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Ask Slashdot: Fastest, Cheapest Path To a Bachelor's Degree?
First time accepted submitter AnOminusCowHerd (3399855) writes "I have an Associates degree in programming and systems analysis, and over a decade of experience in the field. I work primarily as a contractor, so I'm finding a new job/contract every year or two. And every year, it gets harder to convince potential employers/clients that 10-12 years of hands-on experience doing what they need done, trumps an additional 2 years of general IT education.
So, I'd like to get a Bachelor's degree (preferably IT-related, ideally CS, accredited of course). If I can actually learn something interesting and useful in the process, that would be a perk, but mainly, I just want a BSCS to add to my resume. I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding."
So, I'd like to get a Bachelor's degree (preferably IT-related, ideally CS, accredited of course). If I can actually learn something interesting and useful in the process, that would be a perk, but mainly, I just want a BSCS to add to my resume. I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding."
http://www.wgu.edu/
Solid course material. Industry standard certs tied to the courses as finals, and fully accredited.
Most companies never vet your resume.
That plus industry certifications.
We are a RHCE shop and look at all these happy clients who use Redhat, or the staff has X MCSE and MCSA holders and here's our list of happy people with windows servers.
Hi, You can check for Internet for distance education programs in Turkish universities. Many of the courses are offered in English too. Also you can gain a bachelor's degree in 2 years if you can transfer your credits from your previous studies.
Ask Slashdot: Fastest, Cheapest Path To a Bachelor's Degree?
Yes, it seems like a free education can be had just by posting the right ask slashdot questions.
Knowledge Brings Fear
I don't know much about on-line options.
I got my degree from a local state university that has a lot of non-traditional/part-time students. I'd suggest seeing what colleges in your area are like that.
The requirement to pass any of the IT specific classes at WGU is taking and passing industry certifications.
I'm a student attending WGU. I'm just into my second year, and I'm more than half-way done with BS in IT, including picking up 8 certs so far, with my next set of courses being the CCNA and MS networking cert. Part of your WGU tuition pays for the cert tests, so it's not out of pocket to you, and you can take as many classes as you can fit into your schedule for the same cost (~3000 for 6 months).
I cannot recommend it highly enough.
He will sell you any degree for only $149.95 :)
Cars painted while you study.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
It's relatively fast and easy to take community college courses at your own pace. You can then transfer to a full university for your final year and get the BA/BS.
Futurist Traditionalism
Maybe he was looking for an answer more like, this. It would be far faster and cheaper. You really can't beat 14 cpm (certificates per minute) with the more traditional routes.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Ask them for a list of colleges and universities that accept their courses as transfer credit. Don't want to redo work you've already done.
If your associate's place doesn't transfer anywhere at all, the good news is that your options are all open, and the bad news is that you'll have to do two years of work over again. (The other bad news is that it's a sign that no other college likes the college you got your 2 year degree from, for some reason, which either speaks to the quality of education that you received or to some underlying college political issue, and you won't know which without digging a bit.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
A lot of practice!!
Ba-dum-da.
No seriously, there is a shortcut... Private colleges who are funded by shady government-backed loans. Didn't we just have this discussion? Or was the answer "Plastics!"?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
Send me a cheque for $300 and I'll send you a Degree.
By the principle of "Quality, price, speed, pick any two," when you ask for price and speed, just know what you're asking for.
My gut tells me the education is just the "official" or "least objectionable" thing employers are finding to either negotiate a lower salary or show him the door.
Kinda like when you buy a car and find some nitpick thing to get the guy to knock a little off the price.
Apply to a local state funded university. Talk with an admissions counselor about your goals and how well your associates will transfer (10 years old, the answer is usually Not At All). State schools provide the best bang for the buck. It also helps that their programs tend to be quite good. You also have to accept the fact that this isn't going to be convenient or easy. If it was easy to get a degree worth the paper it was printed on, everybody would have one.
If you just want to throw money at the problem and don't care about the quality of the degree, find the online program with the biggest advertising budget. Ideally somebody who can advertise on broadcast channels during prime time. The degree won't be well respected, but if you're doing this as a checkbox item it hardly matters. Just avoid taking on debt to do it. The private programs are expensive, and have a terrible track record for defaults on student loans (probably because of the expense).
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
Frankly, with all of the job experience on the OP's resume, a degree mill is not a bad way to get a legitimate line on the resume. I had an associates degree, went to the local branch of the state university, and realized I'd be graduating with my kids if I stuck with that route. I sucked it up, plunked down the money to buy my degree in 15 months worth of classes, and now HR departments everywhere will pass that portion of the resume filter.
As far as the original requirements - fast, cheap, accredited, you may pick any 2.
One way you can lighten the financial burden is to get hired full time by a company that offers tuition reimbursement.
Take off every 'sig' for great justice.
You often can get a decent rate at part time taking some classes at your local state University. You can often take classes before you are admitted to the school. Usually after you prove that you know your stuff and get a few good grades, the school will normally let you in the program.
As for experience. Experience does matter, however from my own personal experience hiring developers, a college education usually gets employees that don't have those odd holes in their skills, which makes bringing up to speed sometimes a little more difficult.
These gaps vary from person to person... However some of the common ones are.
1. Not understanding details of data structures. Why am I getting a negative number when it is clearly 5 billion!
2. Recursion seems magical. I admit it, in college it took me a bit to get Recursion, after a class in LISP it cleared it right up. Also when you get the details realizing how often the system is stacking stuff together means there is a limit on how much Recursion magic you can do.
3. IPC (Inter Process Communications) Dealing with threads can get sketchy if you don't have a way to get them to talk.
4. Complex Boolean logic with short circuit evaluation. Yep after that one function returned true that second function won't run in your or clause. You know that one for some reason you made to update some data.
Now for those of you without degree who feel insulted by this, don't be this is what I find are often the most common issues. There are a lot of really good developers without degrees, many who I will admit who could kick my butt at coding. But for a company trying to hire, it is normally better to weed out some good employees then it is to hire a bad one.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
,,, and if he doesn't have a trust fund?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a business degree. That should tell you everything. PHB training academe.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Hi, I want to pretend that I've done a bunch of academic learning, because I feel that I have the right to the title because I have some experience.
Hint: Bachelors degrees are different from experience. Experience is valuable, but it's not the same thing as academic learning, in the same way as academic learning is valuable, but not the same thing as experience. If you want a bachelor's degree... go and do one.
My school (University of Cincinnati) requires all engineering grads to have 1.5 years of industry experience (co-op) to graduate. That means that you get paid for 1.5 years at a decent rate and likely will have an offer at graduation. Worked great for me, though, it does require a 5 year program to complete. Regardless, you get a solid grasp of the fundamentals and a job.
But not wasting your time... I'm all for a solid CS education and I'd give brownie points for it. But if it bugs you to study what you think you already know, then don't. I really can't imagine that a BS in CS is going to impress most hiring managers more than your dozen years of experience plus some other 4 year degree. So get the 4 year degree in something else quantitative in which you have interest. Physics, statistics, math, chemistry, etc. Take your time, and enjoy learning something outside of your normal field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
I had a similar though, fast and cheap is the wrong mindset. Sit down and research the local (or online) schools and degree programs available to you. Dig into the courses and see what topics are taught. Look for a program that will compliment your career goals. Some schools may accept your associates degree coursework, but make sure you ask up front since credits do expire. You are probably looking at a minimum of 2 years to complete a decent program. It could be a long, miserable road if you pick a program simply because you can get it done "fast". I am not saying that time and cost shouldn't be a factor, but make sure you consider the sights you are going to see along the way.
Obviously, your local state school is probably the cheapest.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/11/09/cheapest-colleges-13-standup-schools-that-cost-less-than-5-000/
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
every year, it gets harder to convince potential employers/clients that 10-12 years of hands-on experience doing what they need done, trumps an additional 2 years of general IT education.
Both are pretty meaningless if you don't actually have the necessary knowledge to do the job properly. There are plenty of people with degrees that don't know anything. There are plenty of people with lots of experience that don't know anything. I know lots of people who talk a good game, and can't deliver. There are plenty of people paying for software development that don;t know what good software is, and that's what allows these hacks to survive. The fact that you want to get a BS in computer science with doing the least amount of effort, makes me not want to hire you. What it says to me, is that you don't think the knowledge gained by going through a real CS program is very important. There is also quite a difference in quality between "accredited" computer science programs, and most employers are aware this difference. Maybe you think you know the material already, but I have literally never seen a single "self-taught" person who knew a damn about proper software engineering. Maybe you are a genius and an exception, but I also wouldn't take the word of some self-proclaimed CS/IT genius. Everyone who does computers thinks their a genius, myself included. It's a psychological disorder that's rampant in the field.
Don't be surprised if a fastest cheapest accredited degree (i.e. where you learn the least), doesn't yield the results you were hoping for.
My resume doesn't have any education listed on it either. It never has. Knowing the subject matter is far more important than the piece of paper saying I spent a few years at a school.
If they ask about it, I only discuss it loosely. Yes, I have gone to college. No, I don't have a degree. I started working, and stayed with working rather than school. I've never been pressed for any educational details, like what college/university, how long, etc, etc.
Usually, if I get in for an interview, I have the job. Some others, I interviewed and refused the job, just because I didn't want it after I saw the environment or the people I'd be working with. Employers seem just as likely to misrepresent the actual job, as candidates are to misrepresent their own abilities.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I am willing to bet most companies will not bother to see if your college is accredited just as long as it sounds collegey.
For most jobs in theory you can just fake your degrees. But if you get caught you are often in deep doo-doo, as lying on your resume is a bad thing.
For people with experience a college degree gets past that resume filter.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As with everything else, Pick two.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I've never understood the point of a degree from a non-accredited institution. If the university isn't accredited, I'd probably be better off licensing an official Miskatonic University degree plaque from HP Lovecraft's estate.
The parent nailed it. I'd see about the reimbursement item.
Also, sometimes OS certificates can get one in the door as well. A CCIE can get one in the door, similar with a MCSE. For the tech people, it doesn't mean as much, but the HR department are the people that round-file resumes or pass resumes on, so those are the people that one has to get past first, then one will need to show the IT people what one can really do.
If this is the attitude then you do not want to work there
When it becomes a choice of either "there", 5 different employers with the same policy as "there", or minimum wage, it becomes hard to make ends meet.
I have an Associates degree
I think what you're looking for is "associates degree from a 2 year technical college"
No, OP is looking for something sufficient for employment.
I've always wondered what it is that prevents us from creating a fully accredited* Computer Science Degree (bachelor's) completely online, for cheap. I'm not talking code-school, I mean let's learn Computer Science, with all the math and non-shortcuts that entails. The "industry" might want programmers, but *I* want to be more than that, and I'd like a formal education to get it without spending $30-40k/semester and would prefer to do it at my own pace while I continue working in the field. Perhaps this needs to be a Y Combinator style start-up. Courses from Algebra (yes, Algebra), Geometry, Trig, first principles kind of stuff focusing on the WHYS not just rote memorization. Sure, you'd still need the social sciences and what not (and I would be happy to just take those at the local community college for $cheap and transfer them in), but the real meat at the real school. Hell, it doesn't even have to be accredited if you actually learn something.
This also brings me to self-taught computer scientists: I've begun an adventure down "Teach myself math from scratch" lane because, at age 40, I'm still rather annoyed at my math education in high school. I was more concerned about learning to the test, not the concepts, and that's haunted me ever since. Anyone have recommendations for learning math starting from, say, Algebra I or II level (high school) that will actually teach in a way that will be useful rather than taking a test? Stuff that will carry over into future classes as the proper building blocks, etc?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I'd add a couple:
5: Locks and integrity. You have two threads updating one variable. Without some sort of transaction/lock/mutex/semaphore system, one can get very unpredictable results. This is a subset of #3 above, but variable manipulation can be a basic thing overlooked.
6: Choosing the proper variable type in a strongly typed language. Yes, one can always use long doubles for every floating point calculation, similar with long longs... but when a counter never gets past 16, it wastes space. Yes, the pressure to conserve RAM and disk space isn't as much as it used to be, but embedded programming is only going to grow, so resource use will be an issue for a number of projects.
WTF? A guy wants a degree on his resume to enhance his employment opportunities and you suggest that he blow his head off? What the hell's the matter with you? "Perk" is defined as 'an advantage or benefit following from a job or situation.' Which pretty much describes the OP's intent. Just because he is interested in the practical outcomes of having a degree rather than worshiping at the Holy Altar of the Ivory Tower you think he should end his life?
Went to DeVry; you know he's not the brightest bulb in the pack.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The other bad news is that it's a sign that no other college likes the college you got your 2 year degree from, for some reason, which either speaks to the quality of education that you received or to some underlying college political issue, and you won't know which without digging a bit
In the USA, there are two tiers of institutions of higher education: regionally accredited schools and nationally accredited schools. Regionally accredited institutions tend to be more prestigious and more academic as opposed to vocational. Credits from nationally accredited schools seldom transfer to regionally accredited schools, and students have sued over this.
It isn't "IT", but there are degrees in IS, along the lines of business management. This is another path, likely a profitable one since it gets one closer to PM/PHB types of jobs... those are the jobs that will stay even after the corporate axemen come to visit with the pink slips.
For most jobs in theory you can just fake your degrees. But if you get caught you are often in deep doo-doo, as lying on your resume is a bad thing.
Man don't say things like that. That is a good way to get a major black spot in your resume. This business is smaller than some people realize. Next time you try getting a job it will probably be of the kind where you say 'do you want that with fries or not?'.
...does an accredited (presumably) school come up with that? That sounds like a trade school degree. Might as well be self-taught.
When did people stop going to college to get "educated" as opposed to "resumated"?
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They allow you to transfer lots of credits, to write essays to demonstrate life learning, and offer tons of independent study courses to top off any remaining gaps. The essays are pure gold though.
How do you shop for new clients? How do you find businesses and get on their list of "approved vendors?"
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
As you noted #5 was a subset of #3
Also I would say #6 is a subset of #1. If you don't understand data structures those long doubles and long longs seems like the best choice if you really don't know why there are so many different types.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Most do not consider this, and most colleges don't advertise it. One option to to look at taking an exam to pass out of the required classes for a degree. So for a bachelor's degree look for classes that you know everything about and fit the degree requirement. Most colleges allow you to pay a fraction of the cost for a class, and allow you to take a single exam. If you pass, that is your grade, or some do just a pass/fail. However if you know most of what the college requires for their Bachelor's CS degree, you can get away with the degree for pennies. I haven't looked at my local college for awhile, but I know at one point I paid like $250 about 10 years ago and then took an exam. It takes some work and research, but could end up being your fastest and cheapest route! I would also recommend if you go this route to meet with the professors or chair of the school (CS of IS maybe) and let them know what you are doing. Most of them are very accommodating and understanding of people who work full time trying to get a degree
Oh, and get off my lawn... ;)
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Perhaps an actual answer to his question.
First off, make sure your Associates degree is a transferable associates degree. The fact that you say it is in "Programming and Systems Analysis" instead of just Associates in Arts or Associates in Science leads me to believe it isn't a very transferable degree. You would have needed things like 3 communications classes (English, Speech, etc), 6 behavioral sciences / humanities courses, 2 science classes, and 2 math classes. If it is a transferable degree, then you are half way there.
If it is not transferable, you can try to use CLEP tests to get past many required classes. I was able to get past two humanities courses that weren't part of my associates this way. If you can't pass the tests because you are a bad test taker or something, community college classes are your best bet. It will be easy to pass those classes but it will take a while this way.
If you aren't able to go to college for two years during daytime hours, it will be a bit harder to finish the last 60 credit hours. When I needed a BS while working in 2009 I was forced to use University of Phoenix, but now there are many better options at real schools. I followed up my BS with an MS at a real school, so I didn't mind going to a degree mill. But a quick internet search can find numerous online BS programs at real brick and mortar schools.
I do not suggest going to a diploma mill unless you are going to follow up with a real MS. The government is likely to start cracking down on programs like UoP and Devry soon, and those schools will probably obtain even worse reputations than they already have when that happens. That said, I did get a job with a 50% pay increase by just listing I was 12 credit hours away from my UoP BS degree, so it was useful to me all by itself (my boss later confirmed my resume would never have reached her desk if I hadn't listed I was close to my BS).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I have been seeing a fatal trend in the IT space these last few years that seem to disregard the usefulness of a college degree. Another group seems to think a degree is only valuable to the extent that it helps you get a job. Most people who actually take the time and get a degree that takes a tremendous effort are able to see what a degree provides is critical thinking skills. While some people can develop these skills without a degree few actually do.
Critical thinking helps someone more easily form association with others, their ideas, and lets them thoughtfully consider divergent ideas in order to choose the best direction. I have worked with all forms of IT people from doctors to people who barely graduated high school to accountants/musicians turned IT and one thing that helps build a team and move a project in a unified direction is a degree. The teams can be made as true contributing partnerships as opposed to being authoritatively led. This structure builds an abstract organism with multiple brains and hands instead of one with one brain and multiple hands.
Also I hate to sound like a conspiracy theory nut but there are plenty of people who like the one mind many hands abstraction which include politicians, religious, and military leaders. A population can only be free when there are free thinkers and free thinking can only be achieved when you understand many conflicting ideas and then are able to choose the ones you agree with. Later you should be free to change your mind and will learn to delight in paradigm crushing logic. Only one institution was designed to inundate you with perspectives and make you think for yourself, that is a university.
Just put on your resume that you have a BSc. They'll never require proof and they're idiots for demanding you have one anyways.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Get a degree in Electrical Engineering from your nearest State University, filling all your elective credits with Computer Science courses.
Gets you access to all those "4 year degree" tech jobs, plus a whole slew of other tech jobs that you didn't know existed. That's what I did because I didn't want to pigeonhole myself into a field that is rife with bubbles and outsourcing. Worse case scenario, if at some point I can't find work writing code, I can try to get a job with the power company, a telco, etc.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
I'm not an HR flack (Thank the nonexistent deities of a thousand dead pantheons); but I'd guess that, if HR (or anybody else who felt like quietly dropping the dime on you for some reason at any point during your tenure...) was feeling nasty, testing for degree mills would be easier than testing for fake or overstated degrees.
Thanks to some combination of FERPA and the Office of the Bursar's desire to extract fees, actually getting the details of a student's stay at a given school is a pain. By contrast, googling the exact name of the school the applicant claims (or even running an automated query against info from accreditation bodies, if you do this in bulk) is easy.
They may or may not care; but trusting the difficulty of that database problem is like turning your back on a dude with a knife and a nasty gleam in his eye.
Wherever you get your degree, don't run up a fortune in debt to pay for it. It would be better to not get it at all then to run up, say, $30,000 or more of debt to pay off - in my opinion. I do agree with you that it probably really is harder and harder to get jobs without a 4 year degree. I've seen this happen to IT people I know who don't have 4 year degrees and get laid off.
This is, without a doubt, the fastest way to get your bachelor's degree. You can study at your own pace, and you can take tests for materials that you already know without investing time into the studies.
MBA has mod points.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Maybe there was a Computer CV screening, and the boss, instead of bothering to hassle with the programming, just made the three into a four?
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
A lot of government research entities will pay for your advanced education (Georgia Tech Research Institute, Sandia Labs, etc) because they value advanced degrees. I know this works great getting MS degrees. You just have to sell your soul to the same company usually for an additional 4 years. I recommend you just get a BS degree with a decent in-state public school. Usually you can help pay for tuition by working for the school as a TA or Research Assistant.
I was in a similar situation several years back with an associates degree in computer programming/systems analysis. I got a BS in computer science from Park University. Make sure you talk to a counselor there since the CS degree (at least in 2007) wasn't listed as a degree you could get online. I talked to a counselor and it turned out that after considering transfer credits from my associates degree, I was able to take all my remaining classes online except one. I had to go to a local community college and take Calculus II and then transfer the credits to Park. I was also able to be exempted from a couple of the intro programming classes based on work experience. Total cost to me was about $10,000 and it took two years.
Get a job doing support, call center, help desk, whatever, with a company that has tuition reimbursement. Get most of it done at a community college as they are usually easier & better schedule wise for the working adult. Just be sure it has a transfer program to a state college so your degree has a better name on it. This worked well for me.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I can tell by your syntax that you learned to code in the early 90s....
Good god, take a remedial writing class, please.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
For most jobs in theory you can just fake your degrees. But if you get caught you are often in deep doo-doo, as lying on your resume is a bad thing.
Man don't say things like that. That is a good way to get a major black spot in your resume.
Nonsense. Even if you get caught (unlikely), there is very little chance that it will hurt you in your next interview. Do you really think HR people have nothing better to do than to build and maintain blacklists for the benefit of their competitors?
No. But they can certainly check your resume by calling your ex-bosses to ask them about you.
I took three. I did 90 credits at Mesa Community College, who operates a very solid Cisco Network Academy affiliate, and 30 credits at Northern Arizona University for my bachelors in IT Management. Both are public colleges and accredited. It's cheap because you get the discount community college rates for 90 credits, and then only have to do the core credits for the university portion (skipping all of the fluff such as liberal arts, because they recognize that you already did the fluff at community college; so why repeat it?)
Zero student debt, in fact my costs were almost non-existent due to FAFSA and other grants issued by the schools themselves (which were based on FAFSA results but funded separately.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I hear one can buy many things in Mumbai, tried there yet?
I am willing to bet most companies will not bother to see if your college is accredited just as long as it sounds collegey.
I would not bet on that. More likely, if they haven't heard of the school they will trash the resume unless your experience is eye catching.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
No. But they can certainly check your resume by calling your ex-bosses to ask them about you.
And any smart one simply refers the request to HR, especially if they fired you. No one ants to open themsvez up to a lawsuit.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Might be awkward, otherwise.
CLEP is something that should be at the top of the discussion. Get many of your gen ed requriements out of the way for $80 a class.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/...
also has a ton of hints.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
I got my M.Ed. there. The main advantage of WGU is that it isn't class based but competency based. You do assignments (and tests) to prove your knowledge. They don't really provide much in the way of materials, but if you already know it and just need the diploma you can advance very quickly. It is ~$3000 for an all-you-can-study semester.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
Around the end of the power of labor in the late 1970s. What rock have you been hiding under?
The minimum for an accredited degree program is 3 years; 4 for an advanced degree.
Two year programs are tech school stuff, and will not get your foot in the door any easier than the 10-12 years of experience you have.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
No. But they can certainly check your resume by calling your ex-bosses to ask them about you.
They may check on your last job, or the one before that if in the last few years. But it is very unlikely that they are going to check on a job from five or ten years ago. Likewise, if you are 23, they may check on your degree, but if you are 33, that is unlikely too. You just need to be smart about what you lie about.
No prospective employer has ever asked me for proof of any degrees, and they never asked for my GPA or transcripts. As far as I know, they never checked with any previous employer about anything. For some reason, they seemed to be much more concerned about what I could actually do.
I hired a guy who was in a small time band for 20 years after high school. Traveled all over US. No one ever paid an admission price to hear them. Hotel lobby. Restaurant. Etc. Decided to get a degree at age 40. 20 years of travel showed him the cheapest place in USA. Upper peninsula of Michigan. Mich tech or some such place. Finished degree in three years with summer session. Started as entry level coder at age 44. One of the smartest guys I have met. He joined and enjoyed our London times cryptic crossword puzzle group. So go north young man.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Call me Reverend HornWumpus please. I've got the paper.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
According to TFA, he's a contractor. While he might work remotely, there's a good chance he has to travel to the client site, and things being how they are there's no guarantee how long he'll be there.
Therefore he might not have a local university.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have 13+ years of IT. Went to community college for 2 yrs, then State school for 1, where I dropped out. .. very few ask if I graduated; if they don't ask, I don't bring it up.
I just put "University: [state school name]" and it passes most filters
Doesn't seem to have hurt me, so far.
No prospective employer has ever asked me for proof of any degrees, and they never asked for my GPA or transcripts. As far as I know, they never checked with any previous employer about anything. For some reason, they seemed to be much more concerned about what I could actually do.
Google 'Gil Gerard'. He is one example of someone who lied on his resume. I know more cases of this happening. It works until it doesn't. When someone finds you out you usually are toast.
I would hope that LISP class would teach you to avoid side-effects when possible too...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
If the company you worked for is large enough to have HR. Even then when they are thinking of hiring you sometimes they ask specifically to speak with the project manager or your former boss. I have factual knowledge of this because in one of the companies I worked for we all worked in an open space office and the CEO quite often answered calls from other companies asking for details on some ex-employee. They were usually quite terse in their replies and only confirmed or dismissed previous work experience. However I remember on other more informal occasions someone in a different company asked my boss about someone and he spilled all the beans. People in the business know each other better than you would think they do.
Once I was working at a pretty large client and one of the people handling the contract at the client knew where I had studied. In fact he had studied in the same college I did and so did his boss.The company I worked for gave them my resume before sending me there. In fact he told me he had explicitly asked for it from my boss.
So try lying on your resume and see how far you will get with it. It is not a good idea. I do not lie to people by principle. If you think you can get away with it you probably can. For a while. Just do not count on it working forever. Your income depends on your reputation. If you get a bad reputation do not be surprised that people will stop wanting you to work for them.
Just about every developed country other than the US provides highly subsidized tertiary education, making it much much cheaper than the US (in some cases free). So move to another country then enroll. Downside is you may have to marry a local or do something similarly complicated to get residency. :)
Is there an item for confusing processes with threads?
Just make sure to enrol on the BS and not the Beta-BS.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Funny that you mentioned those information holes. I learned all of those facets from a technical diploma 14 years ago, and I know more than a few CS degree grads that several years into the workforce have confessed that they never 'got' multi-threading. Basically, everyone has holes and most have a ton of them. Being ignorant isn't the end of the world, but being ignorant and incapable of learning is a much larger problem, but I doubt educational background has as crutial in determining the latter.
Assuming that the 'average' 12 year work experience individual is less capable than the 'average' BSC new grad is rather insulting to the veteran's, full stop. If you want to compare individuals of the same seniority, that's a different matter, but frankly at that point you should be able to talk to a developer for a while in order to know which one is full of it.
Bye!
The interviewer who is worth working for is the one willing to give him a job in which he can earn money to eat and pay rent.
He probably could. But without the magic piece of a dead goat's bum he probably couldn't convince anyone that he could.
That, largely, is the gist of the question, is it not?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My alma mater averages $210/credit hour (http://tuitionfees.smca.ucf.edu/). The engineering degree, when I graduated, was 128 credit hours. This brings the cost of the degree close to $27000 ($6000/year). It appears that GP paid 50% more than traditional education (in-state tuition) for his non-traditional degree program.
For math Khan academy is worth checking out; I don't know why parent is modded zero.
Probably good for other stuff too, it was the math that caught my eye.
https://www.khanacademy.org
Some cool video (give the first one five minutes... I think you'll like it):
Salman Khan talk at TED 2011 (from ted.com)
TEDxSanJoseCA - Salman Khan - (Sequel to talk at TED)
Making a false claim on a resume, even if not caught for years, has, in the last few years, gotten a senior MIT administrator and a company CEO fired.
The federal government sometimes checks items that are 20 years old on your resume.
Using an unaccredited PhD got some Ryerson University faculty in public trouble.
Don't even mislead or be ambiguous. If I read a resume that says, "attended Miskatonic", I assume 2 things. 1) The writer didn't graduate. 2) He wants me to think that he did.
Do not say that you attended Harvard if you went only to the Summer School.
Know your market. Some places value the degree quality and some do not. In the latter case, WGU or Excelsior are fine.
CS accreditation is optional and sets only a very low bar. MIT was not accredited until relatively recently. Accreditation is a hassle and everyone already knew that they were good.
Engineering accreditation is not optional. Stanford was threatened with losing their EE accreditation if they made a proposed change that probably would have been an improvement.
If the company you worked for is large enough to have HR. Even then when they are thinking of hiring you sometimes they ask specifically to speak with the project manager or your former boss. I have factual knowledge of this because in one of the companies I worked for we all worked in an open space office and the CEO quite often answered calls from other companies asking for details on some ex-employee. They were usually quite terse in their replies and only confirmed or dismissed previous work experience. However I remember on other more informal occasions someone in a different company asked my boss about someone and he spilled all the beans. People in the business know each other better than you would think they do.
I realize people know each other; having worked for quite some time I often tell people it is never a good idea to burn bridges because it really is a small world. I know many of the major players in my niche and we talk periodically even though we are competitors. My point was is most companies will do nothing but verify dates of employment to avoid potential lawsuits.
So try lying on your resume and see how far you will get with it. It is not a good idea. I do not lie to people by principle. If you think you can get away with it you probably can. For a while. Just do not count on it working forever. Your income depends on your reputation. If you get a bad reputation do not be surprised that people will stop wanting you to work for them.
I totally agree. Lying is a bad idea overall and certainly bad on a resume. I can deal with incompetence but can't abide lying.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
WGU is fully accredited, same accreditation as a state university. It is completely self-paced, there are no classes- just suggested reading and references to self-teach. You simply test for each subject's final exam whenever you are ready to do so. Testing is stringent, and is done in proctored centers (usually a local state or community college testing center).
You pay by the semester, and if you test out 4 years in that one semester, you are done- here is your diploma. I did it, transferred my associates from a military school and dove in. 2 semesters later, I had a BS:Information technology to hang on the boss' forehead. Could have done it in one semester, but I burned out/got lazy at the end and went long. With things like OpenCourseware, KhanAcademy, and similar for resources, you can learn any topic.
Link:http://www.wgu.edu/
I'm not sure on which area of programming you are focused, but until recently I was doing contract development exclusively and more often than not beat out people with Bachelor's and even Master's.
.Net, C# enterprise web applications. I've actually passed up contracts even though it might be another week or two so that I can maintain a resume that speaks clearly to a specific technology. The bad thing about web development is that it changes faster than Florida weather. The good thing is that if you keep up with the cutting edge technology such as Angular, SignalR, Breeze and anything else that is coming up you will never want for work.
That being said, the reason I've been successful has nothing to do with intelligence or years of experience. I have gone out of my way to find contracts with Fortune 500 companies starting in 1994 with EDS followed by Blockbuster / Viacom, Sprint, Disney, Darden and other well known companies. I've actually taken less money to work for some of these companies because I know that people read our resumes very quickly and look for things that stand out.
Degrees over almost everything else are important if not critical if you are looking for temp to perm or contracts with companies that require it, obviously. However, you could hand two resumes to someone with absolutely no knowledge of programming and they will immediately recognize the names and form a strong opinion.
Another thing that I believe has brought me success is the fact that I decided in 2004/5 to focus exclusively on N-Tier,
While my post title, "No College for Me" may offend a lot of people, my belief is that you must do what you can to be marketable and stand out. If I stand side by side with someone with exactly the same experience and focus, they will get the job if they have a degree. On the other hand, I landed the contract at Blockbuster / Viacom in December of 1996 because I had just received a Microsoft Certified Professional certification in Windows 95 so had a large logo at the top of my resume. I am currently working on my (they keep changing it) Microsoft Certified something relating to developing applications. When I put that at the top of my resume I believe that it will again trump most if not all degrees.
On a related note, I went to Orlando Code Camp this weekend. There were 789 males and one scarily hot Goth girl with a mini skirt and some disturbing yet erotic tattoos. Damn, I'd like to see her code.
Khan Academy has a pretty good math program, up to high school AP math courses. Videos, problems, references, etc.
8. CAP theorem and why you can't just code around it.
We'll be seeing each of these becoming more and more important as the standard abstraction programming model moves up from transistor logic to assembler to virtual machines to distributed computing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Unless you're talking about DeVry graduates, there weren't "programming" degrees in accredited colleges in the early 90's. The closest you could come was a CS degree from a non-liberal arts school so you could just do the CS portions and didn't have to get a well rounded education since you could skip things like liberal arts electives.
What college did offer them before 1995?
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We know what BS means. MS == More of the Same. PhD == More of the Same, just Piled Higher and Deeper! GA Tech is an accredited (and good) university. They won't let you into a Masters program without a BA or BS of some sore, and that means from an accredited institution. I would suggest that you do what my daughter is doing, and take as many courses (night or correspondance courses if necessary) from your local state college as you can (or can afford) until you get your BA/BS degree. Then, you will have your "credentials", value notwithstanding. Me, I am a non-degreed engineer, and a full member of the IEEE because of experience and recommendations from colleagues who have PhD's in the CS field (and have been university professors), and in one case is the current President of the IEEE-USA, Doctor Gary Blank. I have pretty much always been able to get a job that I applied for, but 30 years of experience, publications, and patents to my name have helped cross that divide. So, you can join the IEEE as an Associate Member (BS not needed - just adequate experience), get some recommendations from colleagues who are members and have serious credentials, and you also can become a full member. Since the IEEE ONLY accepts for full membership those with at least a BS, or experience and recommendations from members in good standing, this is a major leg up, so to speak.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
I'd add one for setting them apart dogma-style :D
Come on, what is cheaper than that?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
If you're interested in a MSC online and don't mind if it's from a UK university, you might want to check out the University of Liverpool. I think they will accept you on this one. Price was around 18,000 GBP 4 years ago. Some modules are a breeze but others are a PITA; the modules involving group work can be an interesting experience or a really painful one, depending on your group. Their collaboration tools were message boards and crappy Java-based chats and whiteboards; a few fellow students couldn't use voice chat or better collaboration tools because of Internet censorship in their countries, and some other students were rather incompetent. Once you start a module, you're committed to turn out weekly assignments for eight consecutive weeks. They claim you can complete it dedicating between 10 and 20 hours a week, but prepare to work more if you're unlucky.
So I'm not exactly selling it but if you're interested don't be put off; my experience is anecdotal and their website looks pretty different now, everything might have changed. Ask around if you can (I think they have a forum on LinkedIn).
http://www.londoninternational...
I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding.
Also, don't bother to apply if you got your 4-year degree more than a few years ago, work experience notwithstanding. The application process requires recommendations and the online recommendation form is completely oriented towards coursework. If your recommenders aren't former classmates or professors, it will be hard for them to complete the form.
Before I dropped out from inability to pay, Clemson University charged $340-510 per credit hour (at least 12, up to 18 a semester). And that was in-state costs.
I know of a guy who just called around to universities until he found someone with the same name who graduated about when he would have. Instant degree.
Certifications are THE way to stay gainfully employed in tech...hands down. But NOT because they really do anything for you, they are a quantifiable credential for HR and headhunters. HR is the first and most difficult task in the employment process. Certs are cheap and have a good ROI both in time and money outlay. Some are harder than others but I know guys working for code farms or support companies with nothing more than a couple of certs...no degree and no plans to get one. Degrees are nice but the curriculum stays a bit behind unless you're at an expensive research university like MIT. Certs are always industry current and tells an employer you can do the job.
Check you processor architecture. Using ints smaller then the native register size of the processor is _slower_ and the code is larger. Truncation is not free.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If I could go back to 18 again and be starting school over again, I probably would have just gotten an AA in Liberal Arts to save money, and then transfer wherever and for whatever I felt. But that's not the situation for me or you. :) You should be ok if they have any sort of articulation agreements though, and good luck!
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.
When I went to school, my adviser said to stay away from diploma mills. For most good jobs, they are worse than not having a degree.
I like #7 for regular programming. When working with threads, many times wasting work because the data some times changes, is better than locking on every read to make sure the data hasn't changed. At least when working with relatively small tasks. Works great for heavy-read, almost never write, kinds of workloads.
Mine was $130/credit with credits after 12 in a semester being free. But the other 90% was paid for by tax-payers. Non-trade students with no degrees got PAID to go to college. Fairly easy state grants for students over the age of 26, and especially parents. They will give you extra money per child to help with costs of being a parent going to school. I knew someone who was making a net profit of over $1,000/sem going to college, and a very well renown one.
... but really doesn't matter what your degree is in. As a hiring manager, I could care less if you majored in basket weaving or circle jerking. So long as you have the experience I need - then you resume doesn't make a bee-line to the recycle bin. But to me - a college degree (especially a 4-year degree) demonstrates to me that you have goals, forward looking thinking and most importantly, you finished what you started. Bonus points if you went away to college, learned a little bit about life, got laid and didn't spend 10 years after high school scratching the inside of your mom's uterus.
It's not business correspondence, nor a grade in academia.
But the reason that all your posts are downmodded into oblivion is that no one wants to see or spend time decoding your hellacious writing. If that's happening on a casual internet forum, then just think about how much it's costing you elsewhere in your life, that you don't even get to see directly.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
It happens that in some places on Slashdot and elsewhere if you refer to Ken or Dennis people know who they are. Ken is still round i hear and working for Schmidt at Google i imagine when he went by HR it was after he was hired. So the need to get pass HR checklists is not a law of nature.
Consider join ACM. You are more than qualified. They award nice pieces of paper than in my day were liked by HR. They have top notch educational offerings. They offer job search help. There are a lot of networking opportunities etc. The last two are the ones that really counts.
As far as CS degrees i am unenthusiastic. Pick up something that is not techie that you will enjoy.
Become German, get a degree for free (except in Saxony).
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Nice false dichotomy, you fucking imbecile.
Did you read the article? He wants a degree as easily as possible, just so that he can make more money. If an accredited institution offered Bachelor's degrees in CS for sucking dick in the parking lot, I'm sure our erstwhile submitter wouldn't have bothered asking for anything else.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Google "yahoo ceo scott thompson resume"
Yes, he was eventually found out but only after becoming CEO of yahoo and probably having millions in the bank.
I probably wouldn't want to do it but putting a 10 year old degree on your resume after you already have 20 years
experience is probably pretty safe. They will probably call the last 2-3 places that you worked but chances are
they won't actually call the college. As a contractor, even if they do call and it says you were never a student,
you can play ignorant and move on. You could also play it safe and use a college that has since closed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
The OP was complaining of losing a significant number of jobs so he would have to weigh the number of lost jobs
due to not having a degree vs the number of lost jobs due to someone calling and not being able to verify.