imgur.com/BBLeYmy.png https://i.imgur.com/BBLeYmy.png In green are events I created manually. In orange are predicted study sessions based on tracking data from ActivityWatch [1], which tracks my desktop, laptop, phone, and even my Chromecast usage. I get roughly 80% coverage with it, and 100% coverage with manual time tracking. In fact, I built a "WGU Time Tracker" for my capstone project, which attempted to automatically classify my ActivityWatch data into study sessions using NLP, machine learning, and heuristics. I might write a post about it. [1] https://activitywatch.net/ https://activitywatch.net/
  • TuringNYC 6y ago
    Any luck finding an online PhD? I've been looking for those. As much as I'd love to do a formal PhD program, I cannot with family, but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      > but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did. Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a PhD on paper but didn't really achieve much they're going to say 'huh but I've never seen your work in the community?' > from whichever accredited university I'd say the single most important thing on a PhD is where you did it and who your advisor was, so I would caution about this as well. Having said all that, I did all my PhD remotely, and I did it while working mostly full-time for half of it, and while buying a house and building a family and serving part-time in the military on top of all that, so it can be combined with other things.
      • TuringNYC 6y ago
        Totally agree. This is definitely the case for places where the PhD actually matters. Except for a large number of jobs in NY (finance) and in DC (government), it is just a binary flag used to whittle down the candidate pool. In Government it is especially bad as some of these credentials are used for pay increases.
      • codingdave 6y ago
        I have heard exactly the opposite from people who work in the administrative side of academia. If your future job prospects are research-based, sure it matters. But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district? Any doctorate is fine.
  • yyyymmddh 6y ago
    Did you find any other schools that offer a similar opportunity?
    • miguelrochefort 6y ago
      Not really. You might be able to cut your time/cost to graduate by half by earning credits on Study.com, Sophia.org, Saylor.org, StraighterLine.com and transferring them to a traditional university. I've seen universities allow up to 50-75% of a program's credits to be transferred in.
  • jerry80 6y ago
    Congrats on the degree! I took almost exactly the same path as you, and I also finished my WGU degree in 3 months. I got my BS to meet the admission requirements for GATech's OMSCS program, which I'm doing now. Do you plan to go for a masters next?
    • miguelrochefort 6y ago
      How's GATech's OMSCS? I'm thinking about applying.
      • jerry80 6y ago
        The OMSCS material is great! I'm really enjoying the challenge of learning new things (I didn't learn much of anything new at WGU. That's not a knock against WGU's materials, which seemed good. It's just a reflection of my having worked in industry and self-studying for 15 years before applying). I do think GATech could learn a few things from WGU. I found WGU to have much better administration. WGU was 10x better about enrolling, being able to get support, and such. Overall, WGU had less bullshit than GATech. I also really loved the ability to go at my own pace at WGU. GATech uses a semi-synchronous model in that you're on a deadline for each assignment and exam. I don't like the subjective grading of the assignments, and sometimes they're ambiguous about what they want exactly. Seems to very a lot from class-to-class. I loved that at WGU you could have redoes - even though I never took advantage of that it was a lot lower stress knowing I could redo an assignment or exam. At GATech there are no redoes short of dropping a course. Overall, I think WGU is the best value for a BS CS, and GATech is the best value for a MS CS right now - and really there aren't any close seconds. If you want to discuss further, let me know, and I'll send you an email. Also, off topic, but did you get any scholarship at WGU? Their scholarships are basically coupons. I thought everyone got one, and I was surprised to not see that in your accounting.
        • miguelrochefort 6y ago
          Thanks, that's very comprehensive. I wish I didn't have to wait until Fall 2021 to start studying at OMSCS. If I prepared early enough, I probably would have been studying there already. I also wish the program could be accelerated, like at WGU. 2-3 years seems far compared to 3 months. Given that we both finished the program in 3 months, I suspect that we have similar skill-level and study habits. Do you find courses at OMSCS to be as difficult as others claim? How much time do you study in a given week? I didn't receive any scholarship at WGU. I didn't know they were so easy to get. How much was it, $500/term? Email me, I'd like to stay in touch.
• Jabbles 6y ago
  Congratulations. It is somewhat surprising to me how some credits required vastly more effort than others. For example Algorithms 2 is worth as much as "Introduction to IT" - 4 credits each. Were there other restrictions on which credits you could use? In your opinion is this "fair"?
  • plasticchris 6y ago
    This is normal. When I was scheduling classes I would weight them by difficulty and have a cap for total course weight to account for it. Otherwise it's easy to overload on hard courses.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      I certainly tended to do that as an undergraduate when I could. Credit hours or the equivalent correlate pretty loosely to difficulty and the time you'll need to spend. (And, of course it's even truer when you mix in non-engineering classes which aren't necessarily easy but were relatively speaking for me for the most part.) >On average, I studied for 40 hours a week and completed a course every 3 days. I will say that when I was in university, there were very few courses I only spent about 24 hours on. In fact, there are probably a fair number of courses which, even had I taken them a couple years earlier, would still have probably taken more time than that to do assignments and brush up for exams.
  • jessermeyer 6y ago
    Algorithms II is typically a mathematical proof class about algorithms. At my university, it was used as a filter class, and quite demanding. I think it was also 4 credits.
  • tengbretson 6y ago
    Credits are usually used as a proxy for how much out-of-classroom time the class will occupy in a week. Not necessarily the difficulty of the material.
• goatcode 6y ago
  I was initially skeptical, but this looks pretty solid after reading. The author seems to be an absolute beast though, so anyone diving into this should expect to focus and work hard / very consistently.
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    Aside from it being everyday work, which he explains it was his only job and during Covid, the daily hourly effort seems to average around 6-7 hours a day. That said, I don’t see many days where he didn’t have school. So yea this isn’t for everyone obviously.
• neogodless 6y ago
  This is interesting to me. I attended a public/state university for 5 semesters studying computer science, and dropped out due to personal matters (while also getting paid employment during the internet boom in a relatively rural part of the United States.) My first paid job didn't pan out, but then I got my first salaried position as a web developer, and I've been employed ever since (though I'm currently furloughed but mostly satisfied to be so because - I can handle it financially, and I have lots of work and projects around the house to keep me busy.) I've often thought about getting a degree, mostly for some additional pointers on low-level, algorithmic engineering, and for exploring more interesting computer science subjects in greater depth. However, I don't plan on doing full-time development work for a significant period of time going forward, so the investment of money and time at a traditional four-year university doesn't seem worth it to me. This alternative may or may not pay for itself in compensation, but that isn't why I would pursue it. I'm just interested in the education!
  • cstejerean 6y ago
    This was my motivation for finally going back to school. I dropped out originally due to running out of money and having to take a full time job. Or rather I told myself I'd continue school part time, but never did. Lack of a degree was never a problem professionally so there was no reason to go back and spend a pile of money and a lot of time. But then I got to the point where I wanted to advance my knowledge of various topics and a master's degree would have been a great structured way to do that. For example I did the MITx MicroMasters in Supply Chain Management. After that I would have had an option to finish the master's program on-site at MIT with 1 additional semester. But I couldn't pursude this due to lack of completed undegrad. So this finally motivated me to look into some options, and I also found WGU very appealing due to the rolling start, low cost and ability to quickly blaze through the classes I know and only spend time on the ones I need to learn something new.
    • reidjs 6y ago
      Hey can I talk to you about that course? I’m switching into a new job in supply chain management (I currently work as a sys admin/IT admin) and feel pretty overwhelmed trying to figure out how that industry works
• booleandilemma 6y ago
  Is that how much they’re worth nowadays? /s
• yters 6y ago
  Comp Eng PhD here. The fields can indeed be dramatically compressed. Lots of trivia obscure the main points in each comp sci topic.
  • gspr 6y ago
    This comment summarizes much of the the whole thread: a bunch of people who think that getting an academic degree should be like trade school.
    • skeeter2020 6y ago
      I don't fully understand this mentality. We don't look at everything we want to accomplish and say"what's the fastest way to get there?" a 4-year university degree certainly isn't if you want a job, money or credibility. The journey is amazing; I have 2 undergrads and a MSc not because of the material benefits, but because I absolutely loved school, especially the second time around. #3 grad school was a little disappointing but that was due to my expectations. I'm now near 50 and thinking about starting my PhD as a quasi-retirement project. Maaybe I'll go to school with my kids!
      • wincy 6y ago
        I think the problem is that once you're working in the field, not having a bachelors can be perceived as you lacking in skill for the positions you're applying for, regardless of if that's the case. And the bachelors is (improperly) being used as a gauge for competence rather than being shown as a jumping off point toward a career in software development, which can be reached by alternate avenues. I also discovered that if I want to move to basically any European nation, despite having years of experience in the USA, I would not be able to work in software or emigrate without some sort of bachelors.
        • umanghere 6y ago
          Speaking from experience, that's not necessarily true. EU countries accept equivalent experience in lieu of academic qualifications. Assuming that you are offered a position that pays well, and have around 5-ish years of experience, emigration is a breeze. My experience with getting might not be universal since I work in a niche CS field, but getting a work permit (also alluded to by other commenters) was trivial and likely applies to everyone.
• simoneau 6y ago
  Does anyone have a good sense how online degrees are perceived by employers? Or graduate programs? I wonder if the pandemic will be shifting these attitudes.
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    When you're given a resume, do you look at the education, other that briefly? If it doesn't sound like an online program (e.g. University of Phoenix) I doubt most would notice. But then again, I never see resumes until someone asks me to do a phone screening. Even then, I kinda glance at them enough to figure out which set of questions to pull out. So I guess that decision is made well before me. Getting to the actual phone/in-person interview is the challenging part. I've discovered it's often more about who you know than anything else.
    • skeeter2020 6y ago
      When I see degrees from universities I've never heard of I assume they're diploma mills and look them up. Often they're not but fill a particular niche in learning or circumstance. This is the major failing with the US system IMO, in Canada the word "university" has a much stronger legal definition so there is more trust in it. Similar to what happened to the title "Engineer" when programmers started using it* *I have a MSc in Software Engineering but I am not a PEng
      • mobattah 6y ago
        Wow, I hope to never work with you. You value things that should not be valued in tech. We care about competence, not credentials. I've interviewed dozens of engineers. Never once looked at their education or gave it any weight. I assess them myself, no need to defer. Selecting for people from schools you've heard of is probably the wildest thing I've heard in my career.
        • vulcan01 6y ago
          It depends on the number of applications. If the number of applications is unmanageable, then credentials can be a useful first filter. This is also why the SAT/ACT is still important in college admissions: they get a lot of applications, and they need to filter out some applicants to make it more manageable.
• pokler 6y ago
  I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.' This seems feasible only for a specific set of people: those with previous experience & looking specifically for the credential and not so much the learning experience that comes with a traditional 4 year degree. Not to take away from the author's achievement, I just think it would be misleading to imply that this is a path that most people can take.
  • astura 6y ago
    Reminds me of every single one of those "how I paid off $100,000 in debt in 1 year" articles. It's always like "dad got me an executive job at his company and grandma gave me a condo as a graduation gift so instead of living in it I moved in with my parents rent free and turned the condo into income stream. (Aren't I smart!?!) Since mom always had a gourmet hot meal prepared for me I could put all my income into my loans instead of silly things like buying food and worrying about preparing meals." These sorts of writings have their audience (I guess) but they aren't written for normal people. What I mean is, normal (or even above average) people can't follow a similar path and get similar results - it's extraordinary people getting extraordinary results.
    • abfan1127 6y ago
      I paid off $240,000 in 3 years by not being an idiot with my money. I got on a budget with my wife. We cut up our credit cards because we always double or triple spent our money. We budgeted for things like Christmas. We followed Dave Ramsey's plan. We're 2 months from paying off our house now. Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.
      • kace91 6y ago
        I mean, that's still contingent on having a decent salary relative to the amount of debt - I'm assuming it didn't happen with a couple of ~30k/year salaries.
        • 6y ago
• rootusrootus 6y ago
  That's brilliant. I wish something like this had been available back in the late 90s when I was getting my CS degree from Oregon State. I pulled it off in a couple years by taking a heavy load and working through summers, I'd have been ecstatic to find a fully self-paced program. I also think the idea of capping it off with OMSCS is a great idea. I did that myself but 20 years later. And mostly just for entertainment rather than boosting my career.
• seiferteric 6y ago
  This is very interesting to me. I have an EE degree but have been doing software full time since I graduated in 2009. Even though I am mostly self taught and feel competent enough compared to my coworkers, I frequently have pangs of self doubt around not having a CS degree. Mainly worry about not having a deeper knowledge of algorithms and data structures. I have been thinking for a while of an online CS degree and this looks pretty good!
  • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    > Mainly worry about not having a deeper knowledge of algorithms and data structures. Why not just look at these then? As an example you could check out MITs algorithms and DS lectures on Youtube. An entire degree might be a lot of wasted effort.
    • ghaff 6y ago
      Also I assume OpenCourseware and edX.
    • seiferteric 6y ago
      Some of it is just the unknown unknowns I guess. I can only look at things I think I may not know or know well enough. Whereas a directed course might guide me to what I don't know better. But perhaps you are right, I should probably start there.
      • ghaff 6y ago
        What I would probably do is look at MIT's degree requirements for their 6-2 or 6-3 degree (BS for EE and CS--with apparently different emphasis on the EE or the CS). And then look at OpenCourseware for the syllabi. Of course you can look at other schools as well--though I don't know of other resources as comprehensive as OpenCourseware. That should give you a fairly good idea of at least what MIT requires that you may not be familiar with. MIT is probably also a good start if you an EE given that the degrees are in the same school vs. places where CS is closer to the Math department.
• belinder 6y ago
  Wonder if he will go for a masters degree next.
• jng 6y ago
  Does anyone know about similar programs for non-US residents? I understand the original author is Canadian, but it seems they got granted a "special exception" that is unlikely to be available to, say, people from the EU (my case), or other countries.
  • justinlloyd 6y ago
    Look up Thomas Edison University, which will let you test out of many classes, transfer in other (US) college credit, does offer PLA credit (though that isn't as easy as just studying for and taking an exam). Also OpenClassrooms, which is project based, and offers many options for Bachelor level diplomas through a non-traditional route with many of the diplomas backed by reputable European universities such as Ecole de Paris and Lyon University. Also check out degreeforums for other places that are legitimate. I am not affiliated with any of these websites or businesses, but I have been through their educational programmes. If you are an intrinsically motivated self-learner/self-teacher that works well on their own with occasional mentor contact, then I can highly recommend them.
    • jng 6y ago
      Thanks! That may be very useful at some point.
• djsumdog 6y ago
  Almost seems like the writer treated the process like playing a video game, without all the pretty colors and sounds that give you that dopamine hit. I feel like I did get a lot out of my Computer Science degree. I got it in 2004 and I picked up a lot of stuff I don't think I would have learned on my own. I also went to a small state University in the middle of nowhere that' wasn't very expensive, and I didn't rack up any debt (a little in grad school, but still not more that I couldn't pay off in ~2 years). But you get out of your education what you put into it. I worked with people who went to 2-year associate programs who didn't understand BigO notation, and people who didn't go to college at all, but who knew their algorithms inside and out (one who even got in at Google in the early days). I'm glad I got my degree, but I'm not sure it's worth the cost some people are paying now. I shared my concerns with my nephew and he ended up getting his CS degree at a smaller/cheaper state university. I'd say if you can't get a degree without going into excessive debt, it's really not worth it today. I know I'm just guessing, but the writer of this article seems crazy driven. Maybe, this is the type of person who could start their own small business out of nowhere, or survive long hours at SpaceX for the pure thrill of successful rocket launches? If you have the drive to run through something like this, there really aren't any limits to what you can do. I've done pretty well at all my jobs and have learned a lot of cool stuff, worked in three countries ... but on a scale of Wally (from Dilbert) to Elon, I'm certainly more towards the Wally side. Going back to games; I wonder if this type of education and training would be more accessibl if it was gameified. McDonalds Japan briefly tried to turn their training program into a Nintendo DS game (failed terrible and the game is very rare). That might be a model for new typed of education going forward.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    >Going back to games; I wonder if this type of education and training would be more accessibl if it was gameified. Standard stuff like GitHub stars and so forth notwithstanding, my sense is that more extreme gamification has sort of fallen out of favor. MOOCs tried a fair number of gamification "tricks" and by and large I don't think they really helped much.
  • kemiller2002 6y ago
    He also mentions in the article that he wasn't working at the time. He's still driven, but that makes doing it a whole lot easier.
• Uptrenda 6y ago
  I read something ages back about a lesser known process called 'testing out' where you are basically able to just do the exams at universities to get a degree. It's suppose to encourage life-long learning and its based on the assumption that many professionals and adults accrue relevant experience outside of academia. I had always wanted to look more into this myself but it seemed to require too much bureaucracy. OPs university sounds like it might be an actual working alternative to this. I find this fascinating and wonder what other degrees might be possible
  • alisonkisk 6y ago
    Reputable colleges won't give you credit for that, beyond skipping first year prerequisites. But you can get "a degree" for employers like government that pay based a formula based on credentials.
    • linksnapzz 6y ago
      If they did, they'd get the reputation for leaving money on the table. Notgonnahappen.
    • lostcolony 6y ago
      Sort of. CLEP tests go over much of your core curriculum, but not major specific stuff. So really more like two years worth of material, maximally. And while some top tier universities won't credit that, they -will- credit transfer credit from colleges that DO accept CLEP credit. Takes a bit of work to figure it all out, but you can end up going to top tier universities with two years of college credit if you do it just right. But yeah, per OP, you can't get a degree with it.
  • PenguinCoder 6y ago
    As a full time working adult, WGU was _amazing_ for getting a degree, at my own pace. Which was a lot faster than a standard brick and mortar school. You can see the course catalog here [0]. My work paid tuition for my degree, but they had an upper limit on reimbursement. WGU was what I found that they approved, and came in under cost (I didn't want to pay out of pocket). I really do recommend WGU for experienced professionals, and self-guided and motivated learners. I would not suggest it for a brand new high schooler, or people who have no experience in the industry they're trying to get a degree in. [0]https://www.wgu.edu/about/institutional-catalog.html https://www.wgu.edu/about/institutional-catalog.html
• xwdv 6y ago
  Could I do the same with a masters?
  • barry-cotter 6y ago
    In six months? I doubt it. Go to degreeforum.net and ask. The forum is devoted to that kind of stuff.
• ajkjk 6y ago
  > In 2012, I studied computer science at Concordia University and dropped out after 1 semester. > On my first day, I attended 2 lectures. I quickly realized that a 2-hour commute to listen to someone slowly recite a PowerPoint wasn’t the best use of my time. It's so depressing that a lot of expensive higher education is this pathetic. I wish our education system worked enough like a market that it could hold lecturers, programs, and schools that to a higher standard, and destroy them if they cheated their students like this.
  • JamisonM 6y ago
    I am going to go out on a limb and say that most of getting a Comp. Sci. degree at Concordia University isn't actually "listen[ing] to someone slowly recite a PowerPoint". Having attended a public University in Canada myself it certainly wasn't my experience (and also not very expensive, <10K a year). Of course, as with most things in life a lot of the benefit of an activity is what you make of it, not just what is on offer to the passive consumer. Upon completing the article my main takeaway was that the author would have been a lot better off just toughing it out at Concordia in the first place. If you are the sort of person that tries something once for a few hours and then just backs away from it entirely they way this person did.. it's really something!
    • ceridwyn 6y ago
      As a fellow 2012 Concordia dropout, it's possible there's more to that particular story going untold, and this is the clean version of it for employers. You can look up "printemps érable 2012" for some context and Montreal Police brutality related to that. My personal experience being a student involved running from police on horseback launching teargas grenades. Finding excuses not to talk about it is easier than trying to explain it.
    • alisonkisk 6y ago
      Thing is, 20+ years ago you had to go to college to find a dozen like minded students to collaborate with. Today, reddit stufy groups are free
  • albertgoeswoof 6y ago
• Edmond 6y ago
  The course collection required for your graduation is fairly good, assuming the student actually learned the topics covered as opposed to simply prepping for exams. It is however not at all comparable to what's required in traditional programs. You can compare the course requirements between traditional curriculums and this one...the gap is wide. Of course one can argue that a lot of time and money is wasted pursuing traditional Comp Sci degrees:)
• paxys 6y ago
  This is interesting, but from what I have seen in the industry a CS degree is only really useful if you are starting out or are a relatively junior developer. With 10+ years of experience, an additional "BS degree from XYZ University" line on your resume is worth pretty much nothing.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    In the article he suggests that wasn't really his experience and it's hard to argue with someone's experience. I also read him as just being bothered by the fact that he had never gotten a degree. Given that, and the way/circumstances under which he did it, it's hard to argue with just online enrolling for a semester and doing it. From what I understand, it can sometimes be useful to have the paper. On the other hand, I'm sure you're right that a lot of the time in tech someone with 10+ years of experience probably doesn't add a lot by getting a credential like this--especially if e.g. there were significant opportunity cost to doing so.
    • Consultant32452 6y ago
      My personal anecdata is that it's most important dealing with government or government contractors. This is because they have incentives built into their contracts. In the private sector I've found it less of a hurdle.
  • dnissley 6y ago
    WGU CS grad here (with 10+ years of experience before I entered the program). If you're in the midwest (and from what I hear, east coast) it's definitely necessary to get through a lot of HR screens.
• xgulfie 6y ago
  writes "computer science degree" on a piece of paper ha, I did it in ten seconds, nerd
• ehejsbbejsk 6y ago
  As a CS major, I can honestly say the ONLY thing of value was a couple of algorithm classes I took. And even then it was from a text I could have read on my own. Unless you’re what I call one-percent talent, CS theory is not going to help you much in your career.
  • czbond 6y ago
    Broad statement, I don't agree with. Different personality types take wholly different things from the same content. I personally feel (and this may sound hubristic, but it isn't) is that the CompSci background raised me to a whole new echelon of depth of meta-knowledge and ability to problem solve large problems.
    • ehejsbbejsk 6y ago
      That’s fair. I was also a math major so perhaps my concentration was a lot more theoretical in nature.
  • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    That really depends. Where having CS knowledge matters is both low-level systems and libraries programming (working on the Linux kernel, embedded systems, building platforms or SDK stuff like AWS, etc.) and really big scaling, like at the FAANGs. Most people in this industry don't work on such things, so having CS knowledge probably does matter less to them.
• mateioprea 6y ago
  Does anyone know something like this, but in Europe?
  • thrwawayacc5212 6y ago
    There are some universities that require you only to pass exams, and don't check attendance. You'd still need to "wait" for 3+ years. I've never seen such a course myself, only heard some stories, so it may be an urban myth. There definitely are universities that allow taking courses at your own pace. I'm currently doing Bachelor of CS at University of Wroclaw, designed as 3.5 year course, and there are people finishing it in 2.5 years (though that's rare, it's much more usual to see 3.5 years turning out not to be enough time). Sadly, offered only in Polish, and requires a lot of time and effort.
  • boyband6666 6y ago
    Not the same, but I'm sure some (10?) years ago I saw something about University of Buckingham doign straight through the summer learning, so you completed in 2 years. So it isn't unheard of for everything not to be the standard 3...
• martamorena918 6y ago
  Clickbait headline... Should be "How to get a CS degree in the time you need to be ready". Cool that something like this exists, and I support it. For me it was similar. I studied math and physics for 6 terms and was programming since age of 6. Then my thesis adviser told me that all my thesis suggestions are for CS, not math. So I thought, well what the heck, let's just write a CS thesis. I did all the missing coursework in half a year and wrote my thesis in the second. This would be of course utterly impossible without the background I had at that time. (I studied in Germany, where you generally have full control over your studies. I.e. you can do all courses from all terms at the same time, for instance)
• D13Fd 6y ago
  For anyone who is wondering, the school he listed (Western Governors University) is unfortunately not ABET accredited as far as I can tell.
  • NullPrefix 6y ago
    This should be at the top. What's the point of that paper if the issuer is not accredited?
    • SilasX 6y ago
      I assume if you're just interested in learning. (Not trying to be sarcastic or trollish -- I'm looking for stuff that optimizes more for personal enlightenment than a credential, and I accept that both targets are valid to pursue.) With that said, even for that use case, it feels clickbaity to label it "I got a CS degree" rather than "I learned the content of a CS degree".
      • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        > "I'm looking for stuff that optimizes more for personal enlightenment than a credential" The point of accreditation is to assure that various minimum standards are met by the educational institution. (Whether that works or not is a different discussion.) Lack of normal accreditation is usually a sign of a diploma mill and, more importantly, that the student will not be getting their money's worth either in terms of a credential or personal enlightenment.
    • TameAntelope 6y ago
      The article says the school is accredited by a different group.
    • 0xffff2 6y ago
      The school may be accredited but not the degree. This is the case for CS degrees from several UC schools including Berkley. My CS degree from a slightly less prestigious UC is not accredited but no one has ever said anything about it.
• fortran77 6y ago
  This is a little extreme, of course. But there's probably no reason an ordinary motivated person can't get the same education that a college takes 4 years and charges $80,000 for (or more!) in 2 years and $10,000, especially if they combine in-class and on-line. We just need schools and accreditation organizations to take a new look at things.
• timwaagh 6y ago
  I was surprised to find no advanced stuff on their curriculum. At first i thought: another genius telling us hes a genius but it seems quite doable. I mean even during my half year of cs bachelors courses i took to get into the master i did have to do a graphics course and another on image processing.
• azhenley 6y ago
  Is the value the same as a traditional 4 year degree?
  • ex_amazon_sde 6y ago
    Obviously not.
  • codingdave 6y ago
    It depends on what value you care about - the deep experience of 4 years studying not only your subject, but broader academics... no, it does not compare with that at all. But if you just want a piece of paper to help you check off a requirement for a job? This absolutely meets that need. And there is nothing wrong with seeking that value - when you get into higher level jobs that require a Master's (or in academia, PhDs), these are exactly the programs people look for.
• dncornholio 6y ago
  This reminds of how I dropped out early as well, had a good job offer and didn't need any papers anymore. I ended being a freelancer and the same school I dropped out of ended up hiring me for doing some teaching activities. Somebody kept an eye on me and gave me a call when they needed someone with actual programming experience. This gave me the opportunity to work on my own diploma by writing courses for their students. I completed the courses in less then an hour and received diploma for free. So I basically made my own diploma.
• fayten 6y ago
  I'm glad to see others attending WGU. I worked in the industry for a little while, but I couldn't take web dev any longer and decided to go back to school. I've enjoyed the CS program quite a bit, especially the self-pacing. I have been going at a much slower pace than you have, but I hope to finish up in the next 3 months. For someone new to CS I still think WGU is a good school if you are self-motivated. A standard class is expected to last 8-12 weeks, but they take the full 6 months if needed. Some of the intro classes are very short and can be done within a day or 2. Some classes have cohorts which are nice and instructors will have webinars to go over things in the class. I had a lot of fun with the later project courses giving me a chance to build out some neat JavaFX and Tkinter applications. A lot of students get crushed by Discrete Math 1 and 2, but it's just one of those classes you need to practice with paper and pencil at. I also like that you are open to using other material to learn the subject matter. For the operating system class, I worked on Georgia Tech's Intro to operating systems class on Udacity and learned everything I needed for the test. The school also provides a Pluralsight subscription so, you can benefit from the excellent classes there as well. There is also a subreddit where students discuss courses and their strategies for passing them here: https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/ I can see the program being brutal for people who cannot keep themselves on track due to lack of deadlines though. You do have an advisor that follows you through the whole program that communicates with you every week. If you do struggle with deadlines, let them know and they can help you strategize and keep you on track. Lastly, I would like to note that the capstone does force the student down the path of a Data analysis/AI application. As someone that has little to no interest in AI, I was pretty bummed that it wasn't more open-ended. These things change though, so it might be different in the future.
• autotune 6y ago
  WGU would be great if they would just accept my friggin high school transcripts. I've had them mailed out twice, once via certified letter, and both times their admissions department failed to receive said transcripts. It's really infuriating too because I'd love to take their CS program but they just... won't... accept... my... transcripts.
  • confidantlake 6y ago
    Also gave up in attending because of the admissions process.
    • jacurtis 6y ago
      I eventually went to and graduated WGU. But I actually tried to go a few years ago initially and their admissions and communication process was such a disaster I gave up. I went back later and literally had to force them to let me enroll. When I finally complained to my mentor about the admissions process being like pulling teeth she simply said "We want to make sure students are motivated before we enroll them". I am not sure I buy that response, but that's what she told me. I agree, it is a joke.
• MitPitt 6y ago
  Speedrunning degrees now, huh...
• diveanon 6y ago
  humblebrag
• vmception 6y ago
  How do you guys feel about this? He signed up at an accredited university and then used non university resources to transfer credits in, which weren’t universities at all Is that concept new? Is this something we can all be doing for other degrees or is this barely accredited and will come under fire very soon and stop being respected long before
  • papercrane 6y ago
    It's not new. Some accredited institutions will give credits for "life experience", and I know some University's work with local community colleges so that students can transfer credits in. Typically these transfers are very limited though and only let you bypass "Intro to X" type classes, or meet requirements for graduation that aren't core to the program.
  • fayten 6y ago
    Those online classes he took are ACE or NCCRS accredited. Study.com for example can be transferred to many Universities: https://study.com/college/school/index.html#transferSearch https://study.com/college/school/index.html#transferSearch Take a look at ACE and NCCRS: https://www.acenet.edu/Programs-Services/Pages/Credit-Transcripts/Colleges-Universities.aspx https://www.acenet.edu/Programs-Services/Pages/Credit-Transc... http://www.nationalccrs.org/policies-procedures http://www.nationalccrs.org/policies-procedures
    • vmception 6y ago
      I did notice the classes themselves were accredited, and I also like the possibility of rapid iteration and refinement of the course material that these online classes can offer. ie. A university has one professor following an unchallenged lecture routine, whereas online can be very competitive and update and have the most useful style of visual aids.
  • vitus 6y ago
    I went to a public 4-year university and transferred in community college credits that I'd previously used to satisfy high school graduation requirements. Requiring courses from a university is assuredly too high a bar, given that it would exclude anyone who, say, transferred from a community college into a 4-year program (several of my brightest peers fell into that category). Several of these courses (Calc 1, American Government, Environmental Science, Stats) are comparable to taking AP exams (cost of $95) for credit, which you could ostensibly do without taking the course in the first place.
• dfee 6y ago
  I had some rich experiences going through computer engineering at Notre Dame. I very much didn’t come from wealth, and received some amazing scholarship. I left with a relatively small student loan. (Now, USC on the other hand - offered me no financial aid! Which I rightfully understood as they didn’t really want me to attend.) One of them was doing an internship after sophomore year with the Air Force Research Labs (Hanscom AFB, though I ended moving off base and subletted an apartment in Boston). I built a system with GNU radio (software defined radio), a free attenas, etc. and was able to take it to “production”. My peers in the program came from other great schools like NC State, LSU, a couple historically black colleges, etc. Now, this program was only available to folks considering going through the office candidate program (which, I don’t think any of us ended up pursuing). But sophomores in college. I returned to campus and found an opportunity to be a research assistant with doctoral candidates doing SDR work on Zigbee - so I hopped on. There were many more rich experiences, too: studying abroad in London, meeting the girl I’d marry, realizing I was not the smartest person in the room and inheriting a bunch of culture that I’m better off for having. I don’t know how you replicate these experiences outside a formal program; that’s the uphill battle for any of these programs. I also don’t think that it would’ve been best for me to pursue any of these modern alternatives. But, the articles approach, and programs like Lambda School do provide interesting value to their own customers and on their own merits. They also provide appropriate competitive pressure to keep Unviersity programs honest.
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    > I don’t know how you replicate these experiences outside a formal program; They aren’t designed for that. The specific programmed mentioned I believe is designed solely to bypass credential based gates where you might meet them. Bootcamps are generally designed for quick turn around times for people who want a high paying career change, and come with a different set of experiences.
• baron816 6y ago
  Seems like the biggest accomplishment here is getting to the top of the front page on HN. But seriously, if you have 10 years of software engineering experience, what do you gain by doing a bachelors CS program?
  • autotune 6y ago
    Some companies still require college degrees even for software development, unfortunately. This checks the box for those companies at a low cost. Of course whether you'd want to work at such a bureaucratic institution is another question entirely, but there is a good reason for still wanting a degree if you do.
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    I’ve heard many companies will not allow you to move past IC type roles without a degree, so if you want to go into management or something that’s an issue. Also, you have the immigration aspect mentioned in the article and throughout the thread.
    • jacurtis 6y ago
      This has been my experience. I built a career for 10 years without a degree. I was fine during my entry level and mid-level positions. I was able to outperform people that had bachelors degrees and get jobs. But as I started applying for High-level and VP positions, I found that not having a degree got harder. I was mostly competing against applicants that have Master's degrees, and I don't even have a bachelors. My dad went back to get his degree at 55 years old. He found the same thing, the high-level jobs are very competitive and not having a degree really hurts at that level.
• rsweeney21 6y ago
  Requiring a computer science degree to apply for a programming job has always been bizarre to me and this blog post is a great example of why. "The bulk of the effort was memorizing things that I normally would have Googled." And given how memory works, in a few weeks you'll probably have to Google them again. To earn my CS degree I learned a lot of stuff before starting my career that I never used. It would have been much more efficient to learn the things I needed on demand. I learned more about programming in 30 days on my first real programming job after graduation than I did in 4 years in school.
  • asddubs 6y ago
    You know the things you learned exist, at least approximately what they're useful for, and what you have to search for to look them up. I think it's definitely not a perfect system, but having programmed a long time before I started studying computer science, it did fill a lot of knowledge gaps I didn't even know I had. If you're working in a team you might not notice this as much, though, as long as at least someone knows what they're looking for.
    • gxs 6y ago
      Going to college is this peculiar process where what you get out of it is commensurate with what you put into it, 100%. I was a math major in college. A lot of my exams were open book - because exactly like you said - it's mostly about do you know how to think about something, do you know how to unfold something, do you know what to search for, and how it's useful. Over the years I've had to help nieces and nephews with calculus homework, and it's been interesting to see this at play in the "real" world. I approach math a little differently now than a high schooler would, and usually my mind starts to wander around thinking, "you know, I'm pretty sure I remember xyz theorem that we can use here, let me look it up." Most of the time it works every time. From there it's easy to put it into the context of their current lesson and go over it in a way that makes sense with how and what they are studying in class. When looking at job applicants, if someone has a degree, at the very least it means they had an opportunity to put a lot of effort into it and HOPEFULLY it means they got a lot out of it. Sure, it's possible, maybe even most common, for it to just be a piece of paper - and that's OK. That's why we interview and a degree isn't the be all end all.
• Technically 6y ago
  What is the value of such a degree? Mildly reduced insurance rates?
• rement 6y ago
  How important is a CS degree to a hiring manager? I have two unrelated degrees (both STEM though). Does a CS degree play a role when looking at a resume or does several years experience say more? I've been a software engineer for over 5 years and people still ask why I have the degrees that I do.
  • wulfmann 6y ago
    Not a hiring manager, but of the engineering jobs i've had, school never came up (I have no degree). That said, i've had plenty of rejections without even getting into the interview process. Would a degree have changed that? Possibly.
  • astura 6y ago
    I can only speak to my own experience (east coast). At my current company we won't hire or consider anyone without a degree, however, it doesn't have to be a CS/SE degree. We even have a few people with liberal arts degrees.
    • criveros 6y ago
      This makes no sense. How about someone from a bootcamp or with an associate's degree?
      • astura 6y ago
        No, at my job we don't consider anyone without a bachelor's degree - that's a hard requirement. I don't personally make the requirements. There seems to be plenty enough talent applying with bachelor's degrees where that doesn't seem to stop us from hiring really great engineers. Our work is more complicated than simple CRUD apps though.
  • cwp 6y ago
    Not that important, at least in the SV-centred tech world. I have a journalism degree, and I don't think it's ever been a problem. I've also been a hiring manager, and on hiring committees and never really paid much attention to it. Degrees matter in data science but not software engineering.
• setheron 6y ago
  Im actually starting a PhD position while having a full time job, at least for the initial course work portion (I don't have a master's). This was the only way I could do it without incurring expenses since I'm now 33 and have a family with children.
• andjd 6y ago
  I think the takeaway point from this is how dumb it is that most organizations value credentials over experience. It shouldn't come as a surprise that someone who has a decade of work experience in the field can sail through a college curriculum like this, and it is really a failing of society more broadly if the author feels that he needs to get a diploma to be taken seriously.
  • Bakary 6y ago
    It's not dumb, it just hides a cynical compromise. Companies need to wade through tons of applications, young people want a path through which they have some degree of certainty (pun semi-intended) that their work will lead to social capital + being with other people their age in a common setting. The college experience leaves no one very satisfied but many chunks of society tolerably satisfied. Of course, the social contract is weakening and a new compromise will have to be found. That may simply be the broader acceptance of online degrees and certificates.
• jventura 6y ago
  While I praise the author's effort, as a professor myself (I teach CS in a local polytechnic school - something like the US community colleges) I really doubt the quality of either the WGU and of the knowledge retention. As an example, this semester I'm teaching Operating Systems concepts (definitions, processes, threads, semaphores, mutexes, signals, memory layouts, IO, etc.), and even if I take the theoretical concepts out (like not explaining how a fork() works under the hood), I still have 20 hours of labs and some 60 hours for two projects. How can this author ever reach the same level of competency as my students who let these concepts "sink", as he dedicated 15 hours in only 2/3 days. Second example: in 2019 I taught some classes for a 4 month course on basic programming and web apps. Even having 7h of classes per day, things had to be really succinct, and in 4 months, although they were capable of doing some web apps, there was a lot of confusion in their heads because of the fast pace. Some other examples on his post: 9h30 minutes for Discrete Math I. Either trivial things were handled, he is a math wiz, he rushed through all the exercises, or no exercise solving was necessary.. Again, I don't want to undervalue the author's effort, but as someone who as been teaching for quite some time, and has taught people from the 7th grade to MSc, I'm really suspicious of the quality of the degree and of the knowledge retention..
  • trogdor3000 6y ago
    The sad thing is that no one cares abou the quality of the degree outside of academia. All they care about is seeing the BS on your resume.
    • jventura 6y ago
      When I say that the quality of the degree is not good, it is somewhat implied that the quality of the work of the person who did the degree is also questionable.. :/
      • fayten 6y ago
        Unfortunately you get this with students at every school. Many are just there to skate by and get a degree. The OP could also just know the material already and had no issue being able to pass as quickly as possible. This is something that is a huge benefit of WGU. Also for what it's worth I took 8 weeks doing about 10 hours of work a week on Discrete math 1 and found it very interesting. My discrete math notes is a 1300 line org file that translates to a 29 page word doc. This doesn't include the many proofs and problems I practiced on a white board or on my iPad. I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning.
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  Cool. I applaud your achievement. In my case, I have often considered going back for a degree (I had a "redneck tech school" education), but I could never justify devoting the time and money to get a degree in tech that would already be at least three years out of date by the time I graduated, qualifying me for a job, paying half of what I was already making. Nowadays, the point is moot. I have spent my entire adult life, relentlessly self-teaching (still at it), and no longer need to prove anything to anyone (the biggest issue with not having a sheepskin, is looking up noses everywhere). I love learning, and do wish I could have gotten a "more rounded" education, but the mitigating factor is that I have been shipping software, since I was 22, and that has taught me some stuff that I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
• regera 6y ago
  Scott H. Young completed entire 4-year MIT curriculum for computer science in one year [1]. That was in 2012 when MOOCs was still a new thing. Good luck, I hope your WHY is strong enough to push through difficult days. [1] https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/
• confidantlake 6y ago
  I applied to WG this year to get a CS degree. Work as a dev with no degree. My college transcript has AP classes on it so they wanted those sent as well. These were from 2 decades ago and I have virtually no chance of getting them. Emailed my "enrollment advisor" 3 times about the situation, no response. But every week or so he would send a canned email about how great WGU is and enroll now! Figured if they were so uncommunicative before they got my money imagine how it would be after.
• caeril 6y ago
  I see a lot missing, here. No assembly, compilers, linear algebra, or digital design courses that you find in every other CS program. How did this courseload get accredited? (and I say this as someone who never graduated - just showing some respect for the courseload required by some of my peers, here)
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    To my knowledge, certain accreditations are easier to get than others.
  • dnissley 6y ago
    FWIW, I did this program and assembly / digital design (assuming you mean computer architecture) was pretty well covered in the OS class. They use the Patterson + Hennessey book that many other large universities seem to use. That class was one of the ones that took me the longest since the only background I had was going through the nand to tetris book a few years before. Definitely no compilers or linear algebra though. Personally, I plan on going through some self-study of those topics at some point or another, but I've had a hard time prioritizing them over what seems like more relevant material to the area I've been working in (full stack web dev).
  • imtringued 6y ago
    I was wondering about linear algebra as well. Not sure how you can skip on that.
• xenihn 6y ago
  I've been wanting to do an online MSCS program for years, but it probably won't happen anytime soon. I looked into WGU, but I didn't like the lack of accreditation. I found one school/program that seemed fair in terms of cost and time, but I couldn't fully test out of all of my pre-requisites, and I would still have to spend a considerable amount of time (and money) doing community college courses. I just can't justify the time and effort involved when it would do nothing for my career at this point. I'm already at a top employer, top 5% income, a ridiculous upward trajectory that beats out all of my friends with a CS degree, and I'm basically set for the rest of my working life if I just keep doing what I've been doing for the past five years. Coworkers have always assumed I had a CS degree, and have been surprised when they find out that I don't. I've grinded leetcode twice in the past, and when I'm in interviewing shape, I perform as well as someone with a CS background, and that's the only thing that really matters. The main benefits I see at this point are that it would help for immigration, but I'm confident that the United States will remain the best market for software engineers for years to come. I'd rather invest the time in learning Mandarin, which I think will become increasingly important for software engineering. I at least have a non-STEM undergrad degree, so immigration wouldn't be impossible. The employers on my resume mean more than any CS degree would in the US market, but I don't know how true that is in other job markets. For people who don't have experience, and especially for those doing the typical college path from ages 18-21, a CS bachelor's is great. You get priority for internships (a huge advantage over people from non-CS backgrounds, and the most significant IMO), a network of peers, and you have the opportunity to land in FAANG straight out of college, which means you'll be able to retire early if you want to. If you don't, you still get the other two. I started my career late, but if I had the opportunity to go back in time to when I had just graduated from a non-STEM program and trade two years of working for a CS degree, I wouldn't do it. I don't think I would be as successful as I am now if I had done that. Things would be different if software engineering had gatekeeping similar to what's seen in other high-paying fields like finance, law, and medicine. The only real form of gatekeeping is the aforementioned prioritization (and sometimes even exclusivity) for internships.
  • Bakary 6y ago
    What sort of non-stem degree field did you get into and and what point in your life did you learn the skills necessary for whatever career you have now?
• bertmuthalaly 6y ago
  Does anyone have a sense (or direct experience) of whether goverments are tougher on immigration applicants that get degrees from online institutions like this?
• amingilani 6y ago
  I feel like some of the other comments are missing out on how it's possible to do this slower while still working, regardless: Thank you for this experience, it's super motivating. I recently got into the GA Tech OMSCS program myself. I had a non-tech BSc from a South Asian university that I barely survived because it wasn't my thing. Ever since I got out of school, I've worked in tech. I even managed to get a job and move to North America through my work, but the lack of a degree always felt off to me as well. If I'd read this article a few years ago, I'd likely have jumped into this program before joining GA Tech's OMSCS program. But at this point, I'm happy with what I chose, and to be able to work and study at the same time, no matter how intense it may get.
  • tsjq 6y ago
    > it's possible to do this sort while still working. This. Woah, I had to scroll down so much to reach this point! This is a very important aspect indeed. Does the GATech OMSCS program have this flexibility? . So they admit people from outside the US?
    • aketchum 6y ago
      yes and yes
• peanut_worm 6y ago
  Hopefully this style of university takes off. The traditional college system is an outright scam.
• daralthus 6y ago
  Is this accreditation accepted to apply to Georgia Tech's OMS CS?
  • jerry80 6y ago
    Yes. I did the WGU BSCS purely to get into GaTech OMSCS, and I got in with no problem.
• disown 6y ago
  This article reads like an ad for those online "schools". But ignoring that, it seems like the courses were mostly exams rather than projects as he didn't delve much into what projects he had to do. I have a hard time believing he could have built an OS, AI program, Network Stack, Security (pentesting/auditing/etc ) and dozens of fundamental data structures ( given he didn't take these courses before ) in that time. Also, as he acknowledged, they didn't offer compilers, which is a biggie when it comes to CS. He could also have done the same thing without paying thousands. > If you’re thinking about getting a Bachelor’s degree in CS, already have experience in the field, and live in the US/Canada, you should seriously consider Western Governors University’s Bachelor of Science in Computer Science program. If you already have experience in the field, why bother? I know it's "accredited" but nobody is going to take that degree seriously. If you are interested in the "prestige" of having a degree, why not just do it via a college near you. Most major colleges offer programs for working professionals or adults who want to earn a degree. And you can even network with professors/TAs/etc if you are inclined.
• Buttons840 6y ago
  I'll repost my WGU experience from another comment: I dropped out of traditional college. Last class I remember they were talking about what a GET and POST request were. I had been a professional web developer for years at that point. I felt it was a waste of time. In WGU I had a similar easy class, stuff that was "way below me". Not to worry, I passed the class in a day and stopped worrying about wasted time. I recently did a C++ assignment that was filled with artificial requirements making it artificially difficult, yet I learned some things about pointers and figured out the basics of CMake for the first time. Useful stuff. Now I'm doing a similar assignment with Java. I knew I would have to set aside my distaste for things like Java (gross!), and with that mindset things aren't so bad. I'm actually enjoying JavaFX. WGU's calculus class was harder than calc 1 at my brick and mortar university, but easier than calc 2. Once again, I knew most of the material and passed after only a few weeks of casual review. I also found a calculus text book I personally like (and will happily refer to again in the future), rather that just using whatever the department chose. I do agree that a CS degree doesn't teach as much as it sometimes gets credit for. I do believe WGU's CS degree is as good as many brick and mortar CS degrees, but with minimal "bullshit", though there is still some.
  • jimbokun 6y ago
    From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners. Of course, if the goal is 4 years of fun social life and putting off "adult" responsibilities, the WGU approach is counter productive. But for people who want the benefit of a degree as an employment credential, looks like this is the fastest and cheapest way to attain it, and I don't think many other existing four year colleges are prepared to compete with this model. Their cost structure doesn't allow it.
    • Mandatum 6y ago
      I think you'll enjoy this: https://tracingwoodgrains.medium.com/speedrunning-college-my-plan-to-get-a-bachelors-degree-within-a-year-abe741c4c8bb https://tracingwoodgrains.medium.com/speedrunning-college-my... There's actually a bit of a college speed running community.
• IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  I wonder what his earnings were last year to approximate his opportunity costs. A $100 an hour job at 600 hours would've cost him $60k in opportunity costs. In my personal experience (I did go to uni right after highschool and graduated) it was important for my entry-level job, but once I gained 6 years of experience, nobody cared, discussed or looked at your credentials. The hiring/promotion stuff was done entirely by network, reputation, work experience.
  • fastball 6y ago
    I mean he did it in three months. Can't imagine the opportunity cost is that high. $100ph is a lot, on average.
• bondolo 6y ago
  I also dropped out of a Canadian computer science degree program but in my case I will likely never get a degree. I left University of Alberta in 1989 after completing about two years of my degree to co-found a startup with the thought that if it failed I would go back to get a degree at a better program. The startup was a success and I have never gone back to school. Sadly, in 1988 the University of Alberta CS program was stuck in a 1970s data processing curriculum and, for undergrads, had neither PCs or Unix. I had already been making money writing applications software for PC for several years and there was no way I was going to go work for an oil company or provincial government doing mainframes. I did miss out on some things by not completing. I had very much wanted to take the compilers course offered by Jonathan Schaeffer (of Chinook checkers and poker bot fame). Had the U of A program included internships or co-op, more unix or PCs and a more modern curriculum I probably would have stayed. Indeed they closed the program to new students for a year in the fall of 1989 to retool it and modernize. The revised program was much better (In irony, I was hiring interns from the program about the same time as I would have originally graduated). It is still strange when I have to explain sometimes that I have no degree. I can't imagine getting a CS degree just for the piece of paper. I can understand why someone might need that paper in addition to the skills, such as for a TN work visa. Thankfully I have not. If I did go back, and in my 50s I would feel like I was stealing a seat from someone who really needed it for their career, I would go for math, statistics instead of CS, a degree complementary to the CS skills already have.
  • 908B64B197 6y ago
    > Sadly, in 1988 the University of Alberta CS program was stuck in a 1970s data processing curriculum and, for undergrads, had neither PCs or Unix I feel the landscape today is very different for CS degrees. Most universities standardized quite a bit around what CMU, Stanford and Berkley are doing. But you are not the first telling me that CS degrees were a crapshoot in the 80's. EE as a pathway to software was much more common.
    • bondolo 6y ago
      At that time there was work in the ACM to standardize the college CS curriculum and, for me, the obvious differences between the proposed ACM curriculum and what I was taking was a stark indicator.
• burnthrow 6y ago
  Western Governor's! Recognized that name, they're spammers. "Ready to start your dream job?"
• lcall 6y ago
  A capable family member (in-law) of mine got a Master's degree from WGU, resulting in a salary increase. For someone who lacks the needed English skills, is not in USA/Canada (and thus benefits from much lower cost, varying widely by country), there is also BYU Pathway Worldwide, which also provides high-quality, online university education (from start to Master's). It helps with, for example, learning English and/or study skills in an inexpensive intro program, and has a system for support/encouragement to help students along. More info in wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU_Pathway_Worldwide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU_Pathway_Worldwide or of course their web site https://www.byupathway.org/ https://www.byupathway.org/ .
  • lcall 6y ago
    Thoughtful comments appreciated. (It is accredited, online, and economical even for someone who thinks they otherwise could not afford quality higher ed.)
• 0xbadcafebee 6y ago
  I'm confident now that degrees are just a shitty way of telling if somebody has read some books. You get the degree, and then you get a job, and begin the process of learning how to actually use what you read. Like first creating an entire software product, and then later making it actually work for a customer. Rather than taking 2-4 years to learn how to write the software, and then 2-4 years to learn how to make it work for customers, why don't they do both from day 1? Why aren't universities just mock companies where you build fake products for fake customers, and teach you the theory as you need it? By the end you'd be an expert at working with teams as well as algorithm design.
• whammywon 6y ago
  Didn't go through the CS program as they announced it a month after I finished my Bachelor in Software Development but I thought it was a pretty good program. Definitely planning on going back for a Master's when the time is right.
• gjvc 6y ago
  Behind every overnight success is a decade of effort.
• terrycody 6y ago
  This is such a great experience post and review, really enjoyable to read this, I may choose some online courses in the near future, thanks for posting.
• jdrrch 6y ago
  > The program is not ABET accredited. That limits your ability to even be hired at my employer. We had a pretty good contractor who we had to let walk because his degree wasn't accredited and so we couldn't onboard him.