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Comment by Zircom | Hacker News Reader

So this seems like a good time to ask, does anyone have experience with University of London's online degree and how US employers feel about it? I've been eyeing it for a couple years now and was wondering if anyone either has experience directly with this program, or at least can speak more to how US employer's feel about degrees from overseas.

https://london.ac.uk/sites/default/files/prospectuses/comput...

https://www.coursera.org/degrees/bachelor-of-science-compute...

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This may be slightly off-topic, but if you're looking at online/distance-learning offers from the UK, the OpenUniversity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_University ) is very well known and well respected, and has decades of experience in doing this.

I will second the OU, both me and my wife got access to higher education through the OU and successfully transferred credit elsewhere. It was still cassette tapes and books back then, but those materials were excellent. The difference I see now is that the funding is not as good from the government for UK learners. I didn't pay a penny for my courses.

Another vote for OU; I haven't attended but from an employer perpective, OU grads have had excellent depth of knowledge.

Unfortunately, the OU is now a lot more expensive than it used to be. It's a shame it can't offer anything at the price of this University of the People.

OU is pretty interesting, and I've always heard really good things about it, at least from people in the UK nations strongly associated with the UK. But one thing the GP asked about was how US employers feel about it, and I wouldn't consider OU a well known school in the US.

Some people have brought this up about UoTP, and I think it may also apply to OU in the US: The name makes it sound fishy.

Slightly unrelated, but I find it weird that I, an American, can apply to some their law degrees, but not a number of fully-online STEM degrees.

I’m doing a Master’s in Finance from CEFIMS[1]. It’s a taught Master’s so it’s just fifth year of undergrad, with higher grading standards, though not that much higher. I’ve found it reasonably rigorous and intellectually stimulating and to the extent it’s not rigorous a great deal of that is my own fault for not choosing harder courses. Can’t speak to the esteem it’s held in by US employers but it’s cheaper than almost anything equivalent in the US. If you want prestige and you’re in Software Engineering do Oxford’s M.Sc. They’ll accept enough quality work experience in lieu of a Bachelor’s[2]. You need to go to Oxford for a week for each module though, and the fees aren’t cheap. If you want a regionally accredited US degree cheap and fast people have gotten Excelsior College degrees in under a year. If that interests you go to degreeforum.net. It’s devoted to speed running the credential acquisition process at minimal cost. People have done GA Tech’s MS in CS after.

[1] https://www.cefims.ac.uk/

[2] http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-software...

> However, more extensive experience may compensate for a lack of formal qualifications, and a strong, immediately-relevant qualification may compensate for a lack of professional experience.

I don't know about the online course, but in general the University of London is highly regarded. Some of the best universities in the world (LSE, UCL) are part of the University of London system, and all the members are very good universities.

I don't imagine US employers would have an issue with degrees from there. You can find it easily and it looks reputable.

University of London includes among the most prestigious colleges in the world: King's College of London, London School of Economics, and Goldsmiths. They have been doing distance learning since for decades, if not longer if I remember correctly.

The one thing to note, at least when I took it in early 2000, is that its tough. I signed-up for their business/finance program and it was quite the course workload.

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