Ask HN: Which US college has the best program for non-degree seeking adults?

(I'm a university professor)

What kind of "program" exactly are you looking for?

I'd expect that most good state schools admit non-degree students. Mine (the University of South Carolina) does. I've had some in my classes, who were excellent students.

That said I'm unaware of any "program" or organizational structure. You fill out some paperwork, sign up for the classes you want, and that's it. At any university, some of the classes will be great and some of them will suck. Beyond that --

- If you want advising as to what courses to take, find out who the undergraduate director is in whatever department you're interested in and ask if you can make an appointment. If you have questions about an individual class, look up and email whoever is teaching it next.

- If you want to participate in the university's social or intellectual life beyond your classes, then these are often open to the public anyway.

- If you want to form study groups, these usually aren't organized by the university; just try to make friends with the people sitting next to you.

- If you want tutoring or advising, you can probably access the same resources available to degree-seeking students.

Unfortunately (for you), classes are likely to be 8-5 MWF. For popular classes there might be classes available at off-hours, but for smaller niche classes there isn't enough demand for them.

My suggestion would be to drop your (3) and seek opportunities at any good university that's close to where you live. Good luck!

Hello Professor T :)

I think what is becoming clear to me is that 4 yr universities seldom offer classes to working professionals. It seems that I either have resolve the work conflict, or look for a community college program. I'll have to do a bit more research into both options.

Thank you for the thoughtful response, but I do have another question if you have the time, which is that are you aware of part time jobs open to software engineers at universities, be it IT, labs, or staff? The reason I ask is I once saw a twitter thread asking if anyone has a full time software engineers at their bio lab. I think it was from UPenn.

To me, it seems like a great trade (even if $ = 0) - it's sometimes difficult to allocate grant money to hiring a full-time engineer, and as a SWE I can get access to advance research and a group of experts. Plus it would potentially make tuition cheaper.

I'm just not sure if such demand even exist.

> part time jobs open to software engineers

Not sure -- but unfortunately I'd guess that arrangements like this would be uncommon at best. That said, different research areas can be very different; maybe in fields swimming with NSF/NIH money this is more common.

You might look at University of the People: https://www.uopeople.edu

It's a free, accredited online university. All course materials are OER. If you wanted the actual degree, you'd have to pay $60, I think, at the end of the course as an exam fee. Otherwise, just take the course for free.

If I remember correctly, they've got 4 focuses: business (bachelors & masters), computer science (aa & bachelors), public health (aa & bachelors), and education (masters).

You have to enroll to get access to the courses, and I don't know if you can enroll in courses outside of the degree. I actually enrolled a while back as a part of a career change, but almost immediately realized I wasn't going to do anything thing a business degree would help me with. I realized I could access the syllabi and textbooks without actually enrolling or re-applying, so I've worked through a few courses in each area (I get distracted lol).

The application costs, I think, $60 and is really pain free to submit (doesn't require any of the usual things...it's meant for the kind of person that would struggle to provide those).

The courses are designed by people at the top of their field, almost all full professors at Ivy-league-caliber university. Then, the courses are taught by volunteers who get a small amount of money for each course. So if you get stuck, you have a professor to ask, plus discussion posts are likely part of all the classes.

This seems like a really interesting model! I'm looking for in-person classes and access to experts. But this resource seems to be a great solution to the roadmap problem.

Thank you! I really haven't heard of this resource before.

Sounds exciting. I would love to do something similar.

> In person classes

I think we'd need to know your geographical location?

> in my experience online content suffer from two issues. One is lack of roadmap - hard to tackle unknown unknown. Two is lack of community and interactivity - when I get stuck on a problem, it's hard to get help; there is also no quizzes, homework, and tests that facilitate learning.

Also, there's a lack of access to experts. If I'm learning a new programming language, it sure helps to have an expert in it who can look at my work, see what I'm missing, and send me in the right direction. It's the same with history, philosophy, or anything else.

> I'm just looking to learn; signaling is not important

My thought: If I do enough, or close to enough, for a degree, I might as well get it. If you're focusing on one subject, and if you really want to learn it well, then that's what the degree is - a program where you learn it well. I'd take the piece of paper if I did the work.

And it's not just signaling. The degree is for you too, or most of all; humans need ritual and reward; there's pride and joy and confidence and satisfaction in it. People spend thousands of hours leveling up in a game, and that's not even real!

> I think we'd need to know your geographical location? I'm currently looking for jobs to relocate, so technically I can move anywhere. In fact, one of my goals is to move to a place with a good local college.

I agree with your point about degrees. You're right - rituals are important!

> I'm currently looking for jobs to relocate, so technically I can move anywhere. In fact, one of my goals is to move to a place with a good local college.

I suppose I'd choose a major city with a strong intellectual culture (well-educated population, fine and performing arts). There you will find many colleges and universities; many schools that specialize, such as art schools; and most of all, many people in the community who can teach, who you can share your interests with, learn from, get tutoring from, etc. - communities of people who love this kind of thing.

I guess I'd choose New York most of all. The amount of talent and interest in the things you're interested in is incredible. It attracts people like you. And of course the local resources are unmatched, maybe in the world: Schools (from Columbia and NYU to the New School (I would definitely look them up if you aren't familiar - if they have programs that suit your schedule, they could be perfect), to City College and Brooklyn College, to many more. For the fine arts, there are the incredible museums (which probably offer classes), galleries, and the artist community itself. Also the world leader in theater, in finance, publishing, etc etc. It's a fantasy world for the intellectually curious.

Others: Bay Area and Boston. Philadelphia is affordable and has excellent resources.

It's trendy now to trash major cities, but don't forget what makes them so special; that is unchanged by political winds that blow right and left.

Thanks for the thoughtful response! I like cities. But NYC, which I visited recently, felt really crowded and overwhelming. I do get the appeal honestly, and I after your comment I'll consider it more thoughtfully.

> But NYC, which I visited recently, felt really crowded and overwhelming.

That it is.

It's like many particles contained in a small area. They collide more with each other, and their collisions convert their movement into energy. If the other particles weren't around, the movement would amount to nothing. :)

you could try out some classes at the local community college. I know that they tend to have working professionals teaching course, so if you're taking a class like drawing, or finance, where the teacher having professional make a difference, it's a safe bet. I am not sure about how the liberal arts topics fare though

That's interesting. I didn't know it's often taught by working professionals. My (wrong) impression of community is that it is a cheap alternative for getting some classes out of the way.

People have many motives for community college, and many smart people go to them for various reasons. On average, better schools will have classes and teachers who are more engaged, passionate, smarter, etc. about the academic subjects. Especially if you are intellectually curious yourself, and it sounds like you are, I think engaging with people like that would be the best part.

The entire California State University system is good for this; they have the system-wide Open University program for non-degree students [0] and campuses tend to have a fair number of evening and weekend classes (though not all classes of interest will be offered on that schedule.)

[0] https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/professional-and-continuing...

This seems really interesting! I'll look into this more. Thank you for the response

I know San Francisco State has something called Open University: https://cel.sfsu.edu/openuniversity/ so you might look for something similar at other places but even so there probably aren't many places with classes outside of normal working hours. In that case your best bet may be a community or city college like https://www.ccsf.edu

Community college seems to be a good bet. Thanks!

Open University is offered at all 23 campuses in the California State University system https://www2.calstate.edu/attend/professional-and-continuing...

Have you looked into auditing classes?

If you aren't familiar with it, you can join the class but ungraded and for no credit. So you have less pressure, but still learn. The details of how it works varies by school and instructor, but sometimes you don't have to pay full tuition, and often don't have to actually do all the work. It is intended for exactly what you are talking about - learning material from a course without it actually being part of a degree path.

Stanford via SCPD https://scpd.stanford.edu/ has some great courses. They have programs that cater to working professionals but they are all remote with group-work.

Just go back to any college. If the degree is not relevant, you can just get accepted anywhere you want and take whatever classes you want. No one’s going to bother you to stay on track and finish a major.