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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.
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.
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?
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.
I once interviewed for one of the big investment banks (not gonna give a name, but its one of the big evil wall street banks that everyone knows about). That one has the usual silly "4 year degree with 3.0 GPA or we don't even talk to you, no exception, not even if you're a well known superstar in the software world" rule.
I didn't know that, and I only have a 3 year degree (from a country where thats common). I aced the interview as that particular job wasn't even very computer science-ish, and they had been looking for someone for months to fill that position. Then they noticed the little issue of me not having the mandatory degree.
The hiring manager (not someone from an agency, but someone on their payroll) just modified my resume without telling me and passed it over to HR for final signoff. I got hired.
Fast forward a year, they're updating the HRIS system and verifying that all the info is correct. I get an email from HR asking me to confirm that I indeed have a 4 year bachelor with 3.0 GPA from Big Name College XYZ with my boss CCed.
My boss quickly replied, before I had time to go "WTF?!", that I indeed had such a degree.
Needless to say, him and I had a little talk afterward. That was awkward.
By the principle of "Quality, price, speed, pick any two," when you ask for price and speed, just know what you're asking for.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 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
Great that your boss is watching out for you, yikes that your company has to lie to itself to hire and keep qualified personnel.
Something's broken, and it's beyond individuals to fix it ...
Don't know which other country you're talking about, but a UK 3 year honours degree is considered equivalent to a 4 year US degree.
I don't think "4 year" is to be taken literally.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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?'.
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 got a BS and MS from a here to be un-named University. A few weeks before graduation, I also got a parking ticket, which I contested. I got an un-official copy of my 6 years of transcripts before the ticket was done with the appeals system. I got my first job without even showing the unofficial transcripts, worked there for 12 years while the Uni sent me probably 100 letters demanding $20 payment for the ticket, informing me that my records are frozen until such time as the ticket is paid.
Next job was with a big corporate place out of state, I showed them the unofficial transcripts, that's all they wanted to see.
Many jobs since then, none have even asked for my paperwork- and, unless the Uni was bluffing, none of them have gone behind my back to get the transcripts, either.
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.
Time is money, actually, when I turned 30, time became more valuable than money.
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.
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?
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