I got my degree through Email (1997)

The WGU concept is great, but it also only really works for that intended audience of professionals already in the field, sometimes only getting a degree to satisfy some arbitrary requirement (e.g. I knew two people who went to WGU because they worked somewhere that required a masters degree to be any sort of manager - they were already a shoe-in but needed the piece of paper).

In effect, WGU was not there to teach them anything new.

All the negatives of four year college that you mentioned (besides the loans) are all positives for someone just leaving high school.

The on-campus experience of living in a crappy dorm/apartment with peers is a formative social experience that results in lifelong friendships for many college students. The whole point is to live away from parents in a transitional environment. It’s just plain fun to live in a dilapidated house with 5 friends.

On-campus college is a good measure of priceless juvenile fun combined with a lot of intermingling with people who aren’t necessarily just like you compared to more homogeneous high schools and your parents’ own sheltering. I think this is absolutely valuable to expanding your horizons, which also includes studying elective subjects not part of your direct major (for me, that was film history and geology, and I remember those courses more vividly than many of my required engineering courses).

Self-learning is irrelevant to someone with no professional experience. I don’t really see how I would have self-learned subjects like differential equations without in-person office hours and lessons with the ability to raise your hand and ask a question. Physical in-person labs in science and electrical engineering were important aspects of my degree, while a liberal arts student might have had an in-person discussion, performance, or live presentation.

I also got access to a physical campus library that blew away the local library in my hometown: seven floors of books in endless subjects, more videos than the local Blockbuster. Maybe that’s less relevant in 2020 but the library was also a destination for studying.

I was lucky enough to not end up with significant loans after my four year school (about $12,000). But I think I’d have taken on up to $50,000, heck, maybe $75,000 to get that experience, if the alternative would have been sitting in my bedroom on a computer for four years.

> Really I will never understand doing it the other way with capricious professors, unending busy work, huge loans, living in a crappy apartment next to campus. The list goes on and on. If more schools modeled themselves after WGU the brick and mortar college would be on life support in a generation.

You are aware of the existence of online education, aren't you? Your description of college as solely "brick and mortar" is at least a couple decades behind the times. That doesn't even take into account that correspondence degrees have existed at least since the 1960s.

WGU offers a different product. Community colleges offer a different product. Hacker schools offer a different product. The list goes on. I don't think it's entirely ignorance that explains why people pay for college at places like NYU. For some, college and passing exams are different things, whether or not that is consistent with your own preferences. I can say you're very much not representative since you already had a good job.

The prefix is pretty popular, but has a negative feeling with it, as it usually comes as either "cyber bullying" or "cyber crime" lately.

You should listen to German Politicians, they use it all the time to describe "The Internet", cyber here cyber there :)

On HN, no less, someone told me that a cracker is fireworks. And that a Hacker is a Black Hat. The person sounded nice and law abiding... So my only question at this point is why they read "Hacker" News.

Weirdly enough, in many Spanish speaking countries the word that took over 'cyber' was cyber-coffee, as in the place where you'd pay to use a computer for an hour, and is what most people think of if you just say 'the cyber'.

C Y B E R

The problem with 'cyber' is that it's a recycled tech term. It was popular many decades ago and when you start slapping old technology labels/phrases on new technologies, people tend to reject them.

With that said, the US government uses cyber for a lot of labels now. Obviously security but outside of security as well.

I've never seen that degree program. Where is it offered?

> With a minor in instant messaging.

That's a real thing?

What were the more interesting things that it covered? I have a hard time imagining it going beyond what one can find in RFCs.