Computer Science Degree Online – Bachelor of Science – WGU

I am doing ok now without one but i could easily be unemployable in a few years if the job market in the US goes the way of EU and most other countries where a decade+ experience is still 0 value without that degree.

I avoided right out of highschool to avoid debt and wasting my time learning stuff that will not help me in my career. Now I can afford it but no time and I still have a ton of stuff to continue to learn.

I really wish college becomes free like the rest of public education (at least at public unis). The US gov can easily fund public online universities to compete with WGU that are free. I would be so glad to pay more taxes for that.

Internationally, what I have seen is (pure guesstimating based on observation) 60-70% of people with masters know shit/almost-nothing but the rest make US workforce look like they're in grade school. My point is, the talent gap and global competition from asia and eu mostly is very significant. Free college is how you compete with china, not just $800bn (biden just asked for $20bn increase!) military budget.

It is mostly self-study but there are instructors for every course. Most have Phd's but some just have their masters. Many told me they have worked in industry for 20-30 years. You can book basically unlimited appointments with the instructors to get guidance on the course material. I found the instructors were particularly helpful for code review during my project-based courses.

In terms of rigor of the cirriculum I'd say it was comprable to my previous humanities degree at a medicore Canadian brick and mortar university. Some classes were legit hard and others were a total joke. The difference with the WGU format is you can spend 1-2 weeks cramming for the joke classes to pass the exam and move on with your life.

I'm still looking for my first dev job after graduation in the fall so not totally sure if it was worth it. Seems like I learned more about DSA, databases, OOP and math than you do at a bootcamp. The web development component of the program is really weak so I have been self-studying a lot while I apply to jobs.

You could definitely learn everything in the program on your own. But I think the mix of getting the degree as a credential and benefitting from instructor feedback might make it worth it for some people depending on their situation.

Also if you are already an experienced developer I think you could do this program very quickly if you just want the piece of paper.