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Distance Learning Recommendations?
Coventry asks: "I left college two years ago. At the time, I was actually on staff and going to class for free - working on the in-house network. I left for better money, but now I want to finish my degree. Now, I can`t go back to school full time, I need to work, so my questions is several fold: (more -->)
"What accredited colleges or universities offer a full Bachelors in Computer Science through Distance Learning? How much do they cost? What are the policies on transfered credits, and 'Challenge for Credit' (testing out of a course for full credit) ? Has anyone else looked into this? I know that I want to teach on the college level at some point, and I cant seem to get my foot in the door, reguardless of my other credentials, at certain big and blue company. Any ideas? I do NOT want a buy-a-degree type thing. I'm more then willing to put in the effort and go through the course load, but I need to do it remotely, and preferably at my pace (fairly fast!)"
Just thought I'd get two cents in early... :)
-c.
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Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
I was a chemistry major at a good technical university literally recruited right "out"---sold out---of school. Although I'd only a handful of credits left to finish, I have no regrets but share your wish to follow through for it's own sake.
The best program I've looked at is the University of Phoenix Online distance degree program. I intend to matriculate soon unless I see a better opportunity (thanks for asking this question for me).
See their main page, and also the Distance Education page.
Im in a similar situation, I use Athabasca University from Alberta (Canada eh!) They let you start courses anytime in the year, and they you can rip through them at your own speed.
their website is very extensive, and they respond to email in less than a day. course prices range a bit, but mine have averaged around $400CDn but that includes all materials, like text books and studyguides... at the current exchange rate, that isnt to shabby. =)
They have been reviewed as being one of the more credible distance education universities (i dont have the name of the last set of reviews that i read, sorry)
Many Universities and colleges offer their own distance education courses. Still more computer Science faculties are offering courses that are directed via the web.
Most Universities/colleges have a pre-approved transfer credit lists... ask the records services people or a course advisor. That might give you a good place to start from, especially if you want to attend a specific institute full-time at some point. (All the courses I take have been pre-approved for transfer credit with my od university, it really simplifies things)
An old sig
a bit drops in
Sound of ascii
That would be "...more than willing..."; don't skip the English courses :-)
Seriously, I dropped out too and have sometimes wondered what a good solution for the sheepskin might be. Not that I've had it matter since...
When I was in Sydney last year, I ran into some folks at an XML conference that were pushing the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's then-new all-online certificate and degree programs. The program seems pretty solid, and the University is a hotbed of XML work. They have since been marketing to me pretty hard, and both my conversations with them and the materials portray it as a no-bullshit all-web-based program for BS, MS, and PhD in technical fields. Check it out the online program here.
While it seems all well and good, can anyone who has actually attended a program there comment on it? RMIT seems more serious than the current wave of schools using the shovelware method of developing online course offerings. Is it as good as it appears?
I think not...(*poof*)
Really.. I picked up C++ in about 4 months (the basics now, people) and went on to write a 1500 line program (mp3db - get it @ freshmeat). How'd I do that? Simple .. I bugged the crap out of all my programmer friends for algorithm books, I literally inhaled C++ Primer Plus, etc.
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If you really want to teach you will have to actually go to the university just so the people there can see you. And you would probably have to start as a teaching assistant which means you will do all the leg work for some other professor. It doesn't sound like you have the time to do this if you wan to keep your full time job. IMO the BS is worth it only if you cann't take the upper level classes without it. I learned a lot in my upper level classes but I probably could have taken them day 1 and done just as well. As for the industry it depends on the company you will see people who post that you don't need the degree and people who post that you need the degree, at the end the issue is what you want. Getting a Masters just for $$$ is not worth it and again IMO if you want to learn more you can always buy books so the Masters in only usefull if you don't think you can learn on your own or if you want someone to explain concepts to you.
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
I'm sure it's pretty expensive, but it certainly isn't some hokey Buy-A-Degree!
Here's a link to the Spring Quarter course offerings: Continuing Education
I have been thinking a lot about the education system and it's structure lately after I had an interesting experience. I was majoring in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering here at the University of Minnesota, and now that the semester is more than half over I decided to peruse the web pages of the Computer Science courses that I would be taking later. I looked through their homework, their midterms, the notes, etc. and over all was not very impressed.
Day after day I skip about 80% of my classes as the exact same thing that is taught in lecture is almost word for word in the book.
What's to stop us, the Open Source community, from creating these very same textbooks (which could be written much better as often times these $100+ textbooks are written to supplement lecture material, therefore being clumsy in many areas)? Once they're online not only would students save thousands of dollars, but it would be a great step in the direction of making education available to everyone regardless of economic class.
At South Dakota State their lectures are broadcast on the dorm's cable network. Why not tape these lectures? It's not like in today's generic university there is any "interaction" in a 300+ student lecture hall. Now that bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper, these could be online as well for those that "need" to see someone doing and saying the material.
It seems extremely inefficient for professors to teach the same thing semester after semester if not several times a day. The same material, over and over. A bit inefficient by today's technological advances, no?
I want to create a whole new model of schooling, free schools, so bad! So, why not?
Actually the direct url to RIT's Distance Learning program is http://distancelearning.rit.edu/.
Check out this website. It's headed up by a friend of mine. It gives some pretty good info about distance education.
----- this is my sig, do you like it?
It seems to me that the most indispensable undergrad degree is an engineering degree, as it is one requirement in many places to legally call yourself an engineer (which has special legal advantages).
Does anyone know how to get an engineering/AppSci degree by distance ed?
I have a PhD in another engineering field (chemical) from a well-known university, and am getting tired of the lack of opportunities and shrinking R&D organizations in the industry I work in, even though I've been pretty successful overall. I've done a lot of hacking, running small networks and so on, sold some software as shareware etc. but don't have any formal CS coursework to point even though many of my ChE course required some programming. I would like to change fields even though I know for the first few years I would probably take a pay cut. My own field is just rehashing 20-30 year old technologies, and you can see the field drying up. What would /. folks recommend that I do? I've looked at CS curricula, and from what I see it looks like I've got more of the maths, numerical analysis, etc. in my background than any MS CS graduate would have (My PhD minor was in math, which gives me an equivalent to a MS in Math) - what I don't have are the formal software engineering methods. Would certifications help? Or are there crossover training programs that would be useful?
.... and it is a really good program if it is executed right.
I've been told by some people that out West, UoP's requtation is better since they have been around for 25 years there...
The main problem is not the program or the course content, or even the faculty, who is required to work full-time in the fields they teach, but with the administration...it is impossible to get a hold of people sometimes and there are far too few counselors available as compared to the number of students. Faculty and students quit on a fairly regular basis because the administration is so bad...I'm likely to get my BS from UoP and then move to Central Michigan, which offers a Masters program for information technology in a similar format....
The sessions are 5-8 weeks long, 4 hours a week (one session per week). You also are required to be in a study group, which meets for a couple hours a week to complete group assignments (this is how you get the minimum # of hours and still be accredited)
It qualifies for loan purposes as "full time" enrollment status, too.
My journal has hot
Okay, I have to ask (since I'm thinking of changing jobs soon, and you seem likely to know, if you'll take a minute to answer) -
What's the general attitude towards Bachelors/Masters/PhD levels in Canada? In the U.S., I think, a bachelors gets you plenty of job opportunity; a Masters gets you a few more job opportunities and a higher pay-scale. A PhD is a sort of an odd thing that means you either get really high-up jobs or are overqualified (aka, 'we don't want to pay PhD-level salary for a simple coder')
And, if you know, how hard is it for an USA resident-native to get a Canadian residency-permit & work-visa?
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
That's not true. My employer has been very supportive of my seeking my degree. They would MUCH rather see me with a degree than without one.
My journal has hot
I actually work for a university as the webmaster responsible for our online distance learning department. We don't offer any kind of CS degree, so my opinion is only biased by my own prejudices. These are also just my personal opinions. Now, to the questions I may be able to help you answer...
> What are the policies on transfered credits, and 'Challenge for Credit' (testing out of a course for full credit) ?
Every program is accredited by one or more accrediting bodies. There is no such thing as "fully accredited". There are only agreements between colleges and accrediting agencies on what a course or program is *worth*. Therefore, if you plan on transferring credits between institutions you will need to contact the destination institution to find out if that course (and be specific that it is a DL course) will transfer and how the credits will be treated (i.e. if and how they can be applied toward the degree).
>I do NOT want a buy-a-degree type thing. I'm more then willing to put in the effort and go through the course load...
I would not recommend Phoenix. They are the most together, have the most courses, the most degrees, the best marketing, and are pretty high on customer service. However, they are also the most expensive, most commercial (as in for-profit-mercenary), and least interested in providing a good education. They can get you your degree - though not an education - and they will make sure you pay for it.
In the *realm* of distance learning Maryland and Colorado are good schools. (I'd like to think we are too, but I'm biased and we don't offer CS anyhow.)
Also, watch out for programs that make you use *special* software to access their classrooms or that outsource their online materials. A lot of this software is terrible. If the university doesn't have or is not willing to commit the resources to develop their own online classrooms then they probably aren't ready to deliver at a distance. Think about it: do would you outsource your core business functions?
<rant>This software/outsourcing course creation thing chaps my beans... it's whole purpose is to allow the instructors to create courses on their own, so the university doesn't have to make a large investment in actually supporting the development, the faculty, or the students. Don't get me wrong, the instructors are always experts in their fields, but is it really reasonable to expect them to be experts in multimedia development and online delivery as well? They don't even write books without a team of editors and graphic designers to support them! How can you expect them to be experts at web and media design and the tools they require? Is it reasonable to think we can *dumb* the process down that far and still produce a quality product? I don't think so either... no wonder DL is getting a bad name. A good course can only be created by a team that includes experts in design, programming, and GUI as well as experts on the subject matter.</rant>
-Computers hate being anthropomorphized.
Of course it's a profession, but that's no reason you can't get the required degrees by distance learning.
Here in Canada, you also have to spend two years as an apprentice and pass certain tests to become an engineer. This is a much more effective system for weeding out incompetents than a university.
Anyway, I think the whole "profession" thing is overblown. I've met incompetent, lazy engineers and ones that cut corners. Damn few of them seem to respect their ethical obligations to the end-users, accepting whatever management says is okay (they act more from fear of litigation than from any code of ethics). Same with doctors and lawyers.
In fact 90% of the engineers I met (I worked for 2 years in a co-op engineering program before giving up in disgust) didn't deserve the title as it is represented by the professional organizations. I wouldn't trust them to build me a flashlight, let alone a jet engine. The truth is that the reason important things aren't usually clumsily built is not that professional engineers were involved, but simply that they are important, so the human beings involved in the design and construction take care to do the job right.
Everyone should do their work ethically. Everyone should be competent at their job. A short-order cook is every bit as ethically obligated not to poison his customers or spit in the food as a professional chef.
The difference between a "professional" and a skilled laborer is approval by an old bureaucracy; often one which has gained a government-enforced monopoly. Like any group which is profitable to belong to, they set up complex initiations and other barriers to entry, which they use to ensure that the current members continue to profit and that the new members are thoroughly indoctrinated to become useful tools of the group in return for a share in the profit. These are the true purposes for the degree requirement and the fixed-term apprenticeship.
This quarter at a local community college, I have been taking an online class in report writing as one of three classes (the other two are conventional classroom fare) and I've found that the online class has been pretty well useless. For one thing, the system (known as WebCT) used in the class is, despite appearances, essentially non-interactive in nature. The class consists of a few documents in PDF and HTML providing the information for the class, a message board and an internal e-mail system. There is also a chatroom component, but in the times I have visited it, it has been completely empty.
If you have the time to sort through all the information (made especially difficult by the poor interface on Acrobat as well as the inherent difficulties of reading large amounts of text on a computer screen) you might be able to get the information required. (Some classes also use RealAudio lectures, but those are another can of worms entirely.) It would also be an effective solution if used as a self-paced class, but the way the class I'm in works, you still have deadlines... As it stands, I will most likely be retaking the class as a standard instructor-led class next quarter.
Windows is not a virus. Viruses actually do something.
Do keep in mind, you have military service, which is NOT insignificant. There is an extreme amount of respect for that.
The other thing to consider with your military service is that it compensates for the other fear of hiring someone without a college degree.
If nothing else, a college degree (even in something useless like Art History) demonstrates that you can complete a task once you start it. Twelve years of military service will convince anyone that you aren't a slacker.
Also, those with degrees are immediately biased against those that aren't. Fair or not, there is an assumption that intelligence and education are correlated. While that is true in general, I know a lot of bright people without degrees and a lot of morons at top schools. However, you immediately rule out any decent job in a large company without the degree, they'll have policies.
If you want to sysadmin/C code your whole life, you can get by without a degree, however, I think that you'll run into problems.
For example, experienced coders (age 30+) are having SERIOUS employment problems because companies are stupid (you didn't work with Java?) or their managers (usually in their 20s) would be uncomfortable. Because of the age discrimination in this industry, later in life you're going to be hurting without the degree.
When you are in your 30s or 40s, you may have difficulty obtaining work in these positions. Unless you aquired some management experience, you're limited.
With a solid undergrad degree, you have many more options. 10-15 years down the road, if you are having trouble finding work or bored with your work, you always have the MBA option. Without a degree, good luck getting into an MBA program. With that MBA in hand and years of experience, you can land a nice, cushy, management job in the industry, probably paying twice what you're all excited about now.
There is also a HUGE social status issue with degrees. People without them lose respect in the eyes of most people with degrees. Before ignoring that fact, consider meeting a prospective spouse's family, maybe swapping stories about life, and they ask where you went to school. Want to tell people you didn't go to college?
For entry level programming/sysadmining jobs, you can easily get by without the degree. If you want to move up, you're going to have REAL difficulty without the degree. Your job mobility is going to be severely impacted. Even if you can land another job, think that you'll have as easy a time getting that senior level position? The one that HR insists needs a Masters degree? You can probably get it with a bachelors, but not a Masters.
Besides the job opportunities, undergraduate years are a blast. Why you would pass up the prolonged American adolescence is beyond me. Pick a school, have a blast. You can work part-time/summers to aquire work experience, and later on in life, you'll be glad that you did.
I *completely* understand your frustration and agree with you that something along the lines of what you propose *must* be done.
As an electrical engineer with minors in mathematics and physics, I had a whole heck of a lot of university courses to attend. In addition to this workload, I also completed all the premedical requirements. After graduating with an EE, I started medical school and completed the first two years. I then completed a two-year information technology MBA program and have since returned back to medical school as a third year medical student and am currently working in the hospital. I plan on combining my technical background with medicine and business to start a high-tech medical firm.
Along the course of my education, I have had probably a hundred university courses spread out over nearly 11 years. I must say that the amount of information presented in all of those lectures could probably be condensed into about 15 classes spread over 3 years. What an incredibly inefficient use of resources, energy, and money!
What I have found is that it is a rare professor who actually takes the time to *hone* their lectures and edit them until they are concise, clear, and *optimized* for learning. Usually, they simply reuse lectures from previous years without even attempting to update them and improve them because it is such a time consuming task. Should we require them to do so? Is it efficient to require them to do so? I don't believe it is.
It seems that, while there may be a million different ways to present a lecture on "muscles of the eye" or "binary tree algorithms", it's probably not the most efficient use of time/money/resources to require a thousand different professors/lecturers across the country to produce a thousand different lectures on the same topics. To then require them to repeat this information year after year, day after day, or even several times a day seems like an incredible inefficiency in the educational system.
An "open source" methodology might very well be applicable. Can the energy and resources of so many geographically separated professors, students, and colleages be pooled to produce organized, concise, and clear lectures freely available and accessible to all? Can such order be produced from such chaos?
With the incredible rise to prominence of "open source", and in the larger scale "open collaboration", such a system is at least a possibility...
I don't get my degree to make more money. I enjoy what I do at University.
But the point is that I equally enjoy working in the business already and as I see by other fellow ex-students' examples, you can work in the biz without the degree.
That makes one wonder - do I really have to stay at university for two more semesters or should I just go ahead right now. That's what my original question was about.
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Only problem I see is they have exam centres in Europe only. The USA and rest-of-world is handled by "affiliates". I'll try and find out who these are.
Regards, Ralph.
...at least here in Canada.
Engineers must follow a code of ethics and here they take an oath called the "Obligation of the Engineer" at the "Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer" in which the engineer receives his iron ring which is worn on the little finger of the working hand as a symbol of the oath.
Anyway, use of an oath isn't the definition of a profession, a profession is "a self-selected, self-disciplined group of individuals who hold themselves out of the public as possessing a special skilll in the interests of others."
...at least here in Canada.
Engineers must follow a code of ethics and here they take an oath called the "Obligation of the Engineer" at the "Ritual of the Calling of the Engineer" in which the engineer receives his iron ring which is worn on the little finger of the working hand as a symbol of the oath.
Anyway, use of an oath isn't the definition of a profession, a profession is "a self-selected, self-disciplined group of individuals who hold themselves out of the public as possessing a special skilll in the interests of others." All provinces of Canada officially consider engineering a profession, and enforce a monopoly for one engineering association.
BTW, I've just learned that the bastards have stretched the apprenticeship (as in experience under the direct supervision of a professional engineer) period out to four years. So you're looking at a minimum 8 year commitment of time to become a professional engineer.
There are some initiatives moving forward toward "course banks", such as the New York Regents college, etc., but as far as I know, there is not truly an "Open Source Academia" that we could all contribute to (as yet).
Finally, there's the scope problem: assume I put a really great (and fully accredited) "Engineering 101" course (for example) on the web, and that instead of $100 per credit hour, it's either (preferably) free or a modest cost (say $10.00 per credit hour). And any student anywhere can transfer that course to their own institution/degree program of choice, saving $270 for the course. Heck-ov-a server load, wouldn't you agree?
Anyway, that's not going to stop inexpensive online education from happening for much longer. The web and even non-exotic HTML are just too damn powerful to leave the lousy status quo alone.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Oh, I realize the economic disadvantages. I'm just not all that concerned about them. The cost of living is lower as well, I think, though I'll have to watch the regional-variance.
But, basically - Canada's a nice country, it's right next door (I already live in New England), and I have net-friends in various parts of Canada that I might or might not be near if I moved there.
But, basically, I'm more interested in having employment that I like than having employment that pays well, and I see no reason to cut myself off from opportunity in Canada, and I think I might well enjoy living there, at least for a while.
--Parity
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.