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Comment by D13Fd | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who is wondering, the school he listed (Western Governors University) is unfortunately not ABET accredited as far as I can tell.

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ABET accreditation doesn't mean much for CS however. For example, none of these schools are ABET accredited for CS:

- UC Berkeley

- CMU

- Stanford

- Cornell

- University of Washington

- Caltech

- Princeton

https://amspub.abet.org/aps/category-search?disciplines=19&d...

Add WGU to that list and tell me which one doesn't belong.

I'm not arguing for/against WGU.

My argument is that ABET accreditation isn't relevant to how "good" a CS program is. It does establish a minimum baseline, but lacking it just means you have to determine the program's value in other ways.

I think it is relevant though. Most of the mid-level schools I looked at were ABET accredited. Going unaccredited in CS seems to be a thing that you can only get away with if you have so much or so little name recognition that it doesn't matter.

Isn’t the point of ABET mostly so that you can obtain engineering licenses. I don’t imagine most software development jobs would even bother looking up if your program was accredited because you aren’t going to need a license.

The US government for one requires ABET accreditation for all engineering degrees regardless of licensing requirements for the job. I'm currently a government contractor who is hoping to eventually convert. It's not yet clear to me how much the lack of ABET accreditation on my UC CS degree is going to hurt me.

It means quite a lot if you want to use the CS degree for certain purposes, such as the U.S. patent bar as mentioned below.

I was pointing it out not to criticize the school generally, but because it is meaningful for some use cases that sound like "I need a CS degree, quick."

You're correct. The path I took is not without compromises:

- WGU is not ABET accredited.

- WGU is not as rigorous as other universities.

- WGU is not as prestigious as other universities.

- WGU gives all graduates the same 3.0 GPA.

I probably should point them out in my post.

That said, I still believe WGU was the right choice given my circumstances. I don't value these things enough to justify taking 12 to 16 times longer to graduate.

I agree with all of your points. Thanks for sharing your experience and especially the break down on the time. Do you plan on going for a Masters, either elsewhere or at WGU ?

Ew everyone gets 3.0 GPA? What's the point of that? Are all of the exams pass/fail?

I think it's a combination of:

* The school targets students with previous experience, which transfer credits that have no influence on the GPA.

* The school uses technical certifications (e.g., Oracle Oracle Database SQL 1Z0-07) as a final assessment for some courses, which don't cleanly map to a GPA.

* The school doesn't grade project-based courses (PAs), and instead requires students to resubmit their project until 100% of the rubric is met.

It's basically pass/fail. They won't even show students their grade on final exams (although Chrome's DevTools can reveal them).

I believe it is regionally accredited.

This should be at the top. What's the point of that paper if the issuer is not accredited?

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".

> "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.

The article says the school is accredited by a different group.

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.

It's not ABET accredited, but it is regionally accredited -- which all of the big schools are. That means credits earned at WGU will generally transfer to a traditional school.

There are a lot of top schools that are regionally accredited in their CS department but not ABET.

ABET has been for more traditional engineering like Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and the like.

Even for those schools that do have their CS departments ABET accredited, it's a new thing.

The school I went to, University of Texas at Austin, for example, only became ABET accredited in CS in 2017. Whereas the ChE was ABET accredited in the 1930's.

I assume this matters if they want to go to grad school, but does it matter for any other reason? I think employers attribute value to programs they have heard of, whether it is ABET or not is not something I have ever considered.

One example is taking the patent bar in the United States. A CS degree from this school cannot be used for that purpose. I'm not saying it matters to employers (I don't know either way) and I expect its regional accreditation may be fine for some purposes.

There plenty of people getting a BS from WGU that go on to Master level degrees at other universities. I know quite a few of them personally. Going to WGU for a BS and then a different university for a Masters, is quite possible and not unheard of.

This is actually what my sister did. She got a WGU Bachelors Degree and then went on to get a Master's Degree from a more recognizable college. She shaved 3-4 years off her full masters program that way (if you consider the time spent for the Bachelors degree in that process) and at the end of the day she is applying on her resume that she has a Master's from a recognizable university name that raises eye brows.

I am currently looking at doing the same.

If you do the math, it is possible to get a WGU Bachelors Degree + Full 2-Year Master's Degree program from a "recognizable" school for less money and in less time than most people are spending to get a bachelors degree from an unrecognizable community college.\

That's a life hack for anyone looking for Master's programs.

The US government is very big on requiring ABET accredited degrees for engineering. I've never gotten a straight answer on whether this is the case for CS or not.

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