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Damn good thing Northface University is offering a college education without all the liberal bullshit!

For example, they are accredited, but it isn't because they had to work for it. From what I understand, they bought a small college that already had been accredited and then changed it and rebranded it as "Northface". Thus, I would be want to see how they fare in their next accreditation cycle before I spent two years there.

Also, look at their curriculum. They require 54 credits of General Education, including communications, history, philosophy, and physics. Sound good? It's really not; the same professors that teach the CS classes also teach the general education classes! That sends red flags up for me -- do you think that a Ph.D. in CS knows much about the American Revolution, Mark Twain, or, most of all, Healthy Living (PE 170 in their catalog)?

In the end, I suppose Northface is perfect for some people, but I am glad that I wasn't one of them.

LA 120 Written and Spoken Communications I

Students strengthen their composition and oral presentation skills. Students examine the purpose, structure, logic, and language of expository writing. Students explore and apply appropriate skills for writing and public speaking, including the principles of rhetoric. Students learn the speech, composition, and delivery techniques needed to prepare for a variety of effective presentations.

LA 125 Collaborative and Interpersonal Communications

Students develop collaborative skills for successful interpersonal interactions and group work. Students learn and apply principles related to interpersonal communications, group dynamics, leadership and followership, benefits and caveats of group work, and the collaborative group life cycle.

According to their accreditation page, they are accredited in a way that is recognized by the US Dept. of Education. I am not familiar with different accreditations, but that sounds reliable to me.

Well, there is a a few "computer math" courses(whatever that means), but you are right, there is no calc II, calc III, differential equations, no linear algebra. Any of these "graduates" would be totaly lost in any 400 level undergrad course at my university....
That, and the kid on their site just makes me want to punch my monitor.

This two year degree is pretty much the kind of crap you'd expect. No theory, little exposure advanced topics. The cirriculum is pretty much a lesson in writing web applications for a small set of technologies. Apparently a critical part of all software is the Web.

This is no drop in replacement for a well rounded and indepth degree you'll find at your local University. Accrediation means something, you know.

I looked at the CS requirements, a whopping 12 credits of math(or maths for those of you outside the US). I had that many math credits at the end of my freshman year at Penn State, and had to take much more. The theories behind CS is math, and if they want to do anything but be a code monkey, they will need more than "Introduction to Calculus", most CS geeks took that in high school...
If you want to get through your undergrad program really quick, take the AP tests, don't go to some fly-by-night college....

Looking at their curriculum course descriptions, I'd say that your doubts are well founded. Looks like a trade school with a few classes in logic and discrete math thrown in. I don't see much on software engineering (aside from lip service to "the complete software life cycle"), let alone any actual computer science.

How is this a Computer Science curriculum?

Course Descriptions

So ... the first course teaches all of "software development life cycle, OO Concepts, introductory Object Role Modeling (ORM), Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD), HTML, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Visual Studio Enterprise Architect, C#, Structured Query Language (SQL), Microsoft SQL Server, and XML basics.". That is quite the ... course.

Nothing new here, just another technical institute trying to sell their courses as something they aren't... I have no idea if it is a good program or not, but it isn't a CS degree.

I've been going to Northface University for a few weeks now, and they seem to be pretty good about giving you the math, and putting it in the context of programming. I've had up to Calc II and a bit of Discrete at a community college. Both have been very useful to me, but the discrete would have been better it had been put into a CS context. Our Information Modeling class is kind of teaching us Discrete without mentioning that what we're really doing is math. I expect more advanced courses will expand on this.

I recently started working as an instructor for northface.edu, a school offering bachelor's and (soon) masters CS degrees, with emphasis on real-world stuff like dealing with clients, requirements analysis, design, etc., not just writing code. (Don't get me wrong; there's plenty of that.) It might be worth a look if you're curious.

I recently went to an open house for a new school called Northface University. They have an extremely interesting bachelor of science degree in computer science where you will spend 28 weeks working on state of the art IT. The teachers include Terry Halpin and Joe Celko. The school is in its first year of existence. That actually means you would be working directly with the professors as they establish curriculum. The idea is to pack a full bachelors degree in a 28 month intense programming fest.

There has actually been some rather profound changes in our attitude to calculus and some big advancement in teaching Calculus in the last several decades.

The biggest change in mathematics is computers. In 1900 people were using continuous equations to estimate values for large discrete events. Today, it is really easy to add a column of a million numbers. In fact, we are tending to the opposite extreme. Today we are apt to use discrete mathematics to estimate continuous events. This change might best be called a de-emphasis of Calculus (so it would not warrant a big jump in text book prices). I met Joe Celko at Northface University who says they are using a technique of finite differences to teach calculus. He mentioned other schools are using a technique with nested sets to teach calculus. I dislike transfinite theory because it overemphasizes paradoxes, but I would like to see this new technique.

Personally, however, I believe there is a great deal of merit in the traditional approach to Calculus, and really couldn't see a value in any new technique unless it greatly improved the ability to learn the subject, or otherwise cut the cost of learning Calculus. Northface wanted to use the method of differences as they are focusing on CS. They had a good reason for their approach. I would not use the technique for engineers.

If I were to guess, I would say that this would be the school in question.