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I read the story differently. It seems like WGU splits two problems (teaching material and verifying that the students learned material) into two different problems. It's not that the author crammed weeks of learning into hours, it's that the author _already knew all the same material from years of experience with it_, and just needed someone to help him verify "Yes, this person understands this material." I would love to see more universities who are happy to verify people's learning, instead of pretending there's only one way to learn the material.

The objection you raise seems more relevant to bootcamps, which claim to teach one how to program in a matter of weeks. After a few weeks, students might be able to get by, but they aren't going to be on par with people who have been working through some of this stuff for several years.

I took a Data Structures and Algorithms course at a brick and mortar university. It was being taught by a substitute teacher from the art department who knew some programming. The class was 5 assignments, the first of which I completed with about 60 characters of Python code; I remember feeling smug because others struggled with the same assignment. The other assignments weren't much harder. It's not all bad though, I had a great time "hanging out" (our classes were little more) with the teacher and other students.

My point is: Brick and mortar universities can also be ridiculously easy. Your students are either lucky or unlucky, depending on how they look at it. I'm currently approaching 40 hours spent on Software 1 at WGU, and I've worked as a professional programmer for over 10 years. In my experience WGU has been harder that what I had at my little "community college" (which was actually an accredited university).

> It was being taught by a substitute teacher from the art department who knew some programming. The class was 5 assignments (...)

I guess you were unlucky! Teacher from the art department, and a class with only 5 assignments?! Didn't your university had a CS department with CS-competent people to substitute? For instance, the CS department of my college has at least 40 teachers, and it's a polytechnic school (more like a vocational school than a theoretical university)..

What I want to say with this is that maybe your university is also questionable for delivering CS courses like that..

It was a summer class, and I don't know what their staffing situation was like.

> What I want to say with this is that maybe your university is also questionable for delivering CS courses like that.

Yes, it was. My point is that most CS degrees come with questionable quality. We should not knock WGU for its flaws while ignoring the widespread flaws of traditional universities.

> Even having 7h of classes per day, things had to be really succinct, and in 4 months, although they were capable of doing some web apps, there was a lot of confusion in their heads because of the fast pace.

If I'm reading that right you taught 7 hour per day for 4 months? 16 weeks * 5 days a week * 7 hours = ~500 hours?

If I were to spend just 100 hours doing (WGU style) self study of any topic I would expect to come away with a clear view: not knowing everything, but at least knowing what I know, and knowing how to learn more as needed. I think the traditional style of teaching (large class, one teacher) isn't very time efficient, so it makes me sad to see something like WGU dismissed solely because of the time spent.

> If I'm reading that right you taught 7 hour per day for 4 months? 16 weeks * 5 days a week * 7 hours = ~500 hours?

There were 6 professors. I taught ~75h of server-side web development..

> I think the traditional style of teaching (large class, one teacher) isn't very time efficient, so it makes me sad to see something like WGU dismissed solely because of the time spent.

Not that time spent == quality, but as in the examples I mentioned above, 15h for operating systems concepts (which I've been teaching for the last 3/4 semesters) doesn't teach you anything unless you already know most of it, and 9h30 for Math is only enough if you are reading a book (diagonally, that is)..

Again, the author's effort is something that he should be proud, but I, personally, think that he hasn't learn much things with enough quality..

I probably spent even less time passing Discrete Math 2 at WGU. However, that was largely because I had fully embraced that I would never graduate from a university and had to learn on my own, so the year prior I had read some books on proofs, probability, and statistics. I have notes and flashcards, I really studied, never expecting school credit. I had also encountered combinatorics and such in grade school and other math classes over the years. Discrete Math always seemed like "programmer's math" to me, in contrast to Calculus, and being a programmer it felt easier.

We don't know a lot about what the author was doing outside of school, but we know he was serious about self improvement - he wasn't just putting in hours at work and collecting a paycheck. It sounds like he's completed some impressive programming projects, he attends meetups, keeps a blog, uses Linux, hates Windows, learned to like Windows anyway, ported a Windows UI library to Android and iOS, speaks multiple languages, has attended multiple universities in the past, etc. I think there is a good chance that "he already [knew] most of it".

The sad thing is that no one cares abou the quality of the degree outside of academia. All they care about is seeing the BS on your resume.

When I say that the quality of the degree is not good, it is somewhat implied that the quality of the work of the person who did the degree is also questionable.. :/

Unfortunately you get this with students at every school. Many are just there to skate by and get a degree. The OP could also just know the material already and had no issue being able to pass as quickly as possible. This is something that is a huge benefit of WGU.

Also for what it's worth I took 8 weeks doing about 10 hours of work a week on Discrete math 1 and found it very interesting. My discrete math notes is a 1300 line org file that translates to a 29 page word doc. This doesn't include the many proofs and problems I practiced on a white board or on my iPad. I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning.

> I completed Operating systems in 5 weeks with about 15-20 hours of work a week. I used Georgia Techs Udacity course on operating systems to supplement my learning.

Which gives ~75h-100h, way more credible than the 15h the author mentions in the post..

My students have 3h/week of Lecture, 2h/week of labs which is about 75h of classes (15 weeks). If we add ~60h estimated time for two projects, it's 135h. It means to me that you had enough time to learn the concepts and may have internalized some/most of them..

Here you say that the time spent is "way more credible" than the authors. I think it's worth noting though, that it's the same course.

Im not a native english speaker, what I mean by more credible is the outcome, not the degree itself. In other words, this guy that took 100 hours, I would say that it seems more credible to have learned more than the other that says he took only 15 hours...

That only proves GP's point. What the author of the blog-post did in 3 months does not meet the expectations of a CS program from even a half decent school (think bottom of the top-100 list).

You know what also doesn't meet those expectations? a degree from a diploma mill.

So what you're saying is that, since outside of academia no one cares about quality of education, employers don't mind (or maybe shouldn't mind, according to your opinion) degrees from diploma mills.

Most employers aren't going to see someone with a degree from "Western Governors University" any different than someone with a degree "Central Ohio University" or "University of Wisconsin - Stout". Even though one of these allows you to get a degree in 6 months for $3,500 and the other two are full 4-5 year degrees that total $60,000.

Yes if you have MIT or Harvard on your resume it will be memorable and stand out, but other than that... they are all basically looked at equally.

This is overly simplistic.

There are tiers to everything. If you think it's MIT or Harvard, and then everyone else is a tossup, I've got some very bad news for you.

I have to agree here. I am going back to get a 2nd BS, this time in a technical field, and I just finished discrete mathematics (at a community college no less). We used Rosen, 8th edition, and I had single homework assignments with enough problems to fill up 6-8 hours if you include the readings required. It was probably one of the most challenging classes I've ever taken.

And then the proofs. Oh the proofs.

One thing that stood out for me as well was that someone else indicated that, in general, the only requirements were the exams. Most of the engineering classes I took had weekly problem sets that, yes, took at least a solid evening to do.

The way my undergraduate did credits was the (theoretical) number of hours a week they took between lectures, lab, recitation, and study/problem sets. Typical classes added up to 12 with usually 4 hours of the first 2 categories and 8 hours of the last. Classes varied but that wasn't too far off for the typical class. (Though there were some real time sink outliers.)

My university recommends that you spend 2-3 hours on your own per credit hour of study per week.

That was pretty much my experience at least for lecture-type courses.

I actually read that as 2-3x the in class time. No, where I went people generally spent way more than 2-3 hours/week of their own time on many courses.

It is per credit hour. A 3 credit course would require 6-9 hours per week, a 4 credit course 8-12.