I got a computer science degree in 3 months for less than $5000 (2020)
miguelrochefort.com
miguelrochefort.com
Many WGU students HATE these types of articles, because they undermine the legitimacy of WGU.
WGU was not designed for traditional students, it was 100% designed for working professionals, where WGU will only admit you with a reasonable amount of experience in your field.
WGU is regionally accredited, not nationally, and it's a non-profit. So it cannot be compared to University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, DeVry, etc.
It was founded by a group of governors out west, hence the name. They realized that there were many working adults who possessed a great depth of knowledge, from long working in their fields, yet they had no paper credentials to show for that knowledge.
Their model is competency-based, so you must demonstrate you posses knowledge in any given domain. If you can prove you do then you can test out right away, if you fail to then they offer a variety of resources to allow you to get up to par. In many cases classes are tied to obtaining industry certifications.
It's not for everyone, but it is a far cry from a "degree mill." Does it really matter if a person that has knowledge got it from sitting in a seat, paying ungodly amounts of tuition, or if they got it from life experience? As long as a bar is set, and you can meet it, then that should be what really matters.
Just my personal experience, from having attended the university. Unfortunately life sidetracked my completion, but I hope to return one day soon, and complete my program.
There seems to be some discussion how european country like to have a stronger accreditation, so that is why I am asking what really is the case.
Is that different in Europe?
So Georgia Tech is rated H+ which usually means all recognized (but a lot of text one should read, to check if online degrees are ok)
WGU is H+/- with a warning for online degrees which recognize life experience. One should expect to get the recognition application rejected.
This is an example of a federal accreditation group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_Association_of_C...
I know American institutions can be very picky about what they accept, so they could be similar. Unless the standards are drastically different I feel any institution failing to recognize an education from another seems wrong, but that's a whole different rant.
I think the education system everywhere has much catching up to do with modern society. It used to be that much professional knowledge could really only be obtained in the classroom, now anyone with a desire and access to the Internet can learn much outside a classroom environment.
Kinda seems like my 4 years’ bachelor degree and whatever this ‘uni’ in the article is have radically different standards of what constitutes a degree.
The author learned a lot independently. There's a question of what to do with that knowledge. A system like WGU does a few things:
1) Identify gaps and help fill them. Independent learners almost always develop gaps. One benefits from bringing that knowledge to a uniform "undergrad CS degree" level
2) Provide a certification once that's done.
A traditional university degree takes 4 years, costs $200k, and has mixed quality. Being able to do 75% of that independently, and having an institution gap-fill for a few grand? That sounds awesome.
For brand recognition, I don't see WGU as any better or worse than the 4500+ other random universities and colleges in the US. It doesn't match the top few hundred, but that's okay. Most don't.
I'm not sure who would compare it to Phoenix, ITT Tech, DeVry, or other scams like that.
I'd much more place WGU as more a competitor to ASU. ASU is awesome, and is really trying to pioneer models of innovative, quality, low-cost, scalable education.
I hope one of them succeeds.
By the way, yourself being a former WGU student, would you recommend WGU to a super-gifted kid? E.g. having someone start college there at e.g. age 13? That, plus CMU OMSCS, seems like something they could finish by age 17. Socially, I'm not sure they'd do well starting traditional college early. Academically, middle / high school seems like a waste of time.
It's really important to note that I'm not particularly gifted. I was required to work "real jobs" over the summer starting at 15 and the only way to convince my parents that programming was a "real job" was to make as much as I could working at the community pool. After the first summer I kept working over the semesters nearly full time. I was doing freelance Perl CGI and PHP+HTML+JS junk. my main advantages were:
1) I could do piece work for $8/hr,
(2) I presented professionally because I was usually the only native English speaker bidding on the project,
(3) I was a single person doing full stack + sales/bidding (the competing offshore outfits mostly sliced up labor between backend, frontend, and sales due to language barriers and extremely low-skilled programming labor. For projects of the size I was bidding on this introduced a lot of expenses/overhead without any real advantages), and
(4) I was available in US time zones when bidding on these projects. Even during the school year my after-school availability was way better than the offshore shops could usually offer, and I could answer emails during the school day.
To reiterate: not a genius! Just a kid slinging super simple HTML+JS+SQL+PHP/Perl. I didn't even know SQL for real; I knew CREATE, SELECT (without joins), UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE. Joins were implemented using multiple queries and for loops. Didn't matter for my clients, who just wanted cheap CMSes/ordering systems/etc. for random folks' .com get rich quick schemes, pizza shops who thought they really needed a customer website, etc. I'm pretty sure grubhub/slice/google maps/social media destroyed my old market a decade ago ;)
So a real genius getting there by 13 seems like an extreme outlier but not at all impossible.
As for recommending it to a super-gifted kid - I don't think the program is setup to allow that. You have to have a high-school diploma and at least a bit of work experience to even be admitted. I also think that one drawback of the program is that you can graduate without having written a ton of code, which is fine for someone who's been doing it for a long time, but less ideal for someone who hasn't?
1) A GED would be trivial for this kid. So the high school diploma, I'm not worried about.
2) Kid started doing (real, not Scratch) programming in 1st grade. I'm not worried about coding experience or computer science background. I am worried about software engineering background, but that could come later.
As at the end of the day. The reality is it's about who you know. And if your more concerned about the degree. Your missing the point.
We had obviously gifted kids in my school and they came across as arrogant and entitled. 15 years later, most of them went on to get graduate degrees but don’t seem to be progressing socially (i.e. absent from reunions, weddings, small town bar run-ins)
The test might be trivial, but being able to take it isn't trivial if you don't meet the age requirements.
I just did a web search. I didn't realize they had age requirements. Thank you.
My mother dropped out at 14 and got a GED by 15 back in the 70s because she was so bored. (Parents didn't believe university was for girls, so that wasn't an option).
Seems like a way to screw over a particular subset of kids.
My parents took the middle approach: skipping grades and doing gifted and talented programs. It still wasn’t nearly fast enough. Socially it was still tough for me.
My only advice is don’t ignore the social aspect. Still there has to be a better way than sticking them in public school for 12 years. After-school activities like athletics might be helpful.
Good luck!
Speaking as someone who went to university at 13: Socially I fit in better with my intellectual peers than my chronological peers. Which isn't to say that I fit in well... but at least there was a level of mutual respect. Few educators appreciate the social distance created by a large IQ gap, probably because they haven't experienced it themselves.
The odds that an 18-22yo traditional college student will overlook a 5-9 year age gap because you share a lot of interests and can have interesting conversations are much higher than the odds that another 13yo will overlook the fact that you have no shared interests at all because hey, you're the same age.
I found it extremely difficult to make friends until I got out from under the limiting influence of my parents who didn't want their kid to be "weird."
Now I have a whole bunch of weird friends who are fascinating, joyful dorks, so it's not hopeless either way, but I'd have loved to experience this much sooner.
I do think listening to any of the professional educators who unanimously and repeatedly told my parents it would have been better to accelerate my path through school would have been a good idea.
Do you have any experience with folks who went to secondary education early? Because I was miserable in high school bored out of my mind and left 1 year only and my only regret was not leaving even earlier like some of my peers did. Speaking platitudes like "the grass is always greener" may make you feel better but it doesn't line up with 25% of the profiles of students I've seen go to secondary education early (and I know a lot of them).
I did hang out with a 15-year-old at college and he seemed to have a relatively normal college experience.
Personally I had a 2 year gap between high school and university, so I went from being one of the youngest in my year to one of the oldest,which was kinda nice. Plus the time away taught me some self reliance so college was pretty easy to adjust to.
So yes, in the modal case (advancing with the cohort) a student entering college will start at 17 years old if their birthday is late in the year.
I see both as same odds - mainly zero.
A lot of people ITT who are like, “I’m so high IQ - I went to college when I was 13” like many of us out here didn’t have that option. (Rubs very much the same way of r/iamverysmart) It’s not as difficult as people make it sound. Most of your education growing up is a complete joke - it’s just babysitting. Exclaiming that you were some version of detective Conan is also quite cringe.
You seem to have read it as some kind of bragging, but I see no reason to interpret it that way.
Also the source of one of those amusing HN exchanges where people think everyone else is run of the mill. You know the one.
Alas, only once.
Idk why people on HN assume this is the first time I’ve had to deal with a Putnam winner (or a fields medalist), a celebrity, a billionaire, etc. I live in SV after all. I’ve talked to all of these folks many times. I talk to this person no different than any of the other people I’ve talked to. They deserve no different when they say such things. I judge what they say and are actively doing - not what past accomplishments they have made in some unrelated field.
Whatever. Essentially, I like this guy's software and he seems fairly personable, so I'm inclined to not really believe he's "I'm so much smarter than you"ing a bunch of people.
That's not really what he said at all. He said he fit in somewhat better with his intellectual peers than with his age cohort. There's nothing really controversial about that at all. Most people prefer the company of those with whom they share common intellectual pursuits and viewpoint over those for whom their only common factor is age. Often physical and mental age councide but when they don't, it doesn't seem unreasonable that common mentality would be a stronger bond.
And even if the sentiment were elitist (which I dispute) I don't think I'm the context of this discussion, it deserves a hostile response. I appreciate the individual sharing his personal experience, even if I wouldn't qualify as the type of person he'd share a beer with.
I'm not that smart compared to the other people you replied to but smart is relative. I chose to go to the 3rd best high school in my mediocre Romanian town and had the highest entry grade in the entire high school. When it came to math I would grok the concepts by simply reading on my own 30 minutes before class while my peers would need tutors and still not get it.
Do you think I had a good time in high school? What my peers lacked in math skill they gained in ego preservation. They saw intelligence as a threat that must be neutralized. I doubt my story is that different. I'm telling you this because it's pretty obvious you did not live it so you might gain some empathy and let go of your resentment
He seems to think his parents made the right choice. I wanted to confirm that I thought the choice my parents made was the wrong one.
You can read bragging into it if you really want, but it's extrinsic to the conversation.
1) Doesn't have very many friends
2) Which doesn't give many opportunities to practice social interactions
Which sort of cycles back on itself. It's hurting them a lot more than it's hurting you.
Society could use a lot more empathy.
I think the odds are honestly in better favor of the 13YO. if only because a 5 year age gap for an 18 YO is a magnitude different than a 5 year age gap for a 30 year old, or even a 24 year old.
It may even be a legal risk depending on the profiling of each peer for the former. Of no fault of either party, just of the fault of decades of bad actors and a culture highlighting them.
I have a lot of friends and coulleages like that now, but I can't imagine them even giving me the time of day if we met a decade prior and somehow all had identical interests.
*Thinks of course the creator of Tarsnap was a child prodigy.
I am much more a fan of their work on diffing
A few genuine questions.
Have you found the gap to be self-imposed (the kind where you struggle to keep a conversation going with a stupid person) or is the result of projection by your peers (where they feel uncomfortable having you around because you are smarter, and that makes them insecure about themselves)?
Is the social distance visible only in domains where you have devoted time to excelling in, or do you experience it in domains outside your expertise / in random conversions too ?
Do you think you benefitted from jumping to university so soon in life ?
A lot of the difficulty came down to a lack of shared concepts. To me, partial derivatives are very natural concepts and I would get a few sentences into describing something in terms of partials before I remembered that I was talking to people who didn't even know what those were. (Ditto for differential equations, vector spaces, orthogonality...). Over the years I've learned to a limited extent how to convey ideas without drawing on terminology which most people aren't familiar with, but that has taken decades of practice.
I absolutely benefited from going to university early -- and I also benefited from staying in school. I only finished high school a year early, but spent 4 years taking high school and university courses concurrently. While I gained very little socially from high school, I had a couple excellent teachers there and learned some useful material in other subjects. I've met people who dropped out of high school to attend university full time who struck me as shockingly ignorant of e.g. history.
This is an interesting complaint. I would argue that everyone whose knowledge of history consists of the entirety of their high school curriculum, with nothing forgotten, is shockingly ignorant of history.
After reading one relatively short book on the history of China, ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465015808/ ), I had a Chinese high school student remark to me on how unusual it was for her to find someone who could talk about Chinese history. But I was meeting only the lowest possible bar.
If someone is shockingly ignorant of history, that's not because they missed high school; it's a problem that high school doesn't try to address and isn't intended to.
A low bar but certainly not the lowest possible bar.
This is something you should - uh - think about.
I mean this honestly. Being able to convey ideas to many people of different backgrounds is a skill and an intellectual pursuit. If you’re incapable of talking to people except in nerd shit - you’re not really any smarter or whatnot than them. You’re just insular.
You’re just insular
you’re not really any smarter
God damn. So cringe. I say this as someone who also studied math and got his degree in it. Incredibly cringe.
Indeed, and that is totally okay for a 13 year old to have limits. You can't expect a kid to have any real maturity. People only really get good at communicating with age, and even then it is hard.
This is exactly my point, and why University was a far better social experience for me than high school.
I think this is one of the most remarkable lifeskills to have. Personally, I feel stupid when I find myself between a jargon laced conversation. On the other hand, I respond very well to clearly communicated (not ELI5, but simple) ideas.
Putting things across as simply as possible is very difficult to master IMO.
It's amazing how many conversations you can have about interesting subjects (and thereby dodge smalltalk) by simply rewording them into something everybody at the table can understand.
We just weren't thinking on the same planes. My mind made most connections so quickly and automatically that I didn't realize other people's didn't. I didn't know why I couldn't have a conversation with other children. I just knew it didn't work. They would just stare at me and then leave. I knew I could talk to adults fine, but I didn't have enough life experience to realize the other kids couldn't make mental connections like I could.
It was actually when my younger sister started school that it clicked. I knew she was a smart girl, but academic subjects were surprisingly hard for her. That was when I realized someone could be smart, but have to take time to learn certain things, or at least in certain contexts, and that the things they learned might have to be layered on top of each other slowly.
Prior to that, my only experience had been of someone's presenting an idea to me and my immediately understanding it. It's hard to relate to other people, especially children, when you don't have that conceptual framework.
Now of course interacting with people that are twice my age during my teens has produced some bonus problems in my social skills, but the alternative here is feeling completely isolated, not somehow magically learning to be normal™ person™ as many educators seem to think.
This child does great with his peers. They relate around activities like soccer or other normal kid stuff. It hasn't been a problem yet. He's bored out of his wits in class, but the social stuff is fine.
I also don't think he has the maturity to do well with kids much older than him. College students can interact around intellectual interests just fine, but to be blunt, he'd just come off as super-obnoxious to college-age kids (not in a snooty way, but in the same way as most other kids his age). I don't think he'd make many friends there.
I was admitted under this category, and when my "one or two" courses ended up stretching into half a degree... well, as long as I was getting mostly A+ grades, nobody was going to step in to say that I wasn't allowed to take any more courses.
As a practical matter, I'm sure it helped that my father was a Professor of Chemistry and a widely-respected member of the University Senate. When my admission required approval from the Dean of Science, his response was "no problem, I'll see him at lunch tomorrow". I like to think that I could have gotten in without that connection, but having someone on the inside who knew how the system worked absolutely made things run more smoothly.
Large social gaps are hard to bridge too, and I’d imagine that age is one of those things.
People like genius children/prodigies that don't have a natural peer group require trade offs find them one or else they lose out on important non-intellectual skills.
I think that goes for any leanrer, independent or traditional. Ask a random sample of college graduates to lecture for an hour on their degree focus and you will see the evidence of this.
Accreditation is important, especially if the school is not well known nationally.
>That, plus CMU OMSCS, seems like something they could finish by age 17. Socially, I'm not sure they'd do well starting traditional college early. Academically, middle / high school seems like a waste of time.
Apparently even high school is a waste of time. What's not a waste of time for you? Are you to be put directly as head of engineering at Tesla so that someone as gifted as you doesn't "waste" their precious time?
I understand there's some stigma for community colleges but you can get a great education without getting anywhere near 200K. Won't be Ivy League though.
For example, Stony Brooks costs 10K in tuition per year for in-state residents.
Swap that for a random CA university and we're at $150k (using their numbers!)
If you focus on tuition alone it's cheaper, but room and board do add up, and if you come from out-of-state you're even worse off.
People under-estimate the total cost of school: housing is going to be the biggest expense in CA.
It's insane to think that only a few decades prior, the CSU/UC system was almost entirely covered with pell-grants and student aid if you were from CA, a UC you could cover with just a PT job, or working FT in the Summer.
Now it's entirely impossible to walk out without high 5 to low 6 digits worth of debt even if you live with your parents.
We took the envy of the University system in the US and turned it over to the administrative cronies that came from banks and hedge-funds who monetized it 20 ways from Sunday in order to bleed the students dry and wasted it on bloarted salaries form themselves and more needless things to attract foreign money into the the campuses while gutting the academic programs where ever possible--we used such crappy lab equipment in most of my undergrad it was astonishing where all the money went in student and lab fees.
I went to several CSUs, as well as did summer school or took extra elective at Community colleges to expedite my graduation date and to make up for a lost semester due to a severe car accident, and the level of BS I went through only to see how these leeches operated still makes my blood boil.
I was in an impacted major, Biology, in one of the major 'party schools' in the CSU system and these bastards prioritized admission into the department based on out of state and non-US based tuition rates.
They didn't even hide it, either: they only offered a class you needed to graduate once a year and instead of opening up the section for more students they capped it unless you were from out-of state or out of US and could ten petetion for it based on an 'urgency' basis.
I'm glad they went to Zoom school model, because it shows just how unnecessary 99% of the expenses are and we're re-thinking how we actually educate and accredit degrees.
I got into a well-known University in Europe with a strong AI and ML CompSci program after having founded a fintech startup and my work experience working for a megacorp.
And to be honest, I now realize that my actual worth was way higher even back then (an honors student with letters of recommendation) but I put up with a lot of it because of the 2008 financial crisis that hit me/my family really hard economically as well as the CSUs particularly bad (they cut the budgets hard) and made us all scramble for the doors in order to graduate and try to get into the horrible job market for the few jobs left over.
In short, I will laugh on the grave of traditional academia, which cannot come soon enough.
2 years community college: 4 semesters, ~$1,400
2 years university: 9 quarters (took 1 summer), ~$12,500
These are early 2010's numbers in California, not a private university.
I look back and I am pleased with the education I received for the most part, especially in my major (CS)
It's totally doable to end up debt free with a part time job while living at home. Or easily payable after graduation.
I have no personal experience with WGU or Phoenix or other online unis. But I've met a few folks who graduated from lesser schools (outside the top 200) on traditional campuses. Unless those kids were preternaturally bright and took the initiative to teach themselves (fill the gaps), they often face an uphill battle to recover from the poor preparation that an undemanding and incomplete academic program can inflict on 1) their ability to compete in those skills on the open market and 2) their passion for learning. IMHO, that's a high price to pay.
My advice: don't cheap out on your education.
Jesus. Is this how much CS degrees cost in America? I thought that price was only for Medicine :headexplode:
What is "these types of articles"? How does this one "undermine the legitimacy of WGU"? Even a cursory skim-through of the article would show that the author worked hard and learned all of the material that they then passed exams on at WGU. They don't make it out to be a "degree mill" in any way whatsoever.
WGU is accredited by NWCCU, which is the same as the University of Utah, University of Washington, etc.. See: https://nwccu.org/member-institutions/directory/
Is WGU?
CMU and Stanford don't need anyone or any organization to tell the world they do a good job educating CS students. Not so clear if the CS dept is at the Small Town Liberal Arts College and Seminary.
But the other 4,999 schools CS programs, like the one being discussed at WGU, the source of the accreditation is a valuable signal.
No, having national accreditation would be a red flag.
Regional is the gold standard. (Yes, the names make it sound backwards; it is what it is.)
That said, those that have ample available time, and are driven, can benefit greatly from the flexibility of the model. You only pay for the amount of credits you enrolled in for the semester, but when you complete those classes you can accelerate your other classes, without paying extra. It must be done with care though, as you could find yourself with all the classes you were versed in already knocked out for the next semester, and only tougher classes left over. I found that out the hard way.
It is a degree mill.
The difficulty and material of the courses does not in any way compare to what you would get at a real university.
In some cases, degrees can be harmful by elevating incompetent, ignorant, entitled graduates to positions they shouldn't have, particularly in middle management. Getting a degree is not paying your dues or putting in time toward something useful. It can be, but it depends on the individual, so degrees fail as a shibboleth for utility.
The dilution of quality caused by profit based perverse incentives, the cultural issues grounded in grievance studies, and the enormous wealth of high quality material and alternatives to formal education have radically changed what academia means to society going forward.
Gatekeeping for profit and not discriminating between the value of a degree in mathematics and a degree in underwater basket weaving, eliminating political, ideological, and epistemic diversity have resulted in a world where degrees increasingly mean you simply paid money to exist in the presence of other folks with paper over a sufficient length of time that all parties involved felt satisfied with the kabuki show.
Accreditation through a legitimate culture of intellectual peers in which institutional academia has earned the respect and dedication of its members approaches the ideal case. Few, if any, American institutions pass muster. They're not without value, and some departments are world class, but they exist in relation to near total institutional failure, and they are infecting the rest of the world.
Academic journals, outdated pedagogy, DIE gatekeeping, woke babysitting and infantilized students are just the most obvious rot.
American academia has a lot of soul searching and hard work to do, or it's going to be displaced by something better that serves the need for legitimate accreditation in society. I personally don't want that to be private corporations, and I'm rooting for the professors and alumni who want to preserve the integrity of their institutions.
So the headline makes it sound like "look, here's an easy way to get a piece of paper that says you have a CS degree" when the reality is that they'd already done a lot of the work before enrolling and as AviationAtom notes, WGU works off demonstrating that you have the knowledge.
This isn't "go from zero to CS degree in 3 months". This is "if you already know a lot of your CS stuff, you can work really hard filling in the remaining gaps and showing that you know what you're doing and get a degree in 3 months." Between the associate's degree, a semester at Concordia, and the pre-WGU online courses, they'd probably spent 2-3 years learning.
I think the issue is that the title makes it seem like it's easy. It probably isn't the hardest program, but a decent amount of the author's ease comes from the fact that they had already filled most of the requirements - and just needed to demonstrate their competency. Which seems like it's part of the point according to AviationAtom.
It's pretty disingenious to imply the only thing traditional degree-holding grad students have over somebody with only industry is a "piece of paper". I say this as a former grad student who (with a degree) came out of industry. There are plenty of underwhelming students with only academic experience, but if you had industry-credit and a few terms, where would you get the other skills that I'd argue are far more important than practical experience?
That's the situation I'm in, and somebody recently suggested I check out WGU. I was thinking of doing a Master's degree, and it is an absolute bedrock requirement everywhere I've looked that you have a Bachelor's to apply to the Master's program. Would I get more out of spending 8 years doing a BS part time in the traditional way? I'm sure. Am I going to do that just so I can do a Master's? Fuck no. But if I can get the piece of paper in 6 months, that's starting to seem doable.
The UK option is interesting. For those curious, here's the bit explaining that they normally expect a Bachelor's but will consider experience: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/study/index.html
And the total cost is ~$50k: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/study/Fees_2022-23.pdf
But there is not more to being locked out of working abroad, high-level corporate jobs, and certain fields than a piece of paper. A seriously below average traditional student has access to all of these things, while a high performing, high knowledge person doesn't, simply because they took a different life path.
They assumed they could just continue working, as they started without a degree and made a career out of it.
Then they hit hard walls. Because they never finished out a couple credits in nonsense courses.
But I belive the author was returning to school to get an official qualification after some years of work-experience. (or did I read that wrong?) in that context the ancillaries are less valuable.
Certainly I think a place that tests knowledge for the purpose of recognizing levels achieved already through work experience is a really valuable part of the education chain.
I don't disagree with that. I just disagree with the author for discounting the value of both the social status and network connections that traditional, elite universities offer.
I know this is tangentially related, but this was so demoralizing I kind of gave up on game dev altogether.
Just want to point out for those that may not know, 85% of universities in the U.S. are regionally accredited [1]. Regional accreditation, which WGU has, is the most prestigious and widely-recognized [1]. Some folks may mistake that nationally is "better", but, as you'll see from the link below, that simply is not the case.
[1] https://www.online.drexel.edu/news/national-vs-regional-accr...
What's crazy to me is that it wasn't always the case that you had to go through the formal process of school to achieve credentialing. If you were truly exceptional, and could prove that, you could then get the required credential.
For example it used to be the case that you didn't need to go to law school to take the bar exam. You still don't in a few US states. Law school might make it a million times easier to learn the law and pass, but if you already know it why not go straight to the test?
Another, admittedly extreme, case was Ludwig Wittgenstein getting his PhD from Trinity College. He had already written the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on his own, then basically showed up and presented it as his dissertation, defended it, mocked his friend Bertrand Russel during defense and got the PhD.
What's crazy to me is that if Wittgenstein was alive today he would not be able to achieve this anywhere. There are plenty of people out there who have done ground breaking work in their field, but because of the orthodoxy today, have zero chance of getting a PhD without going through the entire process.
There's such a huge difference between schools saying "you technically don't need us to get the credential, but it's going to be much, much harder to go it your own way" than "it doesn't matter what you do, if you don't sit here and play by our rules you will never be recognized".
This is where it's hard not to get pretty cynical about the state of higher education today.
> What's crazy to me is that if Wittgenstein was alive today he would not be able to achieve this anywhere.
Not so. Cambridge still does it, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey in 2000.
- A live human proctor watches your screen and webcam the whole time.
- You need to show a 360 degree view of your room, walls, ceiling, table, floor, ears, scratch paper, etc.
- You must use an external webcam elevated on a stand that can see both you and your screen at all times.
- You must show your face and your passport or ID card before each exam.
- You can’t talk, stand up, get out of view, or take a break during the exam.
Although I’m sure some people could find a way to cheat, they make it extremely difficult. I have taken over 30 online proctored exams from WGU, Study.com, Sophia.org, Saylor.org, TOEFL, and Georgia Tech’s OMSCS, and I can confidently say that WGU’s proctoring process was by far the strictest.
> Their model is competency-based, so you must demonstrate you posses knowledge in any given domain.
The guy took courses at college, online, and worked in the field for over a decade before speedrunning WGU. It seems to me he’s the exact model of “demonstrating competence” that you mention - I don’t see how that makes WGU out to be a degree mill.
New headline incoming:
> WGU graduates HATE this! Learn their SECRET, how YOU TOO could GRADUATE IN LESS THAN 3 MONTHS FOR ONLY $5,000
that's a big problem in software TBF. The bar is all over which ways and changes dramatically based on the domain. If we can't agree on a bar, there's not much point in the endless arguments that result while pointing to our own interpretations
> Does it really matter if a person that has knowledge got it from sitting in a seat, paying ungodly amounts of tuition, or if they got it from life experience?
well, the real life experience is much more preferable. But the general model of professional industries unfortunately require sitting in a seat for years and getting a piece of paper before resetting 80% of what you learned with imperfect realities.
I'm glad there is an option like this for a developer thrown out of the market without a degree to fast track their way to that piece of paper, but it's a shame that piece of paper is held in such high regards
You also hadn't completed reading the article. The author covers all of your points in a positive way that in no way describes the institution as a "degree mill".
This passage underscores how, for this guy and whoever he was selling himself to, a CS degree was just a credential. He did not have much intention of actually learning anything. That’s (I believe) fundamentally different than most people who seek college degrees.
This is also how the programs are designed - if you fail the course there's no hand holding, you have to do it again or give up the degree. And the support that large universities give for their introductory courses is minimal, so generally your resources consist of the textbook and your lecture notes. The lectures online are just as good if you actually want to learn the material.
My dad, who was a college athlete, used that term a lot to express frustration at systems which no longer served their purpose and were acting performatively.
Did you intend to include a "not" as in "not for the credentials"? I would think you do a tough EE or Physics (or Classics) because you want to learn the stuff.
That seemed to be the case when I was at MIT, though that was a generation ago. Everybody seemed into their work, despite claiming to be upset by the course load. Complaining about it (IHTFP) seemed to be more of a ritual or social activity rather than earnest protest.
Seems like a colossal waste of time and resources to pay for a school and not enjoy it much less learn anything. A modern bonfire of the vanities.
I still learn a lot by reading, but many things do require interaction and guidance.
> Did you go to MIT because you wanted a high course load or because you wanted a prestigious degree?
I lost my diploma within a couple of hours of receiving it and nobody has ever asked me for it. I went there to learn things I thought I wouldn’t be able to learn anywhere else. At the time (early 80s) my high school classmates didn’t even consider it a prestigious school — those were the ivy leagues.
I went to NYU Gallatin for a bit and really wondered what in the world anyone seeing that on a cv would think.
Can you explain that?
But regarding Study.com, I think that their classes for CS are painful and horrible, but probably the same quality as countless physical schools out there.
If you talk to many recruiters, depending on the field, the older person's work, supervisorial/managerial experience, and any references can be much more of the deciding factor. Don't get me wrong, degrees and certifications are very nice decorations, but there is no getting around who you know and doing well on the interview.
That a working adult who has already established themselves professionally gets the degree in their later years, can be more about personal pride and dedication to their field, to make sure there isn't any gaps in their knowledge. And perhaps that's where the emphasis should be, showing personal growth and development. Someone taking the time to become better at what they do.
>I saw many opportunities, especially abroad, that were out of reach because I didn’t have the required papers. I felt ready for graduate school but couldn’t get admitted. I had to work harder to prove myself to employers.
I just really like computer science, and if I didn't have to work for money, I'd probably spend a substantial portion of my energy learning and playing around with it.
(You're probably right about the average person though: most of my ex-classmates don't care much for computer science, they just wanted well paying jobs—or else didn't know what else to do and went, "Well, I guess I'm good at computers, so...")
I'm not very good at formal education though, so my approach is basically to learn everything before I go back to university, via https://teachyourselfcs.com/
Though at that point I question the value of the actual university, especially as the ones I've been to do not really teach the things I'm interested in, let alone in the way that suits me... heck, even MIT (my benchmark for "a good university") dropped SICP! So I might just get one of those online degrees instead.
If teaching yourself everything before going to university seems odd, consider that university expects you to self-teach anyway -- the university just provides the external motivation (you paid a lot of money and people will judge you if you fail), along with its own complications (poorly designed/scheduled courses, depressingly unmotivated classmates/project partners, sleep-inducing (and sometimes) mandatory lectures).
It saddens me when people don't value a well-rounded education. I find curiosity and learning to be a fantastic thing for all of life.
Product tying is often portrayed as immoral, it is even illegal in many places. Why we force a major part of our society to go through a practice that is similar in many ways but is far more expensive is beyond my understanding.
Much like any other tool or instrument, a degree is invaluable if you have something in mind to use it for. If not, sure, it's just 4 years of trivia but it's pretty clear that's not the fault of the degree.
If this were true, college giving programs wouldn't get funded. Here's how college giving works:
1. call up an alum
2. remind them what a great time they had during college
3. ask them if they would like a future student to have that kind of experience
4. take down the credit card number for a donation, because that's all it takes to get the wallets to open.
If college were really a credential mill, reminding people of their time in college wouldn't inspire them to open their wallets to give us money for nothing in return.
For many/most degrees in the US, most folks are just going through the academic motions for the piece of paper and/or the college social experience.
“Serious” students are largely only found in degree programs that have weeder courses.
Other schools make you apply to the major, and that process just weeds out those the dept thinks are not suited for the program.
I noticed this recently while looking at MIT's computer science program for a data structures class I could recommend to a family member.
Apparently MIT doesn't have an intro to data structures class. The I guess the assumption is that everyone applying to the program got their linked list/searching/sorting knowledge before beginning the program. They have a number of algorithm/datastructures classes but none of them teach the basic concepts. Similarly. I don't think they have an algebra I class (they have one called that, but its not what one learns in HS algebra, has calc/etc as prereqs). That might make sense because the basics of algebra are fairly consistent across HS curriculum and everyone takes it, but comp sci/data structures classes are all over the place, and I can see situations where a subset of students is scrambling to understand pointer linking/etc in the intro to algorithms class they have someone outside of the major taking their into to CS classes.
My school wasn't that mean. I think the programming II class was the weed class, and I think the deciding factor was that the projects just took a lot more time than homework you're likely to get in other 100 level courses. I had no CS background but with enough time I got through the homework. Not everyone had the time or the interest.
Probably the hardest one was Operating Systems. First day of class, you’re told not all of you will be here by the end of the class and it was true.
Fortunately we were graded at milestones, and our sins (bugs) were forgiven by replacing our individual buggy implementations with known working implementations that covered the concepts up to that point.
Luckily we were able to use C. We basically implemented file systems, shell executions, schedulers etc.
Only issue was if you had a race condition that wasn’t picked up in the earlier stages. GOOD luck finding that
A non-zero number at “competitive” schools in programs with reputations to uphold.
At my school, the engineering college was perpetually irritated because the Arts and Sciences college was using one of their required courses as a weed-out class for pre-meds, so there were perfectly good engineers failing prerequisites for no good reason.
I have no idea about airplane parts, but I would not call an engineering student "perfectly good" if they couldn't make it through an engineering pre-med weeder. The level of technical ability I expect from an engineer is an order of magnitude greater than a doctor. They should be crushing it.
I have heard that some European universities are this way.
I don't know if it was intentional or just the collective effect of having a bunch of professors with no teaching skills and god complexes who hated engaging with undergrads, happy to assign 40 hours of work per week per class with no regard to the fact that students are in 3 other equally-difficult classes.
Mostly (that I know of) people didn't switch out though, they just took the terrible treatment as it was supposedly normal to have a terrible GPA and terrible time in the STEM majors there. Also there were a lot of international students in the programs - I doubt going to America to study engineering and coming back with a liberal arts degree was an option for them.
Personally, I switched into Industrial Engineering which had notably fewer hard sciences requirements. Still miserable, but less so.
I also managed to find a loophole where each engineering major had its own stats class that was 95% the same content, then vaguely applying it to a problem in that field of study in a final project. So I satisfied my Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, etc. requirements by just taking MechE Stats and ChemE Stats.
They closed that loophole by the time I graduated by having one unified Stats course for all engineering majors.
Was it normal, or was that just what you and your friend group experienced? Is there any hard data?
I find it hard to believe that a 2.75 GPA would be anything but the bottom 10% or less of students.
Some Googling tells me the average final GPA for an engineer there is between 3.3 and 3.4, meaning a lot of people are going to graduate with much lower grades than that. I eventually graduated with a 3.5, but I was below 3 for quite some time. I had two Cs, a fair amount of low As, and a lot of Bs.
What tended to happen was that your GPA increases throughout your time in undergrad because:
* classes are easier later in the major, or they seem easier because you're more directly interested in the content and your classes up to this point have built up the base knowledge, rather than being the freshman year survey of "all the hardest but largely unrelated science classes all at once"
* your study skills improve
This doesn't really excuse how the students are treated in my opinion, both by the professors and generally how the system was set up. Obviously hard things are hard, but there were many, many brilliant students in a very dark place because the school just throws them in the deep end and says "fuck you".
Something like MIT's first semester being pass/fail only could have gone a long way.
Also we were on the quarter system, and engineers needed an absurd 48 classes to graduate, which is a full 4-class schedule every quarter without a single drop or failure in order to graduate on time.
These classes are the same content as full-semester classes at other schools, but crammed into 10 weeks to fit the quarter system.
My school seemed to revel in how hard it was, kids and professors would constantly disparage other top schools saying they were practicing grade inflation. To what degree that is true, who knows. Anytime you go to a top-but-not-Ivy-league school, people are going to talk about oh why our school is actually more legit, etc, whatever. Seemed like half jealousy and half Stockholm syndrome to me.
IIRC, for software/programming, any early class heavy with pointers/hardware/math served as a weeding function. So I'm not sure how students won't be pushed out at some point if they can't do the work.
I think this is actually a reasonable policy since it allows for someone who has great potential but lacks the maturity to apply themselves in lower grades. They still have an opportunity to turn things around and become substantial contributors.
These two are largely diametrically opposed.
- Any professor bringing in significant grant money is at an R1 school.
- R1 schools are famous for bad teaching by the tenured faculty, largely because quality teaching doesn’t gain them much.
- Quality teaching can be found, often in abundance, at small colleges. Some of these colleges do not have weeder courses. There are some serious students at these colleges. These are the rare exceptions, imho.
Some courses are just hard because the concepts are hard. If you're not down to clown, you're not going to make it past it.
Some courses are deliberate obstacles. The degree program at the university I attended had a single course that essentially pivoted you from the 200 level courses to the 300 level courses. It was always full due to it being a requirement and having a high failure rate necessitating people to retake it multiple times.
I never got a chance to take it because I ran out of lower level courses and electives to take to maintain full time status. Without full time status, I couldn't maintain my financial aid. Without my financial aid, I couldn't afford college.
A couple of years later, the program was restructured and the "pivot" was removed. As was other bullshit one was forced to take. If I had started the program a year later, I could have actually completed it. Or if I could have just taken the class. I never struggled with the material.
I went to a top 20 university, even higher ranked CS program. There were plenty of weeder courses. There were also plenty of students that were only there to get the piece of paper they believed, probably rightly, was necessary to get the job they wanted. All of the CS courses were recorded, attendance never mandatory for lectures. It was not uncommon at all for lectures to be less than half full due to students watching a months worth of lectures right before exams.
This is a problem I have with online classes as well, the material is all done already, why are we running it temporally, instead of DVR style.
You can still weed people out and have a strong "certification" program without requiring real time in person attendance.
I'm a serious viewer of Better Call Saul, but I watched it all right before exam time.
Actually I'd bet it's fundamentally the same reason most people get a degree. Especially lately, it has become in the US nearly the default post highschool choice, mostly due to implicit social pressure and America's unique lack of technical training schools like in e.g. Switzerland
I'd say that some people are looking for the "college experience." That's unrelated to education other than by proximity to it.
Most universities will let you audit a course, even graduate courses (if you can convince the professor you have experience in the area) just by paying a fee for that one class. You don't need a credential to do this.
Auditing classes is fine¹ but probably not enough value for me on its own to be worth the time and opportunity cost. I'd want the degree and I'm fairly sure I have the skills and knowledge to begin a CS masters. But I can't get one without doing a BS first, which makes it overall just not worth the effort.
¹ Actually is it? I hear this recommended a lot but I don't know anyone who has audited a university course while not being a student. I tried it once at my local state school but it was an amazingly complex process to get signed up, and then I was told I could have a slot if there was ever an open one. There never was.
How? I have quite a few colleagues with Master's in CS who are no more competent or well paid than me with no degree at all.
Oxford Software Engineering and Coursera Colorado Electrical Engineering will take people without Bachelor’s.
That directly contradicts what the author said about his intentions and experience:
>> While I had some PAs returned for improvements, I made sure to never fail an OA – even if retakes (up to 3-4) were allowed. It wasn’t a race, and my goal wasn’t to brute force my way into a degree. I came for the piece of paper, sure, but I also used it as an opportunity to assess and fill gaps in my knowledge. As a result, I never came close to failing an exam.
My experience talking with people suggests otherwise. When I became an adult and got a few years into my career, it was surprising to me how few people had anything interesting to say about their line of work even to the point of actual disinterest. Yeah, I know that a lot of people don't like to talk about work, but I'm saying that many people not only avoid the topic of their career but will even tell you they don't really care about or like what they do. I've had so many girls I went on dates with who were completely disengaged with their careers and even admitted they got a degree just to make money. I'm talking girls who were chemical engineers, biologists and so forth. Some genuinely liked what they do, but I think ~70% didn't give a f---.
I'm not blaming people in any way, but I think the reality is that not everyone, or even most, are doing what they do as part of a greater calling. They're just humans trying to get by and maybe have a family. The appreciating value of intellectual work along with the idea that everyone should be well-rounded contributes to this impression that people are doing things like getting degrees for reasons that aren't merely utilitarian, but most of the time I think that's not the case.
Any reason not to think that there was a selection bias for the sample of women who choose to go on a date via the platform you used, or choose to try a date with you?
I wonder how that gets weighted?
At competitive schools, most likely negatively. Just apply to the graduate program. Getting a WGU degree is not some sign of academic prowess that would rate one highly at an elite university — maybe the equivalent of perfect GPA in a college-bound HS curriculum. Being a big fish in a small pond is not exceptional.
At large state schools, they would just treat it like a CC and let you transfer in a certain number or credits (mostly non-major).
At most other schools, they won’t care as long as you pay them.
For world record, a few geniuses finished them in a year.
Fastest for someone I know personally: three years from one of the top universities in the US. This is realistic. Can't say they got much out of the program, though. All-in-all, it seemed like a waste of time.
I spent a __long__ time in graduate school, taking interesting courses, travelling the world, and just on learning and intellectual exploration. If you want that, get a Ph.D. Just realize your advisor is just that -- an advisor, and not your boss. You don't need to do what they tell you to do. If you want a slip of paper, consider why you want it, and if you wouldn't be better served by an MBA, MS, or something else. A Ph.D is not all that important, career-wise.
Rushing a BS makes complete sense to me. A Ph.D? Not so much.
Hmm, opposite feelings. I needed time in the bachelor to figure out what I wanted. For many scientific professionals, they might be publishing papers and could potentially even write a thesis on the side. This would enable them to get the degree and teach, should they want to.
My impression is that most people writing scientific papers are already somewhere in/through that pipeline.
Working in different contexts -- jobs, internships, volunteering, etc. -- has tended to work a lot better for that -- especially when the job is structured as a learning experience and not a profit-maximizing one. For me, travel was magical for figuring out who I wanted to be, but I wasn't doing tourism.
You have a lot more freedom to explore as a Ph.D than an undergrad too:
- No timeline
- You're not paying $40k per year, but getting a stipend
- Few fixed requirements
I got my Masters in a field I had already been working in for years, and the majority of the classes I took taught me nothing new since I already knew the subjects. A few taught me some things about subjects I was not familiar with and took some extra effort but overall the classes weren't that useful. But it was still important for me to get that credential on my resume.
I strongly disagree, you are missing the point of competency based education.
It's important to understand that an undergraduate CS degree needs to be accessible even to people without much IT experience. Some people come in with no experience with computers at all.
Look at the names of the first four courses:
C182: Introduction to IT
C172: Network and Security - Foundations
C779: Web Development Foundations
C173: Scripting and Programming - Foundations
Most people on Hacker News would be bored out of their minds taking these courses. Do you know what a computer is? Do you know the difference between HTML and Javascript? Can you write basic scripts using Bash or Python? That's what foundational courses are for.
If you are already beyond this level- which the author clearly was- you can just test out of them. Pass an exam to prove that you already know this stuff, so then you can move on to more advanced material that's more appropriate for you.
All across Europe you could generally get somewhere from 10-40% of your credits through "recognition of prior learning", although few students actually take these offers as they either don't know about them or are shy about the admin.
Most European education also is very affordable, e.g. Germany with generally less than 1000€/year for (excellent but crowded) public universities, and many side benefits such as free public transport.
A shady online degree is just four clicks away at CGNU online e-niversity.
Most colleges take four years to complete.
At CGNU, one year equals one click.
Because of that, most people assume college to be the natural course of progression, even if it isn't a good fit.
> He did not have much intention of actually learning anything.
It’s sounds more like you read this paragraph without much intention of actually understanding anything.
It's not just him. At least at the time I was doing it, it was a lot of people in the program. Maybe even half.
At the time, it annoyed me to no end. Not so much anymore. Programming is a well-paid profession with relatively few barriers to entry. The degree is (usually) one of them. Treating it as just another thing you need to get past in order to get to a good career is fine. Good even. Probably saner than my younger self's "I love this and it will consume my entire life for at least a decade" approach to the subject.
The older me kind of wants to have more people like this on my team. There's a certain ruthless logic and economy of effort here that really earns my respect. It might help counterbalance the tendency to get carried away and over-engineer things that many of us "CS is my life's calling" people tend to exhibit.
> An audit by the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General, released on September 21, 2017, "concluded that Western Governors University did not comply with the institutional eligibility requirement that limits the percentage of regular students who may enroll in correspondence courses" and that "at least 69 of the 102 courses were not designed to offer regular and substantive interaction with an instructor and, therefore, did not meet the regulatory definition of distance education."
They later kept their federal loan eligibility but it sounds like it might have been a case where they skated by due to a lack of clear guidance.
I think outside of the most elite schools this holds true no matter what. Most people just go through the course motions and that’s that, even engineering students
Its also a good gateway to get a useful Masters degree, like the two year Computer Science and Engineering degree from Georgia Tech, which if I recall correctly is very cost effective and highly regarded
- Canadians need a bachelor’s degree to work in the USA.
- Graduate programs typically require a bachelor’s degree.
Will I get left behind in the industry among a sea of Master's and Phds?
Some places, like Google, and to a lesser extent, Apple, Microsoft, and a few others, still really require you have to a degree (bachelors or otherwise), at least when hiring from the outside.
Other places, like Meta, often default to experience or degree, but not per se requiring both. There are of course exceptions at all of these places, however it seems to hold true in aggregate.
It won't hurt you, thats for sure, and if (when?) the job market tightens, those with degrees often get preferred to those without. That was my experience in the last down turn anyway
Though I wouldn't say it's true it won't hurt me - the debt is certainly harmful.
In my experience doors closed on me because I didn't hit that "checkmark". In fact I remember interviewing at a company (who's name I don't 100% remember, I interviewed a lot in the 2010s and I don't want to call out a company by mistake) and they somehow missed that I didn't have my degree yet and halted the entire interview process after the 2nd round because HR couldn't justify deviating from their norms. I also was told by many recruiters at that time that it was the only barrier to me getting into their hiring pipelines. I eventually caught a break and wound up at Apple, but its because I didn't get hired through traditional means (right place, right time).
This has changed as the labor pool tightened, and by 2020 I wasn't in the same position anymore regardless, but those first two situations have always stuck in my mind about how hard it is to get hired when automated systems gate keep things. I since learned alot about how to work around them (without directly hurting your prospects) and through experience know alot more about networking (though I'm no expert), so I'm a little better insulated, but it was much harder for me than it was for my peers who all got their CS degrees early in their careers comparatively.
Ironically, through pure grit, luck (can't underestimate luck to be honest) and my own drive I've ended up being very successful, but it took alot more work than it would have otherwise, I think. I believe truly I would have reached this point earlier in my career (I'm a Staff Engineer now at a mid sized startup in Silicon Valley) and been better off for it.
What is fake about this? And who prevents you from listening to MIT lectures, if you choose to?
An argument can be made that MIT's material is qualitatively better, but still, the smarter choice might be to get the credentialling from WGU and the materials from MIT at a lower overall cost.
and I am pretty sure there needs to be a lot of self-motivation to get this done, which in itself should be a good signal to future employers. Not all jobs need cutting CS research.
I spent months trying to get my brick-and-mortar to allow me to complete my B.S. remotely; I had dropped out after junior year for startup reasons.
Long story short, the idea that an adult working full time might want to complete their degree without dropping $65k wasn't acceptable (of course COVID forced the university remote.)
Then my partner began a WGU Master's program and told me about it.
Although I wasn't able to transfer in most of my courses (older than 5 years), I was able to transfer a chunk of gen-eds. Now I'm slowly but surely working through the degree, diving much deeper into math topics than I ever did before.
I have the time to actually understand things instead of passing by the skin of my teeth. I also have the choice to skip a topic entirely if I know its contents.
It can be a slog, and there are times where it appears a gargantuan task. But I'm learning, and the challenge of doing it while working full time gives me great confidence.
Make sure you match with an excellent mentor to cheer you on while holding you accountable.
Now, some things to consider:
* I value the friends and shared experience I made @ brick-and-mortar university. This doesn't replicate that at all.
* Prices, although relatively low, have risen.
* Self-motivation is critical.
* No detailed feedback on projects.
I appreciate it for what it is: a self-motivated, self-paced escape hatch for those who want to earn a degree, where your experience is valued, and your bank account is respected.
He was able to do this because:
1. Only foreign language classes and lab sciences had class-participation requirements
2. All classes published a syllabus so where possible he could start the major projects early
3. Most of the lower-division classes were a joke to a smart and motivated person anyways.
4. He convinced an academic advisor to sign off on it (this was arguably the hardest part).
If you're capable of completing 5 semesters worth in 2 semesters, you're probably capable of passing several of those tests with only a little studying over a Summer.
There were other classes without any official CLEP, so the process was to convince a board of professors to orally examine you on a day that they'd rather be with their family on vacation or doing research.
That, in my opinion, is how a merit based education should work. Instead, our system asks: Do you have the support system to and finances to enable you to spend 4 years without earning an income to complete a degree program?
The best I once did was only 48 credits (with the baseline for full-time study being 30 per semester, "normal" class giving 6 credits, european university so only a 3 year bachelors degree) and I was very tired after that semester :D
Some of it was stuff I knew really well and only spent an hour or two on, some of it was filler (I now have ITIL v4 and Project+ certifications that were annoying to get and mostly useless?), and some of it was new and interesting (Discrete Math, Computer Architecture, etc..). Overall, it didn't feel like markedly different curriculum from the in-person courses I took at other schools.
Aside from a few terrible classes (the AI course is just a horrendous waste of time), most of them were decent and I felt like I learned something from them. The overall curriculum is a little odd and probably not ideal for someone who has little programming experience. For example, the very first "scripting and programming" course uses C++ to build a simple command-line application, but then you never do anything with C++ again. What is the point of that? I understand how C++ can be useful in a learning context, but I don't think a brief introduction to it really does any good. Two of the biggest courses are big JavaFX projects, which ughh.. fine, but I think there are probably more useful things to teach.
I understand that a CS degree is more about theory than getting job-related skills, but a few of the decisions made serve neither very well. So if I had one knock on the program, it is that someone who comes in with little programming experience is probably going to come out of it without having written much code that resembles what they'd be doing in a job.
Overall, it was a really good experience and it feels good to finally finish up after all these years. I am currently applying for the Georgia Tech OMSCS program, which is a common route for WGU graduates. That one is fairly rigorous and cannot be sped through, so looking at several more years for that, but at the end of it all, a BS + MS in Computer Science in around 5 years and under $20k total seems like a decent result?
First, I realized I wanted to dig deeper into CS topics. I love this field more every year I am in it and wanted to round out my knowledge in some areas. Getting a master's degree and the courses that are part of that seemed like a good way to accomplish that - I've taught myself a lot over the years, but that route leaves some areas untouched. You don't always know what you don't know, plus having deadlines, goals, etc helps keep me on task even when something feels like it isn't immediately relevant. So, getting a BS was the first step in that goal.
Second, as I progress more through my career, there are some interesting positions that require, or at least favor, some kind of degree. I feel like having one or both gives me more options and flexibility.
What I would like to have is a topic approach one. It should be fully online with facilities for student communication such as Discord and online assignment/project submission.
One example: let's say I want to learn OS. The course chain will look like this: Programming class, Comp arch using C and assembly, Data structure, and then straight into OS.
In modern universities you can apply as independent students but the process is often a bit tedious. Also you have to go through a lot of red tapes just to remove some pre-requisite, e.g. as a Math student I don't need Discrete math, and as a Data Engineer I don't need the basic programming class at least, but in reality it's really difficult to get these done easily, if at all.
Of course I can just go to say Berkeley and download their course materials and learn for free. I figured I'm not smart/persistent enough to go through it on my own, so paying some $$ to get a proper learning platform is a better option. Really wish universities such as MIT or Berkeley has such options but I know it's too much for them. Once they open the gate there will be too large a demand to handle.
I've had another job since then and am earning more still. I would say at least for IT degrees WGU is worth it. It gives you the sheet of paper HR needs to let you in through the door for cheap, plus a bunch of certs that helps your resume stand out. Not a bad deal if you have any autodidactive capability.
I created a career in IT by getting a job (2000) and working full time over the years. I got certifications on my own that I transferred in for credit with WGU.
I have now been teaching full time in an IT program at a community college for 2 years and have also developed and manage 2 different MS level online classes for a traditional B&M university you have definitely heard of.
I can tell you, unequivocally, that what I had to do to complete my degrees with WGU was more rigorous than what I am requiring my students to do now (not my choice ... chain of command). The grading was harder at WGU than what I am permitted to do now with my students in the CC and B&M MS classes. I have now been on each side of the "WGU is not legit" argument. Anyone who thinks this is very wrong. No, it's not Stanford or MIT, it's not supposed to be ... though I'm sure grade inflation and special treatment happens at those places. There is no special treatment or grade inflation at WGU. You take a cert exam, take a test, or submit a paper to an unknown grader. You either pass or you don't. Simple as that. If you know your stuff, move on. If you don't ... learn it to move forward. It's meritocracy at its best. That is NOT the traditional University way.
I would included the OP in this ... he states in the end of his blog post that "The program is not the most rigorous." How does he know this having not attended other university recently? How does he know this not having developed or taught classes at other universities or colleges. He's right about the clear value that can be attained from combining knowledge, experience and work ethic to a WGU degree. He's wrong about the rigor.
IMO: WGU is not the place to LEARN, it's the place you PROVE WHAT YOU KNOW.
I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 - Dec 2020 (374 comments)
I wonder if places like RenTech would hire someone with a degree from rentech. I think that the DoD hires folks with degrees from UoP, so I'm not surprised they would. I saw a few folks on Linkedin work at Amazon with degrees from WGU and on their website they list that a few students got accepted to grad programs to Harvard etc. [1].
https://www.uopeople.edu/ WGU reminds me of the uopeople which is in the process of earning regional accreditation.
1. https://www.wgu.edu/alumni/career-support/education-and-prof...
Most federal government jobs that require a degree only require one from an accredited university.
The quality of the degree is not relevant for any but the most sought after positions (e.g., certain state department jobs, federal judge clerkships, etc.).
I think some military folks and some GS folks who want to move up to higher jobs but are prevented by the degree requirement often go to places like WGU. Same holds for masters and doctorate degrees.
What WGU is though, is mostly self guided learning, you don't have a traditional professor, you have advisors and pooled resources and group study to drive learning and for asking questions. It does work, if you're a very motivated person and learn well without professor / teacher guidance like you would get at a traditional state school.
Is it perfect? No, its definitely not, but its not a diploma mill, and I'd argue its of higher quality than University Of Phoenix and the like.
It's not even structured as a for-profit enterprise.
WGU filled the gap as a working professional. They're extremely affordable too. Would I advise someone who say, is just graduating high school and can get into a state school or good college with scholarships to pivot over to WGU? No, I wouldn't, but they wouldn't benefit from WGU the same way either at that stage of life IMO.
From our experience a degree is a mild indicator of performance when hiring at entry levels. We get some great candidates with no degree, and many poor candidates with degrees. Above entry level, the correlation pretty much disappear. I'm really curios what kind of difficulties OP was facing for not having a title.
I don't think we have completely removed a title from our job posting requirements, but it usually uses one of those silly conversions (CS degree or x years of experience).
That makes me wonder, what value would Universities provide if a degree wasn't a signifier anymore? what if all tech companies hired purely based on interview performance and ignored titles even for filtering? I imagine a future where all the knowledge and material is open and free on the internet, and University staff acts more as coaches and mentors, helping people who needs it in a 1-1 fashion. One can dream.
Interview performance is about as low a correlation with job performance as having a degree. (i.e. none) https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-...
If we actually had some way of accurately evaluating performance, it would change the industry.
People will not apply for a job because it wants 10 years of experience for an entry-level job, or some other such nonsense. I have found many employers list a dream sheet, but realistically they are open to accepting candidates with less qualifications, especially when they end up getting very few applicants (due to the hefty qualifications they asked for).
The internet is a revolution in information availability and communications capability. People can, right now, learn anything they want, anything at all, for free, all they need is interest, dedication and to prioritize setting aside time for it. The business world still largely operates on the old paradigm though: signaling capability through credentials. But as companies find time and time again that the two don't always (or even usually) correlate, they're creating interesting interview processes to assess capabilities. The credential is largely a legacy requirement in environments like this.
The pace of this change is accelerating. I think over the coming decades you're going to see less importance placed on credentials in technical fields, and people will begin to just learn what they're interested in, what can get them ahead in life, on their own time, and try to work in those fields on their merit and capability. I do believe that one day people won't need credentials, they'll only need to prove themselves. This is easier for honest people but harder for grifters and phonies.
Of course, there are jobs for which mindless obedience, willingness to waste hours of your life and capacity to eat shit are defining characteristics for success. Hopefully those jobs go away, but as long as they exist, they'll have senseless requirements like credentials that people will go through the rigmarole to get. Jobs built out of red tape will have red tape.
That sounds like a dream come true honestly.
https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/curriculum/
See timeline here: https://www.coloradocollege.edu/academics/curriculum/calenda...
for when each "block" (their term for a single course) start and end
I was wondering if getting the degree translated into any professional benefits? The conventional wisdom is that degrees don't matter, but the author in this blog post says otherwise and they unfortunately have not written a follow-up. I personally have a degree, so don't have perspective.
In government you often get higher pay for having a degree, so it ends up being a box that must be checked if you want to advance further up the pay scales.
I wanted to complete a CS degree there, since I already have a lot of credits from elsewhere, which I officially transferred to WGU. But then they told me I can't be in CS because I don't have pre-Calculus completed. WAIT WHAT? Right there on my transcript, there are completed 'MATH 460 Math Modeling' and '696 Applied Math Project' and 'MATH 394 Probability and Statistics', which all obviously cover pre-Calc, but no - the appraisers think I might not be able to handle Calculus I so they won't let me go to CS (but I'm welcome to do some IT course).
I’m in the same situation, self taught, dropout, been working for a nearly a decade—except no one has ever given a fuck.
More info is in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU_Pathway_Worldwide
...and https://www.byupathway.org/
That first semester especially. These people are all very familiar with the various iterations of CES, from early-morning and release-time seminary to the BYU religion curriculum and Institute. So on the one hand they had an idea what they were getting into and even welcomed it somewhat. But none of them expected it to be as heavy-handed as it was.
If the religious content feels that overbearing for active, committed Mormons, I don't know that I could in good conscience recommend this route to non-Mormons.
You will get some CS knowledge working in the field, but its akin to any field where someone can get by learning how to do X without understand the theoretical underpinnings of X. CS is the theory and study of computation. A trained computer scientist should be able to understand computation and information in terms of abstract models, the mathematics behind those models, and reason with those models. CS can be seen as something only tangentially related to physical computers, it is the academic study of problems and problem solving.
This is not something you can learn in less than a year of study. Anyone selling you a CS degree without making you take a theory of computation is also really doing you a disservice. A lot of people have a degree in CS these days who really lack the fundamentals of the science portion of CS.
I will also say, as this person appears to be only a bit older than myself(I would say OP is no older 30) it doesn't shock me at all that they could have learned everything a degree would have taught you eventually just by reading things online. Other than some some algorithms(eg flow, more advanced trees) and some discrete math I can believe you'd hit on most of what a CS degree could offer, if you're willing to find it for yourself that is...
https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/it-certifications.html
... this is not a CS degree. The author is crazy motivated, but this is more a reflection of the crumbling foundations of higher ed in the US.
It looks like someone can come out of this program and not know what big-O is, and what it is of major algorithms in computer science. Sure you can get by day-to-day, but a Computer Science degree should entail:
- algorithmic complexity
- turing machine vs stack machine vs state diagram
- computer organization
- programming languages
You come out of that with a circuits-to-programming language awareness of how things get translated and executed to the lowest level along with algorithmic complexity and estimation and awareness of "what a computer can calculate".
This looks like it falls short, but the devil is in the details.
I know this sounds really sketchy so here are my thoughts.
* Most undergraduate-level college courses (from any school) are stupid easy, especially 101-level classes. You could skip every lecture, spend 3 hours studying before the final exam and still pass with a B or better. This is what I did for 2 years at a traditional state school where I studied mechanical engineering. At WGU it is exactly the same, except you don't need to wait until the end of the term to take the exam. You can schedule the final exam on day 1 of the term and then move on to the next course if you pass.
* It's not that hard to get through a textbook quickly if you are disciplined. If there are 20 chapters, read 5 per day and you will finish in 4 days. On day 5 wake up early, take a practice test, review the questions you missed and re-read those sections, repeat 3-4 times and you should be scoring 80-90%, that's a pass so schedule the final exam for that evening. After these 5 days of studying you will be better prepared than the average college student, who generally fucks around all term, shows up for lectures but doesn't pay attention, and hardly reads the textbook at all, but somehow still passes.
* Lectures and videos are a waste of time, reading is more efficient
* It helps massively if you can study full time. I took out loans to pay the rent and tuition and didn't work a side job. I studied 9-5 every day like it's my full time job. I paid back my loans after 1 year of working.
* The hardest courses take 10-15 times as long as the easiest ones. Data Structures and Algorithms, Computer Architecture and Discrete Mathematics etc. are the big ones and this model lets you spend more time on that and less time on bullshit.
* Controversially, WGU makes sure you learn SQL really, really well and glosses over Linear Algebra. I find my SQL skills to be extremely useful on the job. I've since studied Linear Algebra on my own time, but I haven't found any uses for it outside of my game development hobby.
* No, you can't master a subject you spent 1 week studying. But that's true of all undergraduate courses, not just WGU, which is why new grads struggle with basic leetcode questions unless they grind leetcode outside of school. In my opinion the purpose of a bachelor's degree is to teach you the basics and bring you to the point where you can get an entry level job and study on your own, which WGU's BSCS absolutely does do.
* Getting a degree in 3 months might seem impressive, but it's not. The average college student might spend 4 years at school, but if you only count the time they are actually studying, it's not going to be more than a couple of months. And when they do study, it's not effective, it's not goal oriented, they study out of obligation and fear of failure which leads to procrastination and burnout and all-nighters before exam day that aren't very productive.
Time is money, if they force you to take more time they are increasing the total actual cost of education.
No normal college can afford that many warm bodies calling. That tells you that either their profit margin per student is MUCH higher, or their student volume is way higher (they take everyone).
It's a valid red flag.
An example of a non-clickbait title for this article:
"I already knew computer science; here's how I got the piece of paper in 3 months"
In some universities from where I am there's something known as "rendir libre", which means that you can skip classes but still do the final exam for each subject, so you would be able to achieve something similar to this.
I like that kind of system, as I don't like the bureaucracy of the education system getting in the way of someone who has the knowledge, I think it was a nice read and what WGU does is useful for a minority of people.
The title is written in an intentionally vague way to entice a potential viewer into clicking it.
If the title was: “I Got a CS Degree in 3 Months for Less Than $5000 from WGU”, that’s not clickbait because it tells a more complete story.
(But telling the whole story from the title means people won’t click, so that’s why it’s written like that)
Can anyone suggest some other options good to get a degree with reasonable price? I really dont mind studying, but I certainly dont have several years and tons of money to go to traditional university.
Wait, aren't Canadian universities very affordable? Is the problem lack of university spots for students?
Personally, the problem was time, not money. I couldn’t find a single university in Canada that would let me complete a bachelor’s degree online in less than 2 years, let alone 3 months. This is despite having 3-4 years of post-secondary education in the field (equivalent of an associate’s degree, plus a semester of university credits).
Now that remote learning is ubiquitous due to COVID-19, I suspect there might be more options for Canadians seeking accelerate their education.
Could someone elaborate on what this part means?
These would not be acceptable in any CS department that I know. The material and exams are at the level of a high school education, nothing more.
You got a piece of paper. You did not get a CS education.
There are bootcamps that are much higher quality than this.
This comment comes off really strongly to me in the direction of gatekeeping.
> These would not be acceptable in any CS department that I know.
Personally, some of the courses I'm taking now are just as hard as those I took during undergrad at a brick-and-mortar university.
I would say that the promised scope & depth of my undergrad courses at my brick-and-mortar university was greater, with interactive lessons, feedback, etc.
On the other hand, to learn that breadth of material takes two interested parties. Often I had professors who wanted to research, not teach. Sometimes the course was taught entirely by TAs after hours. Usually the pace was so fast that I never had time to learn one thing before we moved on to the next.
There were students who did the bare minimum, while others went beyond. That piece of paper symbolizing their "CS education" means much more to some than others.
> You did not get a CS education.
Hard to argue since you haven't defined "CS education", but I'll read it as "..the CS education that my university provides."
I believe it, and acknowledge that not all CS educations are equal.
> There are bootcamps that are much higher quality than this.
I think the goals are different. WGU allows me to study at a slow pace, go as deep or as shallow as I please (while passing a minimum bar) and will grant me a B.S. at the end of it. I already have a job; what I'm missing is the degree.
Perhaps I wouldn't feel such a strong need to get the degree, if it wasn't a prerequisite to even higher education!
Just look at this reddit post from students taking this class and you'll learn everything you need to know https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU_CompSci/comments/maty9w/c950_da...
They are talking about learning about hashmaps (how, at this point in their education???) and it looks like the class can be completed by doing a single project. So yes, this is very unimpressive.
Example DS&A course at Utah: https://www.cs.utah.edu/~miriah/teaching/cs2420/ Following Algorithms course: http://theory.cs.utah.edu/fall18/algorithms/
More than half the classes in the CS BS degree at WGU look like filler too: https://www.wgu.edu/content/dam/wgu-65-assets/western-govern...
3/4 years of a B.S. at a large research university, with 1 or 2 grad courses thrown in.
> DS&A classes..at WGU look completely watered down from what is taught in a single semester at the nearby university of Utah.
I agree with that. They do look watered down.
> They are talking about learning about hashmaps (how, at this point in their education???)
I checked the link and don't see what you are describing. One comment is talking about how to use a hashmap. But, I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't know what a hashmap was at all, since I've encountered that in undergrad at brick-and-mortar too.
> More than half the classes in the CS BS degree at WGU look like filler too
That's exactly how I feel about most gen-eds at a brick-and-mortar :)
But, I am actually learning things from these filler courses that were never taught at my university, nor taught at the workplace, which honestly did surprise me in a good way.
The minimum bar is too low.
> Personally, some of the courses I'm taking now are just as hard as those I took during undergrad at a brick-and-mortar university.
I can't argue with your lived experience. But I can tell you, as someone that teaches such courses, the ones offered by WGU are woefully inadequate. The material they cover, the depth in which they do it, the rigor of the problem sets and exams, are all wildly out of tune with what is offered in any CS department that I have ever seen.
> This comment comes off really strongly to me in the direction of gatekeeping.
I don't care about gatekeeping. If WGU wants to offer a CS degree, that's great. Let's get everyone involved. But! Then they should offer a CS degree with the same level of rigor that is expected of any other student in any other CS department.
It is very disingenuous of them to say they provide CS degrees, but then target the courses to such a low level.
> Perhaps I wouldn't feel such a strong need to get the degree, if it wasn't a prerequisite to even higher education!
Except that a WGU degree will not open the doors to even higher education. I cannot imagine a single CS department admitting a PhD student based on their credentials from WGU. The effort required to convince someone that you know what you're doing, is so huge compared to getting the WGU degree, I don't think it contributes much.
imo... bootcamps are much higher quality than most universities. I've interviewed at least 1000 engineers at this point, and I've interviewed a ton of top tier university graduates that are essentially useless and need to be trained up, but most bootcamp graduates can "hit the ground running" (but lack foundational skills). The idea that software engineering is some academic endeavor is so flawed. It's a trade, and should be taught in trade schools.
(note I'm speaking of developers / software engineers. If you want to do computer research (etc) then I lean toward academic backgrounds)
If you're looking for engineers that can code a fullstack application in Typescript/React or a Backend/Front architecture in Python / Go / etc with a JSON API + a swift frontend; bootcampers will probably have a leg up. After all, they learned the specific knowledge to get them there.
If you need an engineer that can do audio dsp programming, embedded bare metal and/or firmware bootstrapping + development, OS design, compiler/VM design, etc; you'd be hard-pressed to find a bootcamper that could do the job without extensive training, let alone hit the ground running.
But ultimately, it's a moot point. After about 4 years, if they care more about the field than just as "a job" or "to pay bills" (e.g., they have a genuine interest and drive), either one will have enough experience to branch out and fill in their gaps.
Because there are no hardware/embedded bootcamps.
It's no different than becoming an electrician. You don't go to university to learn that. You go to an apprenticeship program.
It is my opinion that computer related trades should follow the format of the more physical trades. ALSO, you typically get PAID for an apprenticeship program. So, my opinion that it is in-fact a better way to learn aside. It's certainly financially superior.
While studying at WGU, I also tracked 100% of my computer/phone/TV usage with ActivityWatch.
I wrote a paper showing that over 80% of my learning sessions could be accurately detected and classified from my computer usage logs:
https://miguelrochefort.com/Rochefort_2021_Academic_Time_Tra...
Sure, yes, general education is important. And this is what secondary education should be for. The idea of consuming a year (or more!) of someone's time while pursuing a STEM degree on such coursework is, in my opinion, deeply misguided.
This is particularly true in a systems where a student is paying from $30K to $60K per year for this education. Sorry, but, if I have to spent $50K per year the last thing I want to do is burn it on course work that is utterly irrelevant.
Taken a different way, this means that a STEM Bachelors in the US could be completed in three, rather than four years. That is huge. That means higher graduation rates and people available to work faster.
That does not mean that nobody would or should take these courses. If someone is interested in sociology, history or political science, by all means, provide the courses as electives --not as graduation requirements.
Let's be free market and let the market decide. You can stipulate that a student must take five electives to graduate. These electives are not on forced subjects. You can take more STEM courses or choose to go into non-STEM classes (geography, world history, business, whatever).
Yes, this would likely reposition some of the stuff nobody cares about. And that's the right way to do it. If you have to pay back $200K to $300K in student loans, the system should not force you to burn 1/4 of that cash on bullshit no company is ever going to pay you for.
I truly think this is one of the great injustices, and maybe even the tyranny, of a system that, in my opinion isn't connected to reality at all. These non-STEM courses are cheap (in terms of the cost of offering them) courses that universities stuff into the student's shopping cart. The profit margin on these is probably outstanding when compared to some of the other subjects (for example, Chemistry requires labs; Robotics requires machine shops, tools, etc.).
From a competitive perspective, any nation that can focus their STEM degrees strictly around STEM to graduate people with the same capabilities as the US in 3 years rather than 4 is going to have an advantage over the long run. Not only are out graduates absolutely saddled with ridiculous debt, they have to invest another year or more for the same job-relevant education. Like I said above, no company is going to pay someone for that shit.
Sadly, I don't think this will ever change. There is no political value in going after this issue. If politicians can't use something to their benefit, it gets no attention at all.
Additionally, he transferred in a bunch of credit from elsewhere, and had watched multiple MIT lectures, so it's hardly 3 months of effort.
Who was that said there's a sucker born every day?
Another comment mentioned it as well, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31182122
I would be glad to know whether the Master program from georgia tech is recognized in Germany/Austria
Do they recognize Georgia Tech? If so, then they recognize the online Masters since there is no distinction between the online and the on-campus.
They are not, pay $5k, click some shit, adds some water...instant degree.
You're comparing gold to turds.