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Comment by hall0ween | Hacker News Reader

I find it wild how often people choose online degrees and how that limits one of the most important features of education: exposure to other people and networking.

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Does this depend on the field you are studying? I have 2 bachelors and a masters, all from in-person schooling when I was in my early to mid 20s. I’ve never had any contact with anyone I knew or worked with since leaving the university. Looking back, I can’t think of anyone I would have wanted to keep in touch with.

It might also depend on your school. My school has a great alumni culture, so randomly messaging other Queen’s alumni to get job intel and a referral is fairly common.

My friend at a different school has rarely received a reply doing that. There is no shared bond between U of Toronto people.

I think you are supposed to join a fraternity, or skull and bones, or quill and dagger. Think of how much power the Harvard network wields.

Not really, it mostly depends on ability to network. The main advantage some universities have is the degree to which they emphasize networking. Some fields I imagine do this as well.

If you didn't network in college, it's not surprising you graduated without one.

I am almost positive this depends upon how socially active and adept the individual is, and if they specifically seek and join internal societies that work at promoting this sort of post-grad networking.

I graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology and although I notice that Amazon is currently loaded with alumni from there, when I applied I received absolutely no "insider help" or whatever from anyone employed there.

Depends on what you need it for.

In government, it is common for pay and promotions to be attached to certain educational levels. A teacher with a Masters can often earn more just according to the pay scales.

My grandfather used to teach, before teaching required a bachelors degree. He has a bachelors degree because he got paid more by taking more courses and if he had a degree. So he just figured out a way to cobble together nearby and cheap courses into a credential that got him a raise.

Are these people you're witnessing employed as well? That would do it as well. For example, in the US military, to make major you used to need a Master's degree in... anything. So, everyone would do an easy one online in his or her spare time, to get promoted.

Yup, even in the CS world I now need to get a masters degree to officially do the job I’ve been doing for 3 years at a FAANG.

Credentialism is self perpetuating.

Is this true? Google and Amazon routinely spam me with recruitment emails and I don’t have a masters degree.

It’s required for a few job families (mainly in the sciences). There is also a bias towards PhDs in senior leadership roles.

There is a bit of dependency on the org, business, and existing staff.

If you're really going to do it, look into Georgia Tech's online MS in CS. The program is 100% online and is under $10k for all classes.

Hah I was actually filling out that application for the spring semester now! It’s a great deal relative to Columbia’s 120k remote CS masters program.

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