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Comment by tryitnow | Hacker News Reader

Nice try, but I've always been suspicious of "Certificates" even at top tier schools. The best way to signal skills to potential employers is to gain experience (either through employers or maybe through contributing to some online collective endeavor).

As an employer I wouldn't want to pay people to go to school I pay them for results. Show me.

I do like the fact that elite schools are offering online certificates, but for $10K there has got to be a great value proposition.

I find the hard GPA requirement a little odd. So an MIT engineering alum with a 3.4 GPA wouldn't be accepted, but a liberal arts grad from a third tier school who happened to pass one probability and one linear algebra course, would be accepted?

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> I do like the fact that elite schools are offering online certificates, but for $10K there has got to be a great value proposition.

The value proposition is that you have someone else pay for them. This is something that you can have most employers pay for as a continuing education proposition. It's the same way I got my MS without paying a dime.

Your approach (result-driven hiring) work well in small organization. In big organization certificates simplifies and standardize hiring process.

I am not saying I support it, I am just saying this is being used and if student aims to work for big company, he probably better invest into this piece of paper.

In big organization certificates simplifies and standardize hiring process

I agree 100%.

But let’s not forget that simplification and standardization are orthogonal to Results as measured by performance. The trouble is, simplification and standardization are how HR departments are measured, whereas employee performance is how line managers are measured. Thus, the companies most likely to emphasize these metrics will be the ones with HR departments.

It’s not so much that big companies benefit, it’s that HR departments benefit and big companies are the ones with HR departments.

SCPD is generally aimed at people with training budget money to spend that need some kind of certificate to show for it. There are a few more (Stanford Advanced Project Management some in financial engineering and risk management, some in bio engineering, IIRC).

The OpenCourseWare classes, which have a lot of spiritual overlap and more delivery system lap with SCPD, are aimed at everyone else.

Oh, the SCPD GPA requirement is not particularly strict, it seems, if you have a professional background in the area or a degree from ``top tier'' school or such. They just don't want to let anyone in who will reflect particularly poorly. (Which you might argue the corporate orientation defeats, but that's a different argument entirely.)

In Florida, in their state university system, a "certificate" is the replacement for a "minor". This isn't a total replacement, as one can get one's "certificate" issued separately from the diploma (I did this).

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