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I spent a lot of time researching online schools. I decided that Baker (http://www.baker.edu/) was the best option for me. It's the biggest private, nonprofit, school in Michigan and has a Computer Science program that is worth it. The price per credit is only a little higher than going to a brick and mortar school where I live. I got my Associates in Computer Programming back in December and I'm working on my Bachelors now. The learning is more of a self taught environment. You're given the weekly notes from the instructor, the chapters to read, and the assignments for the week. You have to participate on a forum by answering weekly discussion questions and helping each other out. This works best for me since I'm a visual leaner. I read all the material and do the assignments and take the tests. If I didn't do that I wouldn't be able to pass the class. Most of the instructors have years of experience in the real world work force with degrees to backup their knowledge.

In my experience Baker does things right. I have a few friends who took a Computer Science degree at the local college. They learned a few different things but their knowledge of the subject is far less than mine. I attribute it to the fact that most of the homework was group projects and they usually let one person do all the work.

I have a PhD and I was full-time at a traditional top-tier college but I now teach exclusively for many online colleges because you can make twice the money with half the work. Many online colleges are junk where it is basically "you pay your fee and take your B" and other are quite good. I remember one university in particular (based in California) where they advertise that their entire faculty have PhDs. I started teaching a course there and quit after 2 weeks. There were almost 50 students in the class and 14 assignments per term. I told them that if I spent just 5 minutes reading each assignment and giving feedback (which would be impossible since it would really take at least 15 minutes each), my remuneration would work out at less than $10 per hour and with my qualifications I would not work for that. Therefore any faculty member at that institution could not really be reading the work submitted by the students unless they are willing to work for less than minimum wage.

Something else you have to watch out for, because many PhDs use this as a money venture (I know some making over $250,000 per year doing this from their bedrooms) many of them are outsourcing the teaching. Some have over 20 classes per term (which obviously they can't physically teach) so they pay unqualified people to handle the class for them so you might be taking a Masters degree and you really have a high school student pretending to be the PhD on the other end (and you wondered why I made this post as an anonymous coward).

From my experience, I have found that if you look for an online college with small classes (10 - 15 students) then the experience will be as good as or better than traditional colleges. Beware of flashy web sites that are full of fluff and promises but no substance. I have found that Colorado Technical University Online (http://www.ctuonline.edu/) is not bad but the classes are much too big and you can't devote the time to each student that you really should. Baker College Online (https://www.baker.edu/online/main.cfm) has small class sizes and is exceptionally good and I think you will get an even better education than you would get in the traditional classroom setting. However the best one of all that I have found is a new online college in Florida called Erudio College (http://www.erudio.us/ which again has small class size and is a real teaching college where the emphasis is on the education of the student and not just the degree.

I'm going to school at Baker College and at my campus, they've got Deep Freeze on all the computers. You are logged on as admin* and can install whatever you want, but when the computer is restarted it goes back to its original condition. It installs a filter driver that keeps track of all writes to the main disk, logs them and prepares to undo them upon restart. All your documents/files you want to keep are put on removable media (they'll get undone upon restart otherwise). Authorized admins can disable this temporairily to make permanent changes. Turn on a computer and it is in pristene condition; no crap, regardless of what the previous user did. This might not be so good for home use, but for the pre-installed standard lab environment needed for the computers, it works beautifully.
I would definately recommend Deep Freeze for any place with requirements like this. Put all the user profiles and documents on a central server, cluster or removable media and make permanent local changes impossible.
Viruses on the document storage area should be the only malware left; if you put it on a server, it can be scanned easily.

* It's not quite full admin, as you can't install new services or drivers; they might mess with Deep Freeze.

Our college refuses to publicly admit that they have had a serous breach or deny any knowledge of current security problems.

That wouldn't be Baker College would it?

Information security tip; if you don't want someone to figure out what institution you are talking about, post anonymously. Otherwise someone will click through on the URL you provide in your messages and almost immediately see what college you are affiliated with.

Baker College has a fully accredited, online Master's program that corresponds to their brick-and-mortar program. I don't know if they have a CS master's but they do have a 100% online MBA with several CS concentrations. I got an MBA from them a few years ago and was very satisfied.

Besides the annoyance of the meat of the course being backed by 10-year old misprinted concepts, this "college" had the audacity to put 20 students in a classroom with only 16 computers, which ran '95a (*gak*) and NetWare client32! (NetEss was based on the NT4 track)

If they had not finally installed another 8 boxen with access to the outer world, these poor saps who paid ~$900 for the course and ~$125 for the nearly worthless book/CD would not have learned half as much. Part of that was disabling the censor software on these 8 machines...which I supported wholeheartedly. Took the brightest one about 5 minutes including a reboot.

I was given a hands-off order for the NetWare servers and clients - along with the promise of replaceable HDs which never came. Needless to say the installation of NT, NICs, and TCP/IP configuration were mostly lecture based - I was able to teach cabling specs and Ethernet laws, and even managed to get a broadcast storm going ;-). Homework assignments were all done on the web at the students' homes, using their own ISP gateway

In contrast, both in tuition and quality, the accelerated courses at Productivity Point where I got my certification encouraged web use. Access was fast, we brought zip drives in, and had a ball while learning the "real world". Of course, that certification cost me about $6k, but was well worth it...

In summary, even though the M$ coursework was based on retired technology, the web was the primary focus - at the students' request, and on hire I was told that the students were the "customers" - who was I to argue with letting them learn something pertinent?

When it comes to computers, I've developed such a proficiency that when I need something done, I do it myself. I started out with a 486/25 when I was 14 (I'm 21 now), and since then I've been hooked. Whether it's hardware, software, or troubleshooting, I can take it no problem. A year and a half ago I learned about Linux and all the great GNU tools and since then I've spent most of my computing time with them.

The only things that I haven't mastered when it comes to computers is networking and programming. Heh, when it comes down to it I'm just a power luser.

I graduated high school in '95, and since then I've had a couple decent jobs, and now I'm considering two options.

1) I can work for myself and make $50-100/hour as a PC repair tech, which I could do with my eyes closed.

2) I can go to college and get an associates in programming locally and later xfer that to a bachelors of business administration at the same school for fairly cheap, or I can go to a big U and lose my ass in debt.

I think as long as I learn the theory and logic behind coding, and get the academic introduction, and basically learn how to learn, that's what's important. As far as I've seen that's what going to school for CS is about, and all the languages you learn basically becomes self-taught.

Anyway, the school programs I was looking at are here: baker college. they're local, they're cheap. I've still gotta talk to the counselor and find out about some stuff before I decide,

So what do ya think? should I stick w/ the pc tech skills I have, or go on to CS and IT stuff? If you think CS and IT is worth it, would a good Associates be good or is a bachelors a requisite? I'm not getting any younger, so it's about time I do soemthing. I'd really love to be a "real" geek =)