"Will the degree I receive from the OMS CS program be the same as the on-campus MS in Computer Science or will my degree say “Online”? Your diploma will read "Master of Science in Computer Science," exactly the same as those of on-campus graduates. There will be no "online" designation for the degrees of OMS CS graduates."
https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/prospective-students/faq
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An employer could simply notice that your location and your school are in different places. However, IMO it's more impressive to have been working a full time job and doing a degree than the opposite.
AFAIK, this is Georgia Tech's second online masters degree course, which demonstrates that the university now stands behind their online degree program. One of my coworkers is currently enrolled in their other online masters program, and he speaks highly of it.
If this is anything like their first online masters program, there is no distinction between the online and on-campus diploma. The degree is a full-fledged Georgia Tech degree. This is what makes it so attractive--employers and other educational institutes won't know you didn't physically attend the campus.
I'd be happy to get more of my coworker's opinion on the program if you like. I'm interested in it myself...
I'm a current student and I switched jobs about halfway through the program. I'm living in Austin so it came up in the interviews that this was an online program. I explained to people that I was doing the online degree in my spare time but taking it slower and that all the courses were the same as the on campus counterparts. Generally speaking the interviewers seemed to be impressed by this and said that it showed a strong work ethic.
I can't give hard facts about the value of the program but given that it only costs between $7k and $10k to complete I think it will pay for itself very quickly and perhaps already has.
1. https://twimlai.com/twiml-talk-4-charles-isbell-interactive-...
And everyone who's been exposed to both says it's the same courses and rigor as the on-campus version.
(Source: 2 classes from finishing)
I am curious: who in the world would do both?
A more serious question, since you're going through it now: is there a thesis component to the online MS, or is it just coursework? If there's a thesis (either required or as an option for more research-oriented students), how does the thesis mentoring at a distance work?
Nobody, they're TAs now. ;)
Got any info for the lazy on the existence of a thesis track?
In my experience, the thesis is a huge part of the degree when it's present so I find it at least somewhat curious that some (many?) programs that are generally considered quite good don't have one.
Another thing one professor explained to me is that the standards for a Master's thesis are actively changing. You can either do a glorified undergrad senior project (but with you doing all of the work that a small team might do in undergrad) or intense publication-worthy research. The latter was mostly people going forward with a PhD to follow. I definitely went in to the degree with the impression that all Master's students were doing a thesis in the second category, but I think this is a case of the times are changing.
My BS CS was also from GT (several years before), so much of the core course list available online were slightly more rigorous retreads of distributed algorithms, simulation architectures, etc. already covered late in undergrad. The most valuable courses in my MS were special topics courses that, at least at the time, weren't available online, many of which were in other departments as part of the computation + application domain interdisciplinary approach of the program.
That said, the core courses that were also offered online were generally quite good, and a few were exceptionally great. Rich Vuduc's HPC applications course comes to mind.
So based on what I've seen and read, I could recommend it.
- Although not universally true, you tend not to need labs stocked with equipment that aren't practical for an individual to purchase. (Though, yes, CS degrees can be oriented around hardware.)
- Automated grading of problem sets/tests seem to work better with software than just about any other topic of MOOCs I've seen. (Though that's probably not an issue for this sort of paid program as you can have paid TAs and professors directly involved.)
- Remote "teams" can clearly collaborate effectively on projects etc. as demonstrated by the fact that they do in many companies and on many open source projects. That said, a big part of a masters degree is going to be individual work anyway.
ADDED: As someone else mentioned, in-person mentoring would still be a concern of mine but that's probably a tractable issue.