[HN Gopher] I got a computer science degree in 3 months for less...
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I got a computer science degree in 3 months for less than $5000
(2020)
Author : miguelrochefort
Score : 331 points
Date : 2022-04-27 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (miguelrochefort.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (miguelrochefort.com)
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Degrees are only worth anything with the backing of a good
| university. This course isn't accredited.
|
| Additionally, he transferred in a bunch of credit from elsewhere,
| and had watched multiple MIT lectures, so it's hardly 3 months of
| effort.
| williamtwild wrote:
| >It's accredited. Their programs are accredited by the
| Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), the
| same accreditation body used by the University of Washington
| (#24) and the University of Oregon (#94).
| danbrooks wrote:
| Interesting to see such polarizing opinions on education in the
| comments. The value of education is a mix of learning,
| credentials, and socialization - and the experience is different
| for each student. WGU makes a lot of sense for working
| professionals.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Going to WGU now, it is exactly as advertised. Low friction,
| decent quality education at a low price.
| splitstud wrote:
| I have hired several WGU grads, and will again. You made a good
| choice.
| gabrieledarrigo wrote:
| Bah, to be honest this seems a lot like a degree mill. I work as
| a SWE and I decided to apply yo a Bachelor'degree course in
| Computer Science at the University of Milan; that took me 4 years
| to complete. It doesn't matter how well I was prepared in
| different subjects, since many courses required a lot of study
| and preparation. And the average time of completion os around 4
| years, so...
| gizajob wrote:
| hatch_q wrote:
| Ok, you got a degree in 3 months. But, did you actually learn
| anything? Did courses prepare you for the world outside?
| Spoom wrote:
| OP is already _in_ the world "outside". That's the point;
| they're in it for the paper, since the paper unlocks
| possibilities.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > They confirmed everything I had read and told me that although
| they didn't officially accept foreign students (I'm Canadian),
| they would try to make an exception.
|
| Wait, aren't Canadian universities very affordable? Is the
| problem lack of university spots for students?
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| In 2022, the average cost to complete a 4-year bachelor's
| degree in Canada (while living at home) is about 50,000 CAD.
|
| 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.
| frontman1988 wrote:
| Degrees are becoming more and more irrelevant with time. Skills
| eat degrees for lunch in computer science.
| 50208 wrote:
| WGU BS / MS Graduate here: I attended 3 other "traditional, B&M"
| Uni's in years past (~60 credits). I also attended a couple
| Community Colleges (16 credits).
|
| 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.
| suresk wrote:
| I just graduated from WGU 2 days ago, after almost 20 years in
| the industry. I didn't rush through it was quickly - I finished
| in just under a year. I studied finance my first time around in
| college and have tried to do a CS degree a few times since, but
| juggling a full-time job and now a family makes that tough. The
| flexibility the WGU program offered was honestly more important
| than the raw speed at which I could go through it.
|
| 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?
| triyambakam wrote:
| Can you share more of your reasoning behind getting the degree
| after so long in the industry?
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I know in my field (Information Security) it ends up being a
| check the box. Having it sets you apart from those that
| don't.
| suresk wrote:
| That's a good question, given that it hasn't been a huge deal
| so far in my career. Two things:
|
| 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.
| xriddle wrote:
| OP is a class act. I reached out to him the first time he posted
| this and he was really helpful with answering my questions. I
| applied then and am now one class away from finishing my Masters
| in Cybersecurity. I have 20 years experience in the field and am
| in a stable, well paying position that I don't plan to leave.
| This was a vanity degree for me but I also wanted to learn
| something in the process. So I took my time an emersed myself in
| the course material even though I could have probably tested out
| of most courses within a few days. Like any school, WGU will
| allow you to get what you want out of it. You want a checkmark?
| WGU will allow you to can get that cheaper than anywhere else.
| You want to really learn and get credit for it? Then take your
| time and you wont be disappointed. Are you done learning after
| your degree? Nope, but as a lifelong learner my experience at WGU
| was great and am glad I went for it.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| This is great - Incan imagine something like this for ongoing
| professional development - or like a refresher driving test you
| take every ten years.
| tristor wrote:
| This article was interesting to me because it helped me learn
| about WGU. I dropped out of college just one semester prior to
| graduating (and had a 3.7gpa at the time). I've had nearly two
| decades of experience in industry, and it'd be great to be able
| to get a degree at this point in my life just to get the
| credential to match my work experience. WGU seems like a really
| reasonable program for someone in my situation, compared to
| taking time off from work to go back to school or hoping I get
| famous enough someday to get an honorary degree.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Also look into TESU
| nomilk wrote:
| Seems odd that speed limits on learning were(/are) the norm at
| most top institutions. What purpose do they serve aside from
| being slightly more administratively convenient.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| They serve another purpose. Credentials with red tape to get
| test another aspect of someone's capability: the willingness to
| tolerate senseless bullshit in order to get ahead. For a lot of
| jobs that's a requirement, you won't do well at some places and
| in some fields without it.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Some context on WGU
|
| > 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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University
| adamisom wrote:
| Lack of clear guidance is right. The existing outdated laws or
| regulations just didn't make sense for their business model or
| for the Internet age. WGU is regionally accredited in all
| regions. Not to say it's good-quality education; it's not. But
| frankly most colleges aren't and I think it meets the same
| (low) bar that most colleges do--and does better for job-
| readiness and cost. I have most of a degree from it. I'm still
| not sure I'd recommend it to others though. I'm not even 100%
| sure I'll finish!--but I'm leaning toward finishing to make it
| easier to get into OMSCS or similar. It's not what got me my
| job and career. But if you don't already have a degree (I did,
| psychology) it's probably worth it if you think checking the
| box can help your career or even just help you hunt for your
| first paid job.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I was in disbelief when I found out that some people are in a
| dilemma about getting a CS degree or not, when they already
| have some other degree. And here I am with no degree in
| anything, working as a SWE. I've gone back and forth about it
| - mostly I don't care about the fake degree from WGU and
| similar schools and then to get a degree where I'd actually
| learn something new (MIT maybe?) it would be a huge time
| sync, cost and I'm not sure I'd even be accepted.
| foolinaround wrote:
| > the fake degree from WGU > get a degree where I'd
| actually learn something new
|
| What is fake about this? And who prevents you from
| listening to MIT lectures, if you choose to?
| no_wizard wrote:
| I can tell you from experience that every company, from
| Meta to Apple to hell, even 90% of startups, will just
| accept the CS degree as is. I'd say to working
| professionals (those with a couple years experience in the
| industry now) its a bigger win because it matters
| astronomically less where you got your degree than when you
| are first starting out as an engineer. It keeps the
| gatekeepers away and checks all the recruitment boxes
| across the board.
|
| 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
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| My motivations:
|
| - Canadians need a bachelor's degree to work in the USA.
|
| - Graduate programs typically require a bachelor's degree.
| triyambakam wrote:
| As far as working in the US, I can understand that. And
| as for a Master's, I'm not sure I'd ever want that. The
| Georgia Tech OMCS for example has a good name but I doubt
| I couldn't learn the same material for free.
|
| Will I get left behind in the industry among a sea of
| Master's and Phds?
| no_wizard wrote:
| Like with all things in life, it really depends.
|
| 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
| triyambakam wrote:
| Which downturn do you mean? And that's certainly worth
| considering. Can you explain more what happened then from
| your experience that gave you that perspective?
|
| Though I wouldn't say it's true it won't hurt me - the
| debt is certainly harmful.
| fckgw wrote:
| FWIW I have a bachelors from WGU in IT Security was was
| accepted into GA Tech's Online Masters Cybersecurity program.
| no_wizard wrote:
| It's fine education if you make it so. My direct experience
| is that I can attain the same knowledge (and then some) as I
| would at a traditional university I had to seek it actively
| however.
|
| 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
| mastazi wrote:
| I'm in Australia, I got my degree in almost half the time since I
| already had experience in the field from working as a developer.
| Some of the fees are per subject, and some per semester. I had to
| pay the former like everyone else, but saved on the latter due to
| the fact that I stayed for a shorter time.
| b8 wrote:
| I thought about going to WGU instead of a community
| college/transferring to a private/state school to earn my
| bachelors, but after starting to apply to WGU it literally seemed
| like a diploma mil to me. There would be WGU recruiters
| constantly calling me etc. and overall didn't seem legit to me.
| So, I decided to go to school for 4-6 years instead.
|
| 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...
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I'm a student of WGU, and tried UoP, not the same whatsoever.
| UoP was garbage. Flagged me for fraud on my first test. WGU is
| what it says it is. Online school with no breaks designed for
| low friction at the cost of interaction.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I am familiar with UoP too, but I got the impression UoP was
| that it was very much amateur in it's operation. A bunch of
| idealistic people trying to make education have zero cost
| barrier to entry. It's simply not feasible to run a college
| like that at this time. WGU and UoP can not rightfully be put
| in the same basket.
| no_wizard wrote:
| It really isn't, they hold _regional accreditation_ which,
| while debatable in total, is much harder to get than national
| accreditation, because the audit is considered to be much more
| strict.
|
| 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.
| csa wrote:
| > I think that the DoD hires folks with degrees from UoP
|
| 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.
| pkdpic wrote:
| I went to a bootcamp for 6 months for less than $20,000.
| biofox wrote:
| I read all the man pages for $0 /s
| goodpoint wrote:
| This but without the "/s".
| TylerH wrote:
| Buying a diploma is not really a bragging point.
| sophacles wrote:
| What so only people on scholarships get to count their degree?
| angarg12 wrote:
| I have a background in academia and extensive experience
| interviewing for FAANG, particularly at the entry level. For me
| this article highlights the futility of current higher education
| institutions.
|
| 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.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Much like view on higher education haven't changed greatly,
| views on job descriptions haven't either.
|
| 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).
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I share the dream, but I season it with a splash of optimism.
|
| 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.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Lots of companies still have degree requirements.
|
| 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.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Well, where interview requirements reflect actually doing the
| job, I'd guess the correlation would be significantly higher,
| no? If interview requirements don't correlate with job
| performance, I'd conclude the interview process is flawed.
| After all, the whole point of an interview is to assess
| performance capability, if it isn't doing that then you need
| a new process.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 - Dec 2020 (374
| comments)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| When I was in undergrad (20ish years ago) it was absolutely
| possible for a motivated student to graduate at a highly
| accelerated rate. I know someone who had approximately 5
| semesters worth of classes done at the end of his freshman year,
| having taken about 40 credits worth of classes each semester (12
| credits was considered "full time" and you needed to average
| slightly more than that per semester to graduate in 4 years in
| most degrees).
|
| 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).
| brimble wrote:
| At a lot of schools, you can take CLEP tests to get out of
| (especially) 100 and 200 level courses. Take the test, pay a
| (somewhat lower) rate for the credit without taking the actual
| class, and it's done.
|
| 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.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| At this Univiersity, at this time, you could not take CLEP
| tests for credit in any classes that were in the same school
| as your major. So e.g. a Physics major (school of science)
| could not get credit for the e.g. Math and Chemistry (also
| school of science) requirements without signing up for the
| actual course.
|
| 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.
| schroeding wrote:
| Impressive! How many credits did a "normal" class (like linear
| algebra or calculus I) have? Or how many classes did he have to
| take to get 40 credits in one semester? The exam taking phase
| must have been hell :P
|
| 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
| AviationAtom wrote:
| So, former WGU student here, though I hadn't completed my degree.
|
| 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.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| So the key difference you're describing between this and a
| degree mill is that you're expected to already possess the
| knowledge. And maybe organize it a little bit or fill in the
| blanks. As opposed to cramming it, or blowing through it too
| fast for it to amount to anything. This makes sense. I can
| imagine traditional universities offering this sort of thing
| everywhere.
| throw10920 wrote:
| > Many WGU students HATE these types of articles, because they
| undermine the legitimacy of WGU.
|
| 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.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A headline stating that a 4-year degree can be earned in
| 3-months? That alone is a huge red flag suggesting a degree
| mill. Lack of national accreditation is red flag #2. I don't
| mean to say that this is a degree mill, but the nature of the
| article does raise reasonable suspicions. Alumni are rightly
| critical of such articles that make their school sound like
| something it probably is not.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| Read about national accreditation elsewhere in the
| comments. It is not what you think. Regional accreditation
| is more desirable.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Only in the USA. The word "University" means absolutely
| nothing there.
| SamBam wrote:
| Yes, well the school in question _is_ in the USA, so the
| specifics of USA 's accreditation system are clearly
| what's relevant...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Lack of national accreditation is red flag #2.
|
| 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.)
| suresk wrote:
| The speed at which you can get a degree can look like a red
| flag, but you are mistaken about the accreditation.
| Regional accreditation is actually what you want, not
| national. Most universities you think of are regionally
| accredited, whereas the for-profit ones that you can't
| transfer credit from are nationally accredited. Ie,
| Stanford = regionally accredited, DeVry = nationally
| acccredited.
|
| 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/
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Thanks. My knowledge of accreditation is mostly from law
| schools, for which national v. regional is a huge deal.
| [deleted]
| AviationAtom wrote:
| More pointing to the clickbait title they chose. It implies
| that WGU is a cakewalk, that can be breezed through. Very few
| people complete their degree there in a very small timeframe.
| It takes great dedication to complete it rapidly.
|
| 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.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| These types of article that show how shallow the education at
| WGU is.
|
| 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.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Haha, a real university? Unless you mean a handful like MIT
| and Stanford, most no name colleges are not going to be any
| better.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Some perspectives still hold that degrees are critical,
| but unless it's from less than a handful of the top
| programs in a field, the degree is barely worth the paper
| it's printed on. Degrees are useful to get into corporate
| work, but having industry experience, a competent body of
| work, recognition from your peers, and a demonstrated
| work ethic can get you into almost any type of job at a
| competitive rate of pay.
|
| 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.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Always construction workers feel smarter than architects
| and civil engineers. Nurses feel smarter than doctors.
| YouTube watchers feel smarter than PhDs in physics.
| mdasen wrote:
| It might have to do with the title. "I got a Computer Science
| degree in 3 months" makes it sound like it isn't serious. As
| you note, reading the article shows that the author worked
| hard, learned the material, already had an associates degree
| in the field, already did a semester in CS at a major
| university, and took 4 study.com CS/IT courses and 3 Sophia
| Learning CS/IT.
|
| 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.
| sophacles wrote:
| Random data point - my first thought reading the title was
| "what sort of scam is this?"
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| For what it's worth, many people reached out to me after
| reading the article to thank me for introducing them to the
| idea that they could earn their missing degree in less than 4
| years and/or without student debt. Many of them are self-taught
| developers with decades of experience that can't move up the
| corporate ladder, work abroad, or pursue graduate studies
| because they lack this important piece of paper.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> or pursue graduate studies because they lack this
| important piece of paper.
|
| 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?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You took it the wrong way--and I get why you did. There is
| definitely a lot more to university than "a piece of
| paper."
|
| 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.
| ljwojfapsdiof wrote:
| No, he said you can't pursue graduate studies unless you
| have an undergrad degree. Let's be real, most undergrad
| programs are trash, and only exist to satisfy industry
| filters. Wow you learned all these topics on your own but
| do not have a paper? Too bad!!!! . I respect graduate
| studies, but I have zero respect for undergrad.
| wpietri wrote:
| They did not imply that. They just said the piece of paper
| was a barrier to other things they wanted to do.
|
| 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.
| willhslade wrote:
| Look, I'm not here to judge, but the Coursera + UC
| Boulder Electrical Engineering OR Computer Science
| Masters will take anyone, regardless of degree status.
| There are also some UK universities that will as well,
| notable Oxford's Software Engineering. Just my 2 cents
| doing the research.
| [deleted]
| barry-cotter wrote:
| As well as the options willhslade mentioned you can also
| do individual Master's modules as distance learning with
| the University of London International Programme and then
| transfer to the Master's programme proper.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I disagree. I have worked with great developers who could
| not be promoted or hired due to missing a few credits in a
| communications class.
|
| 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.
| chaostheory wrote:
| I don't feel that he's being disingenuous. He just doesn't
| have the experience or the context. University prestige and
| your uni social circle can dramatically improve your
| professional life, but you're not going to know that if you
| haven't experienced it yourself or personally know anyone
| who's had the privilege.
| VMtest wrote:
| I checked the admission page but it doesn't mention whether
| people outside of US/EU can apply or not
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I have to ask: what mechanisms are in place to thwart cheating?
| Specifically, paying for someone to take all those tests in
| your stead. Though it's possible to cheat at traditional
| universities in individual courses, it becomes increasingly
| hard over the duration demanded for attendance even on an
| accelerated schedule for lots of small reasons that add up.
| dimgl wrote:
| Hey, does this exist for video game animation? I was extremely
| disappointed with an online school I recently went to for video
| game animation (the classes were way too spread apart and while
| the modeling sections were interesting, I really just need to
| work on animation for the models I purchased).
|
| I know this is tangentially related, but this was so
| demoralizing I kind of gave up on game dev altogether.
| andi999 wrote:
| Is it accepted overseas? I read most degrees from wgu are not
| recognized in europe.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Don't see how, because the accreditation system is setup as
| such that they should see them as any other university that
| is regionally accredited.
| andi999 wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/WGU/comments/pjisyd/any_idea_why_m
| o...
|
| 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.
| tibbon wrote:
| I guess what do you mean by "recognize"? I've reviewed
| hundreds of resumes, and never dug into the regional vs
| national accreditation for a degree. You recognize the big
| names, and otherwise just generally say "seems they have a CS
| degree"
|
| Is that different in Europe?
| Raed667 wrote:
| They do check if you're applying for a certain VISA based
| on your skills or job. Some companies do also check when
| they need an "accredited" engineer for some compliance
| reasons.
| andi999 wrote:
| I think for EU blue card you need to find your degree from
| your varsity in some database, to successfully apply.
| VMtest wrote:
| Glad to see somebody mentioned this, I asked about this
| in another comment regarding georgia tech online master
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31182962
| andi999 wrote:
| I had a look. Germany has this database:
| https://anabin.kmk.org/no_cache/filter/institutionen.html
|
| 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.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Not directly related to the post but I am almost certain
| the Georgia Tech OMSCS would be accepted for EU blue
| visa. So will UT Austin OMSCS.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| I don't believe so because it is not nationally accredited.
| If the college are not nationally accredited, then it is
| highly likely that universities in Europe will not recognize
| WGU. Unless the institution have a formal agreement
| (Articulation Agreement) with WGU to transfer.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| As I recall national accreditation is the weaker of the
| two, and regional is preferred, but someone correct me if I
| am mistaken.
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Regional accreditation is the stronger accreditation.
|
| This is an example of a federal accreditation group: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnational_Association_of_C.
| ..
| AviationAtom wrote:
| That said, WGU does not do traditional GPAs, as I recall,
| which can cause issues with transfers. It's more of a
| pass/fail. Trying to transfer credits is generally not
| advised, as I recall, instead you would want to complete
| your degree with WGU.
| no_wizard wrote:
| They have a policy for anyone seeking your transcriptions
| of just marking everything as a "B" (3.0 GPA) on
| everything.
| leereeves wrote:
| That's ok for transfers, but a 3.0 GPA would make it
| difficult to go to graduate school.
| no_wizard wrote:
| That has not been the experience of my peers so far,
| granted I don't know anyone who went to Harvard
| intimately enough, but I know quite a few people who went
| to well regarded masters programs after graduating WGU
| cwdegidio wrote:
| About to finish the WGU BSCS program myself and have made
| a lot of friends in the program along the way. Many,
| including myself, that choose to go to grad school look
| at Georgia Techs OMSCS program, which is a very
| solid/reputable program.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I'd defer to no_wizard's comment, as I'm just not really sure
| how various overseas institutions go about recognizing/giving
| equivalency.
|
| 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.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Unless the standards are drastically different
|
| 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.
| gzer0 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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...
| blagie wrote:
| I didn't read the article that way (although it's clear many
| posters did).
|
| 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.
| randcraw wrote:
| I know very few graduates of schools outside the "top few
| hundred" in the US who received thorough grounding in core
| skills unless they took the personal initiative to fill those
| gaps through self study. That's hardly a rousing endorsement
| for that track, if the student has to later plug the holes
| that a poor school left in their education.
|
| 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.
| cperciva wrote:
| _Socially, I 'm not sure they'd do well starting traditional
| college early._
|
| 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.
| sannee wrote:
| Indeed. I was completely miserable in high school, instead
| getting my dose of social interaction by visiting a
| hackerspace. Genuinely believe that was the only thing that
| kept me from going insane at that point in life.
|
| 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(tm) person(tm) as many educators seem to think.
| blagie wrote:
| A lot of these depends on personality. Personally, I
| didn't relate to my peers at all, and did a lot better
| with an older crowd.
|
| 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.
| vampiretooth1 wrote:
| Even as someone who's gifted, how do you manage to get into
| a university at 13? I'm assuming you're non-American? Is it
| just a matter of taking entrance exams, showcasing aptitude
| at the college level, then matriculating?
| cperciva wrote:
| I'm Canadian. I finished Grade 12 mathematics (and took
| the "school leaving" exam in that subject) when I was in
| Grade 7. Simon Fraser University (where I attended) has a
| special entrance category for "secondary student with
| superior academic standing" to take "one or two courses"
| while still attending secondary school.
|
| 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.
| smeej wrote:
| Speaking as someone whose school administrators wanted me
| to start university by 13 but whose parents objected and
| held me back, being the same age as my chronological peers
| was meaningless and did not help me relate to them.
|
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| > 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 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.
| data_spy wrote:
| Grass is always greener. You don't know the
| counterfactual and you would have likely been
| disappointed in your parents had they sent you to college
| early as well.
| smeej wrote:
| I'll let other people, like the parent comment, speak to
| their experiences. He, at least, doesn't seem to think my
| grass was greener.
|
| 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.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| First of all, neither do /you/ know the counterfactual
| and so you have no bearing on whether or not this person
| "would have likely been disappointed in your parents had
| they sent you to college early as well."
|
| 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).
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| _Looks at your profile.
|
| *Thinks of course the creator of Tarsnap was a child
| prodigy._
| prawn wrote:
| You might like this classic HN moment. Don't miss the
| follow up down the bottom:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
| screye wrote:
| > social distance created by a large IQ gap
|
| 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 ?
| cperciva wrote:
| There was definitely insecurity-related bullying. More so
| in elementary school because the teacher encouraged and
| participated in it; moving from class to class in high
| school also helped to minimize bullying compared to being
| in a room with the same kids all day long.
|
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| If you can only speak in terms of partials/other-math-
| lingo - it speaks more to your own limits than the limits
| of others.
|
| 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.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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.
| cperciva wrote:
| I'm not saying that high school gives people a great
| education about history. But I would expect anyone
| graduating high school to be able to give general answers
| to questions like "which countries were we fighting
| against in world war 2" and "where was the Roman empire".
| thfuran wrote:
| >But I was meeting only the lowest possible bar.
|
| A low bar but certainly not the lowest possible bar.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Few educators appreciate the social distance created by a
| large IQ gap
|
| Large social gaps are hard to bridge too, and I'd imagine
| that age is one of those things.
| cperciva wrote:
| Maybe, but I'd argue that age is mostly relevant to the
| extent that older people generally know more -- an effect
| which is balanced if the younger person is more
| intelligent.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think you nailed the key with "mutual respect." That to
| me is what distinguishes children from adults. Some people
| achieve it at age 12, others maybe never in life. I'd
| rather be around a mutually respectful 12 year old than a
| same-aged person who still thinks and acts like a child.
| jwilber wrote:
| Doesn't starting someone at 13 fly in the face of the whole
| "prerequisite experience learned on the job" bit?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| 13 seems low, but I had 3 years of full time programming
| experience by the time I was 17.
|
| 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.
| macksd wrote:
| "on the job"? Most likely. But I spent a lot of time and
| money getting a degree from an accredited university, where
| I was bored the whole time and maxing out the number of
| credit hours they would let me take while also working as
| much as I could. Why? Because I could've aced the first 2
| years of CS classes by the time I was 13. I would imagine
| that's not uncommon among people who grew up with a hacker
| mindset and had the resources to explore it. I surely had
| gaps in my knowledge - not saying I didn't learn anything
| from the college experience. But I would love to live in a
| world where I didn't feel like I would, at some point, be
| better off with an accredited 4-year degree just to get or
| keep a job in the first place.
| suresk wrote:
| I think that is a pretty fair and accurate assessment of it.
| For me, with a lot of experience, the credential + filling in
| some gaps were what I really needed and the WGU degree was a
| great way to take care of both.
|
| 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?
| blagie wrote:
| As two points:
|
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| > 1) A GED would be trivial for this kid. So the high
| school diploma, I'm not worried about.
|
| The test might be trivial, but being able to take it
| isn't trivial if you don't meet the age requirements.
| blagie wrote:
| Point.
|
| I just did a web search. I didn't realize they had age
| requirements. Thank you.
| [deleted]
| mtkhaos wrote:
| Challenge where appropriate and allow them to practice
| self teaching. It's better to have accreditation from a
| top university than a one off. And if the child is
| capable they should be able to move through the material
| and jump the artificial hoops.
|
| 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.
| leoqa wrote:
| I'd be more worried about social development. Of the
| small sample size of gifted people who didn't want to be
| with their peers, how many have formed last
| relationships, friendships etc.
|
| 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)
| kingrazor wrote:
| I'm not sure attending traditional school with
| chronological peers does all that much to improve that
| situation. I know very few people who are still friends
| with anyone from high school, for example. I only have
| two friends from high school that I even talk to anymore,
| and only one that I'm close with. I don't feel like
| attending a traditional school did much of anything to
| help me develop social skills, as I still struggle with
| those quite a bit even now.
| gcheong wrote:
| Any community colleges around that teach college level
| courses? That's what I did when I ran out of options for
| math at my high school.
| nnoitra wrote:
| A university doesn't cost 200K. Even in the US residents pay
| less than that and if you take into account community college
| for the first 2 years it's not really as absurdly expensive
| as it's made out to be. Please don't spread half-baked
| misinformation.
|
| >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?
| raunak wrote:
| Average 4-year private school would cost 200k, if not more
| if you're going to any private T100. Average person in this
| community also wouldn't go to CC.
| nnoitra wrote:
| Why wouldn't an average person in this community go to a
| CC?
|
| 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.
| Cerealkiller050 wrote:
| Just as a data point, I did just this
|
| 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)
| bombcar wrote:
| 4 years at a random WI university as a resident sets you
| back $60k.
|
| 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.
| triyambakam wrote:
| > Independent learners almost always develop gaps.
|
| 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.
| randcraw wrote:
| The purpose of national college accreditation standards (as
| ABET does for engineering) is to avoid those gaps. This is
| accomplished publicly by their specifying core courses and
| syllabi that span the competencies expected from anyone
| earning a given degree (BS, BA, etc). Accreditation leaves
| schools little wiggle room when creating compliant courses
| and content. By delivering on a base set of cores that span
| essential theory and skills, students and employers are
| assured that anyone who earns that degree in an accredited
| school will indeed possess a standard set of core skills
| and thus will _not_ suffer from gaps.
|
| Accreditation is important, especially if the school is not
| well known nationally.
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| This sounds like a surprisingly good idea, something I hope we
| see more of (but of course I'll remain pessimistic).
|
| 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.
| mkl wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Not so. Cambridge still does it, e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey in 2000.
| [deleted]
| ilovecaching wrote:
| I think a lot of people confuse Computer Science with SWE or
| something similar. A lot of universities and programs do a
| terrible job of explaining CS.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| TehShrike wrote:
| I wonder what specific opportunities he felt he was missing out
| on. I've been working in software for 17 years without a degree
| and have never noticed the lack of a degree stopping me from
| anything. I've never had it come up during interviews.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that, as I've been wondering if I would ever
| run into that (currently at about four YOE as a SWE) without a
| degree. I find it interesting that there are people who already
| have a degree in something but still feel bad they don't have a
| CS degree. I don't have a degree in anything!
| bialpio wrote:
| As someone already mentioned here, there may be some
| immigration-related requirements that can be satisfied by this
| degree? E.g. when immigrating into US, the lawyers had to check
| for degree equivalency between my 3-year bachelor's degree to
| check if I satisfy H-1B visa requirements (IIRC the answer was
| "yes" when they also included the first year of the master's
| program that I have already completed).
| nomilk wrote:
| > I wouldn't say it was transformative. The bulk of the effort
| was memorizing things that I normally would have Googled.
| gorkagg10 wrote:
| [deleted]
| manukerish wrote:
| You can get CS degree level knowledge for free with
| https://cs1000.vercel.app.
| drbojingle wrote:
| Doubt
| davelacy wrote:
| Got a degree in clickbait headlines too, apparently :)
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| what is click bait about it
| gear_envy wrote:
| "The Curiosity Gap"
|
| 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)
| RankingMember wrote:
| Personally, reading that headline, I would think "oh wow,
| this guy learned enough computer science to get his degree in
| 3 months, he's either some kind of super genius or has some
| crazy learning hacks to share", when really he just Game-
| Genie'd to the end credits as a formality since he already
| knew computer science and just wanted the piece of paper.
|
| 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"
| juanci_to wrote:
| For me, what he wrote is exactly what I expected from the
| title.
|
| 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.
| kofejnik wrote:
| Data point of one: WGU's credit transfer appraisers are comically
| incompetent
|
| 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).
| triyambakam wrote:
| Try TESU
| _caw wrote:
| I just put in a couple hours of studying @ WGU for Discrete Math
| II last night, and I'm happy that the school exists.
|
| 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.
| lcfcjs wrote:
| kazinator wrote:
| Cool! If you don't want it any more, I will give you $3500 for
| it!
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| As someone who teachers at a university, the level of courses at
| WGU is absurdly low. I looked at the algorithms courses, the
| discrete math courses, and the AI course.
|
| 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.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| > There are bootcamps that are much higher quality than this.
|
| 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)
| deaddodo wrote:
| There is no _better_. It 's two different types of education.
| Bootcamps are just a refined version of the "teach yourself"
| crowd and there's nothing wrong with that.
|
| 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.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| What differentiates a course as "high school" level vs.
| college? I honestly feel like my high school courses were just
| as hard as my college courses. The only difference is they
| required the prerequisite knowledge from the high school
| courses. Or, at least, having that knowledge helped.
| google234123 wrote:
| What classes at what university?
| _caw wrote:
| Disclaimer: currently enrolled @ WGU.
|
| 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!
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > (while passing a minimum bar) and will grant me a B.S. at
| the end of it
|
| 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.
| google234123 wrote:
| Brick and motor universities vary in quality and I'm not sure
| where you attend or what level classes you took - intro
| classes are typically weed out in stem and aren't very fun.
| However, I think it's pretty easy to see that the DS&A
| classes (not sure why it's split into two courses, seems like
| WGU does that for every slightly challenging class) at WGU
| look completely watered down from what is taught in a single
| semester at the nearby university of Utah.
|
| Just look at this reddit post from students taking this class
| and you'll learn everything you need to know https://www.redd
| it.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...
| _caw wrote:
| > _Brick and motor universities vary in quality and I'm not
| sure where you attend or what level classes you took_
|
| 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.
| robomartin wrote:
| Something that has always bothered me about STEM degrees in the
| US is the requirement for about a year of non-STEM coursework as
| a degree granting requirement. I think this is ridiculous.
|
| 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.
| likecharges wrote:
| I'm trying to find a tech job after almost a decade of manual
| labor. After reading this story I thought WGU could be a great,
| non-traditional fit for me so I started the sign-up process. A
| few seconds after I filled out the first step of the sign-up
| (name, phone, email), they called me twice (real people, not
| automated) and texted me. I'm probably being too selective, but
| it was an off-putting experience.
| stonogo wrote:
| "Ineffective communicators" is a real weird selector for the
| people providing your educational credentials.
| _tom_ wrote:
| "Driven by sales, not academic qualifications" is a GREAT
| metric for people providing your academic credentials.
|
| 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.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| they're a non-profit
| likecharges wrote:
| That's fair. I'm not in any position to judge the quality of
| the school. I was just surprised that the school called while
| I was filling out the sign-up form.
| alexchantavy wrote:
| I wonder how the author tracked their time with that level of
| granularity.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Does anyone reasonable and with an internet connectt really
| believe they can get sonething of substance (e.g., CS degree) for
| relatively nothing ($5k)? That's not how the world works.
| Anywhere. Anytime.
|
| Who was that said there's a sucker born every day?
| triyambakam wrote:
| So you never learned anything from internet resources?
| zebrahim89 wrote:
| i can think of lots of substantive things I've gotten for
| relatively nothing. the price tag of something doesn't
| necessarily equal quality.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| What y'all are missing is those aren't just "degrees". They are
| formal, proper, and rated programs.
|
| They are not, pay $5k, click some shit, adds some
| water...instant degree.
|
| You're comparing gold to turds.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Plenty of countries have online universities with a Fair price.
| For example, the Open University, or UNED from Spain (where you
| have a handful of them).
| kamranjon wrote:
| I mean New Mexico now offers free college education with very
| few restrictions and many European countries offer similar
| programs, not sure why it would be so unbelievable.
| rybosworld wrote:
| Georgia Tech has one of the best computer science programs in
| the U.S. and they offer the Masters program for <$9k.
| VMtest wrote:
| anyone knows if the online Master from Georgia Tech is
| recognized by Germany/Austria? this is to get a visa to work
| in IT sector in those countries
| aketchum wrote:
| It is the same degree as the on campus program.
| VMtest wrote:
| Yea I am aware of that, my apology, I should have
| mentioned that I was asking more about getting EU blue
| card, they have a score system for foreigners and a
| degree/master could count towards that if we want to work
| as a IT worker in Germany/Austria
|
| 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
| peter303 wrote:
| A number of MIT courses were like that. You had to pass six
| calculus tests per course. If you were exposed to the material
| before, you could do this in a couple days.
| brightball wrote:
| > During my time at WGU, I focused on a single course at a time
| and made sure to complete it before starting a new one.
|
| That sounds like a dream come true honestly.
| xmprt wrote:
| A big part of education is spacing and repetition so completing
| a full course quickly before starting the next one doesn't
| sound like it's very good for learning even if it might speed
| up the degree.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The idea that college is for meaningful learning died a long
| time ago. It may have never been true for software
| engineering.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| I did the same thing. Got a Bachelors in CS in 1 term at WGU.
| Very happy with it, got a great job after graduation and I feel
| very well prepared for it.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I went to WGU for my BSIT. I didn't learn much there, but the
| degree and certifications helped my job prospects. Spent about
| $10,000 going for 3 semesters (already had my AS from a community
| college), walked out with 13 certifications and a boost in pay
| from being headhunted within weeks.
|
| 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.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Still sounds a bit lengthy to me.
|
| 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.
| billllll wrote:
| I see a good number of commenters mention that they also went
| through the same program/went through something similar.
|
| 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.
| AviationAtom wrote:
| When it really comes down to it: you applying at the same time,
| with a degree, against a person without a degree, means you're
| more likely to get the job.
|
| 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.
| SXX wrote:
| Do WGU accept international students? I just curious since I have
| 15+ years experience in programming, but having no degree of any
| kind does limit job options now when I had to immigrate.
|
| 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.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Pffft. Big deal. You can buy one online for $100 without ANY
| classes. You got ripped off.
| bachmitre wrote:
| Haha, agreed, also, in my 30 years of working in CS at more
| than a dozen different companies of all sizes in 3 different
| countries, never ever did anyone ask for my degree.
| b20000 wrote:
| you can get a 4 year degree in europe for $500. but, you only
| have a 0.5% chance of getting through your first year. that is
| the flip side.
| leugim wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900
| farzher wrote:
| sorry to hear you got scammed out of $5000 /:
| hammock wrote:
| _> On my first day, I completed 4 courses in the span of 4 hours.
| At a traditional school, it would have taken 4 months. It made me
| realize...I had underestimated how much knowledge I had gained
| from previous schools, jobs, projects, books, papers, and talks.
| _
|
| 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.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And there's nothing wrong with that. There's something
| fundamentally ritualistic about asserting that people who
| already have the knowledge required for a credential are
| somehow debasing the credentialing system by testing out of it.
|
| I'd say that some people are looking for the _" college
| experience."_ That's unrelated to education other than by
| proximity to it.
| Bedon292 wrote:
| I think the distinction here is more that this person was
| already a working professional. And seems to have had the
| appropriate knowledge to pass most of the classes already.
|
| 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.
| oaiey wrote:
| This concrete university was built for exactly that purpose
| like another poster outlined. It was built for the purpose to
| get credits and certificates for knowledge you have, not
| necessarily to acquire them.
| jdbernard wrote:
| As someone who has spent almost 20 years in software
| professionally, yeah. I'm considering doing the same thing
| because there are still plenty of people and employers out
| there that advantage people who have the paper. I highly doubt
| that there is anything in the course of study for a bachelors
| that will truly be new to me (especially since I already
| completed most of that study once). But if I did want to
| actually learn something, say by pursuing education at the
| graduate level, I have to get that credential rubber-stamping
| my existing knowledge.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| >But if I did want to actually learn something, say by
| pursuing education at the graduate level, I have to get that
| credential rubber-stamping my existing knowledge.
|
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I also didn't go to college but did a pretty solid set of
| online CS and math classes while working as a software
| developer. I'd love to get a masters degree, and it would
| benefit my career quite a lot.
|
| 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.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| > But I can't get one without doing a BS first, which
| makes it overall just not worth the effort.
|
| Oxford Software Engineering and Coursera Colorado
| Electrical Engineering will take people without
| Bachelor's.
| triyambakam wrote:
| > and it would benefit my career quite a lot.
|
| 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.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I'd love to see something similar for a PhD. If one could
| publish three good papers, teach some courses and write/defend
| a thesis -- what's the minimum time requirement for completion?
| blagie wrote:
| Most places have no time minimum for a Ph.D.
|
| 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.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > 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.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Are there many scientific professionals without PhDs
| though?
|
| My impression is that most people writing scientific
| papers are already somewhere in/through that pipeline.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is way too close to CGNU ...
|
| 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.
|
| https://youtu.be/RFi8aZm3jnQ?t=118
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| My experience is that college is heavily advertised as _the_
| choice for personal /professional growth, and there aren't many
| alternatives provided.
|
| Because of that, most people assume college to be the natural
| course of progression, even if it isn't a good fit.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > 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 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.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > That's (I believe) fundamentally different than most people
| who seek college degrees.
|
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| > so many girls I went on dates with who were completely
| disengaged with their careers
|
| 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?
| randrews wrote:
| Part of this might be the context of a date: I spend long
| hours outside work learning and building things just because
| I find my profession interesting, but when most people ask
| about it I change the subject quickly because I know exactly
| how boring my interests are to most people: I assume they're
| asking to be polite and don't want an in-depth discourse on
| CPU design.
| brightball wrote:
| This is great to know about though. Would be interesting to
| complete such a program for somebody with the knowledge coming
| out of high school. Makes you wonder how it would affect
| admission criteria at other 4 year colleges if you can show an
| entire CS degree on your application.
|
| I wonder how that gets weighted?
| csa wrote:
| > Makes you wonder how it would affect admission criteria at
| other 4 year colleges if you can show an entire CS degree on
| your application. 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.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| Traditionally a degree certifies a certain level of knowledge.
| Is there a reason to insist on classroom learning to get that
| degree?
|
| 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 1000EUR/year for (excellent but
| crowded) public universities, and many side benefits such as
| free public transport.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Right, most people are there for the parties and get degrees in
| underwater basket weaving. But the hard sciences and
| engineering are usually for the credentials.
|
| 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.
| gumby wrote:
| > Right, most people are there for the parties and get
| degrees in underwater basket weaving. But the hard sciences
| and engineering are usually for the credentials.
|
| 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.
| t-3 wrote:
| There's probably a pretty big correlation between expense
| and how interested you are in actually learning. A super-
| famous super-expensive MIT is obviously going to have a
| different student population than a cheaper and less
| prestigious institution.
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| No, I meant "for". If you just want to learn the material,
| you can learn it about as effectively for free with self-
| study and online MOOCs. It's the credentials that cost
| money, and the economic assumption is that the credentials
| are why people attend universities. Did you go to MIT
| because you wanted a high course load or because you wanted
| a prestigious degree?
| gumby wrote:
| Thanks for your answer -- I really thought it likely a
| typo.
|
| 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.
| SamBam wrote:
| I mean, nobody has ever asked for my paper diploma either
| (I lost it as well, the day after it was given) and I've
| never heard of anyone asking, but that doesn't mean the
| degree is useless. I certainly have "BA from such-and-
| such, MSc from such-and-such" on my resume. Evidence, if
| anyone cared, is only a phonecall away.
| robbyking wrote:
| Off topic, but where did the "underwater basketweaving" meme
| (in the traditional sense) come from? My dad used to say that
| all the time in reference to what he considered frivolous
| academic pursuits.
| mwint wrote:
| Looks like the 50's, originally coming from an Alaskan
| practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_w
| eaving#Poss...
| [deleted]
| texuf wrote:
| When you weave baskets you have to keep the reeds wet. It's
| the hardest part other than the design itself I guess.
| Doing it under water would be easy. (From personal
| experience, no idea if this is actually correct)
| kodah wrote:
| The term came about in the 50s and is mainly used to
| highlight problems with the exploitative nature of the
| NCAA. Basically, athletes aren't being told to, or put in
| environment where they can, balance education and sports.
| Sports and selling the colleges brand take priority and
| colleges were known to make it easier for athletes to get
| through or with passing grades. Sometimes making up entire
| coursework for their athletes to take.
| https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/16/breaking-
| ncaa... That obviously undermines and frustrates anyone who
| had a hard time in college.
|
| 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.
| robbyking wrote:
| Thank you!
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| In the context of CS degrees I think that credentials is
| oftentimes the only major reason why people pursue college.
| 99_00 wrote:
| A credential demonstrates that you have some knowledge or
| skill. If they already have the knowledge or skill, what would
| they learn from the degree regardless of what you assume his
| intention is.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Seems like we've come full circle. A credential from an
| institution was a good indicator of the caliber of the
| individual. Now, with Study.com and the roll-your-own degree
| programs, it's hard to know. That once-good indicator tells
| very little now.
|
| I went to NYU Gallatin for a bit and really wondered what in
| the world anyone seeing that on a cv would think.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Why doesn't a roll-your-own degree from Study.com indicate
| the caliber of the individual in the way a credential from
| an institution used to?
| triyambakam wrote:
| > roll-your-own degree programs
|
| 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.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I disagree. University is primarily about getting a degree to
| put on your resume. I can't think of anyone I've ever met who
| cared about what they actually learned in school, only that
| they got a piece of paper at the end.
| oaiey wrote:
| When you look at it to get a scientific education you are
| right. When you try to grow as a human in humanitarian way,
| then university social life is also important (maybe not the
| over-the-edge US college way but for the rest of the world
| that is definitely a thing). You grow in that time also as a
| person. When you just earn money and be part of a company you
| will not grow your social behavior or other skills. That is
| also the reason why CS degrees have often random other areas
| included as soft skills like literature etc.
| andai wrote:
| I'm currently working as a web developer, partly so I can
| afford to go back to university! I didn't have the
| discipline/maturity to pass the first time, and now I don't
| qualify for student loans anymore. I'm genuinely interested
| in the material, and want to get a solid footing in every
| major part of the field.
|
| 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).
| adamredwoods wrote:
| In my university, I learned about voltage timing in mosfets
| using oscilliscopes and programmed ASICS. Really cool stuff!
| I also took acting and foreign language classes, and even
| joined a sailing club.
|
| 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.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| You can take an acting class or a foreign language class
| without being enrolled in a research institution.
|
| 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.
| triyambakam wrote:
| None of what you learned needs to be coupled with a
| university as it now exists to learn. And in fact, all of
| those have been and are possible outside of the university.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| My statement was not regarding exclusivity to university,
| but a rebuttal to the parent comment (re: who cares about
| what they learned other than the piece of paper?).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I doubt very many people would be willing to pay out the
| nose for the education if it didn't come with that piece
| of paper at the end. Sure, we may value some things along
| the way, but what matters is the piece of paper.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| Sounds like this person isn't hanging out with the right
| people.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| IMO, that's generally correct but not universally correct.
| The vast majority of programmers are gluing together pre-
| built libraries, frameworks, tools and so forth and so really
| don't need much of a degree. However, the people who are
| creating those libraries, frameworks, tools, compilers,
| operating systems need, not necessarily a degree (e.g. John
| Carmack), but mastery of the knowledge provided by a degree
| to build those things. That's not to suggest one group is
| "better" than the other or some other value judgement; it's
| just an observation of trends.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| wheybags wrote:
| You need to meet more people. Or ask more questions.
| [deleted]
| gmadsen wrote:
| what? I'm sorry you had such a crappy college experience.
| N_A_T_E wrote:
| I feel bad for people who've had that experience. I learned a
| lot of valuable, practical information and skills in my time
| at engineering school.
| madengr wrote:
| ModernMech wrote:
| > University is primarily about getting a degree to put on
| your resume.
|
| 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.
| bloqs wrote:
| This is just not the case im afraid
| csa wrote:
| > That's (I believe) fundamentally different than most people
| who seek college degrees.
|
| 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.
| wutangson1 wrote:
| > "Serious students are largely only found in degree programs
| that have weeder courses". I am unconvinced by that logic.
| Serious students are there to learn from competent teachers-
| i.e. someone that is proficient in the art of conveying
| knowledge, not merely possessing knowledge or having
| successfully brought grant monies to their university. Weed
| out courses are not for serious students, but are a rite of
| passage that many times are themselves gamed.
| csa wrote:
| > Serious students are there to learn from competent
| teachers- i.e. someone that is proficient in the art of
| conveying knowledge, not merely possessing knowledge or
| having successfully brought grant monies to their
| university.
|
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| There's weeder courses and then there's weeder courses.
|
| 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.
| freedomben wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree, but something I didn't
| consider until later when exposed more to the "sausage
| making" of academia was the extent to which the course
| creators are just incompetent at creating material "on
| level" for those students. Many just assume the material
| must be hard, when in fact it (often times) moves too
| fast as well. Also inability to teach complex concepts
| simply is another huge impediment. This was one of
| Einstein's pet peeves, and is one of mine as well.
| Teachers and students alike seem to want to cram/jam as
| much material into each course as possible, but I think
| it ultimately does a grave disservice.
| jseliger wrote:
| True, and an underrated point:
| https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-
| eliz...
| voakbasda wrote:
| How many programs weed out students anymore? None that I have
| heard of, and the notion seems unlikely given that most are
| happy to take their students' money all the way through
| graduation.
| nostrebored wrote:
| Georgia Tech retention rate for first year CS students is
| 60% IIRC. Now, many of these will go to other majors and
| not drop out. But these majors are widely known at the
| school (e.g. riding the management train). While many of
| these students will go on to graduate, 12.2% of enrolled
| first year students are not on graduation rosters 4 years
| later.
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| I can only speak from my experience in Canada, but
| Engineering programs (I don't know about SWE) here still do
| so. I lost ~20% of my student peers within the first
| semester and nearly 30% by the end of the first year.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Similar here also in Canada, my program has a ~20%
| graduation rate (Computer Science)
| Aeolun wrote:
| This was the same for me in Europe, but I'm fairly
| certain it had nothing to do with difficulty, and
| everything with people finding out that CS was just not
| for them.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Many state universities are forced by state law to reduce
| the admittance requirements, especially for in-state
| students. State taxes are paying part of the university
| budget and it is politically valuable to keep those
| universities widely accessible. As a result, the schools
| are forced to do additional screening in the first year.
|
| 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.
| nisegami wrote:
| Your remark about in-state students really matches my
| experience at the university I went to. I can't think of
| anyone I personally knew who transferred out other than
| in-state students.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| My program does have this, two of the first semester
| classes have ~50% average (which is the passing grade), not
| including those who drop out and including 2nd time
| students.
| madengr wrote:
| csa wrote:
| > How many programs weed out students anymore?
|
| A non-zero number at "competitive" schools in programs with
| reputations to uphold.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| It's been a while since I graduated but for those wanting a
| high demand major from a dept with limited resources, it
| seemed normal for one of the 100 level courses to be a step
| up in difficulty. Pushed out a lot of people from pursuing
| CS at my school.
|
| Other schools make you apply to the major, and that process
| just weeds out those the dept thinks are not suited for the
| program.
| StillBored wrote:
| There was an article here a month about this (related to
| an art program IIRC). Basically a number of schools
| "entry level" courses for certain majors aren't passable
| by someone with a general high school degree because they
| only accept students who already learned the groundwork
| before applying to 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.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| So, I haven't applied to MIT (lol). But some schools I
| applied to did ask what major I'd like to do. It could be
| that MIT doesn't accept applicants who want to do CS who
| haven't taken some level of CS fundamentals before.
|
| 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.
| xeromal wrote:
| My compsci program had an almost 50% drop out rate in the
| first two quarters. The classes were almost designed to
| destroy people, but if you did survive, you ended up doing
| pretty well career-wise.
| erdos4d wrote:
| I taught university (big state school) about 10 years ago
| and it was department policy to flunk >= 40% of each
| calculus class. We curved to accomplish this and every
| class was told this was the policy on day 1. We got a mix
| of students at my school and this was to keep the dopes
| from designing airplanes and such. I personally would have
| been happier letting engineering do their own dirty work,
| but that was math's job and I like my plane flights to be
| uneventful, so yeah.
| mbg721 wrote:
| So when they're checking airplane parts for quality, do
| they just rank them all and throw out the worst 40%?
|
| 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.
| erdos4d wrote:
| > So when they're checking airplane parts for quality, do
| they just rank them all and throw out the worst 40%?
|
| 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.
| mbg721 wrote:
| The class I'm thinking of was organic chemistry for civil
| engineers, so it may have been kind of an edge case
| anyway.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| I don't know about now, but when I was in college some
| couple of decades ago we were told during orientation that
| of the roughly 200 or so of us only about 3 would complete
| the degree. My degree is a BSCpE so not really CS. More
| like if CS and EE had a bastard child. I would guess they
| were off by a few, but no more.
| SamBam wrote:
| 1.5%?? That's insane. Either their bar is ridiculously
| high, or they're letting way too many students even
| start, with false expectations. Or both, of course.
| csa wrote:
| This is not uncommon in places where getting into
| university is easy, but getting out (especially of a
| tough major) is very difficult. The attrition rates are
| high, and that is known by everyone going in.
|
| I have heard that some European universities are this
| way.
| wara23arish wrote:
| The uni I went to definitely had 2-3 weed out courses.
|
| 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.
| thebiss wrote:
| This. Our goal was to build a toy OS, from scratch, in
| x86 assembly, that could multitask execution of DOS COM
| files. God help you if you didn't already know ASM.
|
| 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.
| wara23arish wrote:
| Ha nice.
|
| 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
| matwood wrote:
| I was 'weeded' out of pre-med and landed in software. The
| problem with pre-med was the insane number of hours per
| semester I was going to have to take while I was also
| working. I had an interest in computers so tried out the
| first programming classes and it was relatively easy so the
| rest is history.
|
| 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.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Decent bit! I can only speak to my somewhat recent
| experience but the CS program had like a 30% attrition rate
| for year 1 + 2 b/c each year had a weeder course
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I would say most of the STEM majors at my university (top
| 20 US school) pushed students to the absolute brink in the
| first year, jam packed with advanced math, physics, and
| chemistry. It was pretty normal to come out of freshman
| year engineering, CS, or chemistry with a sub-2.75 GPA and
| the joy of learning completely stomped out of you.
|
| 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.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| > It was pretty normal to come out of freshman year
| engineering, CS, or chemistry with a sub-2.75 GPA
|
| 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.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| My department's policy was a 3.2 curve. So half the
| students in every class got B+ or worse. 2.75 is a B-,
| most classes had at least 30% at or below there.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Fair question, there are a few things at play.
|
| 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.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I assume you are referring to CS alone? If not, things like
| medicine, dentistry, and optometry come to mind.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > "Serious" students are largely only found in degree
| programs that have weeder courses.
|
| 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.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I'm not sure this is out of alignment with being a serious
| student, it's just out of alignment with how the uni wants
| to teach classes. This is how I did school in 2000, even
| when classes were not recorded.
|
| 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.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| >He did not have much intention of actually learning anything.
|
| 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.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Former CS program TA here.
|
| 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.
| triyambakam wrote:
| > That's (I believe) fundamentally different than most people
| who seek college degrees.
|
| 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
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Did you read the rest of the article?
| dqpb wrote:
| > It made me realize...I had underestimated how much knowledge
| I had gained from previous schools, jobs, projects, books,
| papers, and talks.
|
| > 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.
| M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote:
| Would this be appropriate for someone fresh out of high school?
| The only concern I can think of is the lack of socialization,
| which is easier to address during high school than university.
| fckgw wrote:
| WGU caters to working professionals and as such usually
| requires prior classwork or some sort of verifiable work
| history.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| The inclusion of industry certifications with the degree programs
| at no extra cost is interesting, do any 'regular' colleges
| integrate certifications like this?
|
| https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/it-certifications.html
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