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I dropped out of college in 1993. I’ve been in industry since and empty nesting has me thinking about going back to school. Are there programs that will give

• andi999 5y ago
  Do you really want that? You would skip useful knowledge, wouldnt you?
  • vidarh 5y ago
    When I took my MSc. most of the subjects were things I was very familiar with already, and so most of the courses were paint by numbers. There were exceptions that were worthwhile, but it was largely an exercise in documenting my existing knowledge. I couldn't test out of things, and most subject had compulsory exercises, so I spent a lot of time basically proving what I already knew rather than learning new stuff. It was clear to me in advance which courses I could have easily skipped, so from that perspective I would not have skipped useful knowledge. That said, of course the problem is that to give me an actual degree the university needed to know I actually knew those things and verifying that only with tests is hard to get right.
    • andi999 5y ago
      Good point. OP dropped out of college 30 years ago, it might also be good to get into the college-mode with something one is familiar with.
• vector_spaces 5y ago
  My school provides a way to "test out" of a given course by exam. Basically you contact an instructor for the course and make arrangements with them for what the test will look like, and submit some paperwork. The big downside at my school is the fee for this approach is the regular cost of taking the course, paid before you take the test, and nonrefundable in the event you don't pass. But not passing doesn't appear on your transcripts, so it only dings you financially Also, you're only allowed to test out of a handful of requirements for your major. It was explained to me this is so no one can effectively "buy a degree" over only a semester or two. But I've found most instructors willing to let someone in their classes who doesn't have formal prereqs who has relevant work experience I'm in a similar boat in that I'm in my 30s now back in school. when I was 18 I dicked around for a couple semesters and dropped out. Thankfully my old community college has a system for expunging bad grades that are more than 7 years old, and I don't think that's very uncommon
• cossatot 5y ago
  While I don't know if there's much you can skip, if you're going for a degree at a typical US state school, I'd recommend taking as much of your general education/ non-major requirements at a community college. It's far cheaper and there is less bullshit, as the state schools will pack a hundred (or four hundred) kids in a single 101 level class ("survey of architecture" or "intro to chemistry" or whatever), and for some classes like the calculus series, they're often poorly taught with needless complexities to weed out the weaker engineering students. (This is also way cheaper.) Then once you have all that out of the way, you can take the upper level classes in CS at the university instead of the community college.