Hacker News Reader

Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I have been unemployed for the last few months, and there's only so much TV and YouTube I can watch without going utterly insane between interviews,

Since WGU just started doing masters degrees in CS, I decided it would be a way to kill large amounts of time while getting at least a little out of it, so I registered for it.

I've been a professional software person for like fourteen years, so I was able to knock it out extremely quickly due to WGU's competency based stuff, so now I finally am able to put "MS" after my name.

View on HN

Good for you. Cross my fingers that you'll land a good job soon. Or create your own job.

I have a few prospects lined up.

I'm actually planning on doing a second masters from a slightly more prestigious university with a more theory-heavy degree [1], but it's nice to at least have an official graduate degree now. Hopefully it helps me find work a bit quicker, and if nothing else it's just kind of fun to pile up degrees.

[1] https://www.open.ac.uk/postgraduate/qualifications/f04

I was recently looking for a master's degree in math that is:

- 100% remote

- 100% self-paced

- fairly cheap

and it looks like Open University is the best option right now? Did you find any better option?

I couldn’t find anything that ticks all those outside of OU.

University of Texas has one that looked pretty ok, but it was kind of expensive for a non-Texas resident.

University of Western Florida has one for “Mathematical Sciences”, which more or less fits, and it’s not even that expensive, but I think that one is synchronous.

Yeah, I wish there were more options than that. Also, remote phd or master+phd would be even better, but these are even more uncommon and pricey (unless you know about a one that is good and cheap and remote then I’d love to learn more)

I was doing the University of York online PhD in computer science (formal methods), and it was actually pretty great, but it was costing me like $17,000 per year, and it was a huge time sink when I was already working full time.

That said, if you feel like you're organized enough to pull it off, I do recommend looking into University of York. It's a very good school.

Thanks, that's actually useful and I will be happy to consider it once I have more spare time in life!

Why did you complete WGU masters in computer science after already having a PhD in computer science?

I don't have a PhD, I dropped it about a year ago; sorry, rereading my comment that was not made clear.

I wanted a graduate degree in CS, and I figured I could get the WGU one quickly.

Oh I get it now, thanks! Please let me know if you decide to enroll to math master's in OU, maybe we can help each other! I think I'll do the same on the next semester (so early 2026)

I actually just registered for it :) Assuming I'm approved I'll be starting in October.

Feel free to email me (address in profile) if you want to talk about it.

Thanks! Keeping fingers crossed for your success with this degree

Best of luck on your job search, hope you land something soon!

Do you feel like you picked up additional knowledge and skills? The pluses you mentioned are fighting boredom, being affordable, and being credentialed.

Not really, no. I was a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing; it didn't feel like "computer science", it felt like light software engineering, and since I've been doing software engineering for awhile I was able to fly through the work.

I did have a bit of fun learning about some of the more "platform as a service" parts of AWS, that has been something I've been putting off at learning more about for awhile, but overall I don't feel like I learned a ton.

I registered for another masters degree from a different online school to start in October that I think I'll enjoy and learn more from.

What did the total cost for your MS?

Not very much, around $4,400. https://www.wgu.edu/online-it-degrees/computer-science-maste...

WGU charges "per term", and you can take as many courses as you'd like per term, as long as you can complete them.

So you completed 10 courses within the span of 6 months? Did you find the workload to be heavy?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com