Ask HN: Fully online CS degrees?
Any recommendations for a worthwhile, fully online CS program? I'm more interested in a BS than a BA, but if online programs are limited (and that seems likely), I won't rule anything out.
Of course, everyone has a different situation so an online CS program might actually be the best for you. For master's degrees, I've heard good things about programs at GTech, UIUC, and UCB (UCB is data science only)...not too much in the direction of undergraduate degrees.
just wanted to highlight that one of the degrees that UIUC (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) offers, the Master of Computer Science in Data Science, is available on Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/degrees/masters-in-computer-data-sc...
the benefit of this is that the way we structure our degrees, they mostly end up being a collection of courses and specializations already provided on the platform; you can try some of the courses without having to go all-in on the degree just yet. (of course, there's a ton of added benefits for enrolling in the degree program, like high-engagement learning opportunities that you don't normally get from the MOOC experience)
Lots of my friends who are in the iMBA program are pretty serious about the Masters in DS. They had to be, after all they are getting 2 masters degree for half the price. I might be wrong but Berkeley is offering their DS Masters (online program for 100k+)
It looks interesting but I’d have to qualify for federal financial aid to do the program and trust the university more than Coursera.
For Master of Information and Data Science students starting the program in academic year 2017-2018 (July 2017 – June 2018), tuition will be $2,333* per unit, plus a $693.75* semester fee. Tuition is charged per unit; datascience@berkeley is a 27 unit program.
That's crazy.
If you already have a BS in computer science or a related field, then see this comment[1]
[0] - http://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate/...
The program has it's pros and cons. People complain but they expect a top 5 CS education from an online program at OSU which isn't going to happen. Overall I learned a lot though and I found it better than attempts at learning through MOOCs, mostly because of the motivation behind paying.
So unless that other field is Math or computer-related, then that's not really going to work, which is why I specifically mentioned "another field".
[0] - https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/admission-criteria
No it doesn't.
"an undergraduate degree in computer science or related field"[0]
[0] - https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/program-info/admission-criteria
Coming to specifically the question, if you need a BS in Computers, then from personal experience, yes, your changes are much much higher if you already have BS.
If you don't, then they'll look into your SOP and related work to see if you good exposure to Computers.
The course materials were excellent as were tutors, I think Mathematics has always been a priority for them.
On the third year you can choose from the variety of subjects: applied maths like fluids, optimisation, etc., pure maths, statistics related, and physics related. Very fun, but challenging.
OU offers a course in it which starts Oct of the next year. I have BE in computers.
I was looking into this a few years back, and ended getting my BS in-person, at the big state school nearby. It paid off well.
That said, these are other online options I considered.
Portland State University -- has a BS in CS that's fully online. They also have an option for people who are getting a 2nd BS, from another field. * https://www.pdx.edu/computer-science/progrgam-preparation
Harvard Extension - Bachelor's in CS * https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/undergraduate-de...
Arizona State - BS in Software Engineering * https://go.asuonline.asu.edu/
I had a co-worker during one of my internships going through this program, at SNHU, fully online & remote, and he liked it a lot: https://www.snhu.edu/online-degrees/bachelors/bs-in-computer...
Just some food for thought. There are many more options. Good luck!
> Page Not Found
Yea, as someone who is admitted to their CS program but unable to find online courses to actually continue, this web message really hits home.
Source: https://www.extension.harvard.edu/academics/undergraduate-de...
The University of Florida and Auburn University have online CS programs but I don't know much about them.
The diploma is the same as the on-campus one by the way. I'm actually attending the commencement ceremony there like all the on-campus students (I'm from GA but some OMSCS students fly in just for the graduation ceremony)
One small correction, I wouldn't say that most of the on-campus classes are available online, I'd say a great deal of them are, but there are many that are offered only on-campus.
I'm a bit biased here -- I was a Georgia Tech undergrad -- but GT is currently ranked 9th for the graduate computer science department :).
Did you work on OMSCS full time or part time? How did you end up scheduling in studying masters level courses into your daily life? And how long did it take at the end?
OMSCS is a part-time program by design, meaning you can only take up to 9 credits (3 courses) per term. Most students do it while working full time, although in that case, you'd either take one difficult course or two "easier" ones.
Most courses took between 6-10 hours per week (actual time spent on the videos/projects as measured by Toggl). That means you have to dedicate one full weekend day, or several evenings during the week. Note that if you're not a fluent software engineer (there is a significant % of students who don't have strictly CS background), some courses may take up to 30 hours per week as reported by others. So in summary, it's doable with full-time work but it requires planning and can be quite exhausting.
Btw if you're interested, pretty much everything about the program has been discussed at https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/
congrats btw!!
I've already got an undergrad degree, but it's not related to the computer science field at all. I have taken a few CS classes and know the very basics of coding (loops, conditionals, using functions, etc). Despite that, I'm assuming I should go for the BS instead of the masters since there's still quite a bit of CS knowledge I'm lacking (most algorithms, working with APIs, proficiency in Linux, etc).*
Thoughts? CS BS first, or go straight for the Masters?
*Those might not be the best examples, but I don't know what I don't know... I'm just assuming those are a few things I'd learn in BS curriculum that I'm not very good at now.
Assuming you're in the US, though, you probably had to study all sorts of irrelevant junk for your BS.
https://engineering.illinois.edu/online/masters-degrees/mcs....
https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/software-development-b...
And I believe CS coming "soon."
http://blog.markshead.com/911/harvard-online-masters-degree-...
Master’s degree (ALM in IT): mostly on-line (8 weeks on-campus) for appx. $30K.
I think including cost info is helpful in this type of discussion.
It's the cheapest I've seen - less than $10K total for the degree.
Note that you do have to pay for exams, which are $100/class. This works out to be ~$4k for your entire CS degree.
There is Athabasca U in Canada which offers a fully online, and accredited BSc in CompSci or Applied Mathematics, and the only requirements are 16+yrs old (no transcripts or even highschool grad needed) but the fees are $900CAD or so for 3 credit courses and you need to complete 120 credits so ~$35k for an undergrad ($27k USD). http://www.athabascau.ca/programs-courses/ whereas you could do Upeople, obtain an undergrad and pay for Johns Hopkins MSc for the same cost.
Other online options:
* Hack Reactor Remote http://hackreactor.com/remote
* Disclaimer: I am a cofounder of Hack Reactor
* "Online classroom" model (work with peers and teachers over videoconf, etc during set hours)
* Time-to-job: 3 months program + job search, plus you may need a prep class to pass the entry interview
* Odds-of-failure: See CIRR.org for grad and placement rate
* Thinkful
* "Mentor-supported" model (some meetings, lots of flex time)
* Time-to-job: I think there is some info on CIRR.org
* Odds-of-failure: See CIRR.org for grad and placement rate
* Free Code Camp
* "Self-driven" model (all driven by you, with online text communications and lots of local meetups)
* Time-to-job: Not sure there is good data on this.
* Odds-of-failure: See CIRR.org for grad and placement rateOP - you're welcome to ping me (bhaumik@thinkful[dot]com) w/ any specific questions. I run the full-time product.
We teach the MERN stack with some CS theory (basic data structures & algorithms). There’s also a heavy focus on building so your portfolio pieces will start with wireframes and end with deployment and code reviews.
The cynical view is the De Beers conjecture. Artificial scarcity is used to maintain prestige, brand equity for the university (http://aei.org/publication/on-the-economics-of-diamonds-the-...).
The generous view is that they are just trying to find a way to ensure a high bar of quality and experience, and as soon as that’s possible they’ll all have options.
I believed MIT has come closest - you can in principal enter a program without a 99% percentile GRE score (or any GRE score) if you can do the work. You have to spend some time on campus, but in the end it’s an MIT degree without an asterisk. For some reason they’ve not picked Computer Science as one of the first programs.
Berkeley’s data science programs do not offer computer science degrees, and unfortunately are not even in the college of engineering. It’s a shame because a lot of the math/work there is a starting foundation for machine learning.
When researching a program, I had narrowed it down to the following options:
* DePaul University
* University of Illinois at Springfield
* Arizona State University
* University of Maryland University College
* University of Florida
I ended up choosing DePaul because of the name recognition and the fact that I can actually visit the campus for advising, activities, etc. They also do not have a distinction on their diploma stating that the degree is "online", it is the same as a residence degree.
It may seem petty, but one of my criteria for choosing a school was that if I had ever heard or seen the school advertised on TV or radio, I wasn't interested. I wanted a school that was invested in academics and not advertising.
- Did my CS undergrad at top school on site ‘11 - Worked full time in Bay as software developer since undergrad graduation, 2011. - Employer paid MS tuition
Pros: - I learn a lot better from doing than listening. I’d watch the lectures at 2x speed. Felt like I could actually pay attention until the end. - Learned how to read papers. - Challenged me to keep learning outside of work. I keep studying new stuff even now otherwise I look back and feel lazy. - Taught by best of the best.
Cons - Group projects can be a little hard to organize with on site students - Summer courses are accelerated but your full time job does not get any lighter. Summer classes are very hard with a full time job. Take something fluffy.
Anecdotally, my friends who took online classes at GTech complained that it was too easy. UIUC was definitely not easy and you get access to some top professors. Salary wise, I don’t know how much it mattered but if your employer pays for it, it’s a no brainer.
You do lose out on some networking opportunities, but I was an older (military veteran) student anyway and couldn't stand the immaturity of most of my classmates while attending in-person class. I found the online ones more distraction-free. It will require quite a bit of discipline, especially in the mathematics courses, to get through it but it is definitely a great program and affordable at the same time.
http://www.umuc.edu/academic-programs/bachelors-degrees/comp...
However, you’ll have to get the vast majority of your bachelor General Education elsewhere (Rio Salado online CC, ASU Online, etc) such as English, Humanities, Calculus, Linear Algebra, etc.
Totally agree with this. For courses like AI, ML, and RL, I watched lectures from Berkeley and Stanford in addition to the GT lectures, and that really helped me understand it better.
> get a well rounded overview of some modern trends in cs
That's usually the case for a master's. PhDs are more in-depth.
http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/softeng/
MSc in Software Engineering, from Oxford. Designed to be doable around a real job, over four years. No undergrad degree required. You need to be onsite for 11 weeks over four years. Modular, and you can fit to your interests and timetable. Cost was about £25k for the whole thing.
Although fees seems a bit higher:
The projected total cost of an MSc at 0% inflation is £32,140 (or £27,380 for students accorded Home/EU status). The actual cost will depend upon the selection of modules and the total time taken to complete, but may be easily estimated. Any substantive change to this fee structure will apply only to subsequent registrations.
(from website)
You can save major bucks by doing your gen ed at a community college and then transferring. (Edit: just noticed you already have a BA in another field, so your gen ed is probably all set.)
University of the People: https://www.uopeople.edu. It's accredited, nonprofit, and has several 'big name' partners like Microsoft, IBM, and Intel.
And Western Governor's University(wgu.edu), also nonprofit and accredited.
Sacramento State, which I personally visited (in meatspace) while investigating online/distance learning Master's, has some excellent programs. I dug around and their site points to what is supposedly an entirely online CS program from a California university here:
https://csumb.edu/scd/cs-online-degree-completion-bs
A good resource for anyone interested in taking either online classes or getting a degree in California is California Virtual Campus:
You can search the database for classes you need. I have taken classes from several California colleges in the process of trying to complete my online Bachelor's, some in person and some online.
Penn State was the other thing I researched years ago that looked good to me, but I recall it being spendy. I am just going to point you to their home page and you can dig around and see if they have a program that interests you:
https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/
I was mostly looking for either GIS programs or Urban Planning programs to further my education after my bachelor's (or looking for classes to fill in the holes in my undergrad education, because I have an AA in Humanities and needed more science classes to complete the requirements of my BS). But my recollection is that Sacremento State and Penn State were two well established online and distance learning programs more than 10 years ago when this was not common. So I think they likely know what they are doing and are not fly-by-night deals.
* If you already have a bachelors, chances are getting further education doesn't make sense from an ROI/opportunity cost standpoint. That's ok though--there are other reasons to further your education. Just run some numbers and know what you're getting yourself into though.
* Community college can be an excellent value, especially for more introductory classes that have a pretty defined curriculum. Outside of that, quality seems to vary more and it's possible your credit won't transfer or satisfy the prerequisites to your program of choice. Unfortunately, most community colleges don't seem to have university-level courses beyond the basics. Leading to...
* Computer science programs have a lot of variation in terms of their curriculum, so it can be hard to piecemeal classes from different sources. At the masters level (which, if you have a bachelors already you might consider) most programs expect you to come in with something of a bachelors-ish level background in computer science, and if you don't, they'll have you take their curriculum. It seems like having professional experience helps in terms of consideration, but not in terms of coursework.
* There are a ton of online programs out there. For what I'm looking at though (MSCS), they work pretty similarly. You can take classes on a per-class basis, then apply to the program, and they'll accept some amount of units toward the degree (note that you can't apply units from your undergrad degree). I know this is the case with Stanford's SCPD program, and I believe it's also true of USC and Columbia.
* Online programs can be pretty expensive on a per-unit basis. Taking one class at a time helps with the sticker shock. Also, there are a lot of professional programs that take less time. Personally, I'm hoping to do a research project, so that won't work for me, but it might for you.
* You can also take classes on an "open" basis at a local university, which is nice for the odd class that is tangentially required that you don't want to pay a lot of money for. For example, I'm taking probability theory at SFSU right now.
A little about me: I'm currently taking classes in preparation to apply to a masters program. I have a BA in economics, but I've been developing software professionally since 2008. I'm currently doing the "Foundations in Computer" science courses through Stanford's SCPD program to provide a coherent core curriculum before applying to programs.
saylor.org
For the knowledge; not sure if they give you a degree.
If you want a degree then actually go to the college. Watching videos is very different than actually talking to lecturers face to face, doing exercises under supervision and guidance, having access to labs and having someone to ask if you don't know something.
There is also the aspect of self-discipline - it is very easy to goof off instead of doing your homework and sitting in front of long lectures on a computer. In a college where you are likely paying tuition you will likely think twice whether you flunk a test or a project or not, forcing you to actually work on your knowledge.
There is also the aspect that pretty much no employer (or grad school) will recognize your online-only "degree". So you may have learned a lot but in the end wasted your time because it doesn't bolster your credentials in any way.
Online programs are a good complement to a classical curriculum on campus but not really the same quality.
All the other problems you cited are instances of baseless bias or could be addressed in an online setting. I suppose it depends on the university you attend but I never experienced "doing exercises under supervision and guidance" and indeed, people who can only work/be motivated in that setting woulud probably make terrible professional developers.