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Comment by evadne | Hacker News Reader

My own opinion regarding on-line academic programs: Accreditation or GTFO.

What do you think of Georgia Tech's "$7,000 Master's Degree"? http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

Does anyone offer a Bachelor's equivalent of this? Last time I looked, most online offerings were more like Information Science and the like. I don't recall a full BS CS online.

There are several. The two that come to mind: University of Maryland, University College (UMUC) [1] and Oregon State's Post-bachelors program [2]. If you search /r/cscareerquestions, you'll find some posts about each.

I am currently finishing up semester two of seven at UMUC's program. It's okay. Why am I in it? It's free for me.

I'm not sure what GT's masters program delivers, but UMUC's online program hasn't changed since it's inception (the 90s, I think). There are no online lectures and little guidance from professors. I read a text book, do exercises, submit assignments, take tests. I do like the structure and pace (two classes a semester), and I'll have a bachelors in computer science.

1. http://www.umuc.edu/academic-programs/bachelors-degrees/comp...

2. http://eecs.oregonstate.edu/online-cs-students

Thanks for the links and /r/cscareerquestions looks like a good resource.

It looks like the OSU program requires a bachelors degree in another subject and the UMUC program is $60,000 in tuition (for out of state students; $32,000 in state) - which is about 3x what I paid for my undergrad tuition 5 years ago. Not that it isn't worth the cost, but that price is a prohibitive barrier to lots of prospective students.

The Open University offers a Computing & IT BSc degree: http://www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q62 - this is very close to a CS degree.

I was aware of that, but it doesn't seem available to US students.

They opened registration also for international students living in the US.

Maybe they need to update their site. At the moment, if you select US as your country of residence and go down to the fees section, it says it is not available in the US.

I'm in it and it's awesome. They're doing some really cool things pushing forward the tech for online delivery and course management. And I'm happy to say that it is every bit as rigorous as you would expect from a Top 10 program.

I'm looking into applying to this in the next year or so. How much time do you feel you have to set aside each week to keep up? How many courses at a time are you taking?

I took CS6300 - Software Development Processes and CS7641 - Machine Learning. I would not recommend two classes at once in your first semester, and never two classes with ML. (I've heard that Networking is comparable to SDP, and advanced operating systems is comparable to ML.)

SDP required 9-12 hours a week on average (many more some weeks) spent on group projects. It would have been less if I'd been working alone. The hardest part is working in a distributed team with no leader - especially because lots of people take this as an "easy" intro course; of the 6 people I worked with, 4 of them were not comfortable being asked to do any programming. O_o

ML required ~25 hours a week on average; I spent close to 100 hours on it during weeks with projects due - fortunately there are only 3 projects. The lectures are longer than SDP, the projects are hard, and there are exams that you'll have no idea how to prepare for. You will love it anyway.

Thanks for the input. If I do this (trying to talk some colleagues and friends into it, study buddies and drinking buddies if it gets too bad) I'll probably have to stick to one course a semester then. I figured that'd be the case.

I'm also currently enrolled in the program and agree 100% regarding the quality and rigor of the classes. To paraphrase the way another student put it, "it's one thing to make it into the program -- it's another thing altogether to make it out."

Over the last 10+ years my entire fortune has been made by directly countering this ignorance and other misconceptions associated with the connotations of accreditation. It's been brilliant! I am "set" for the rest of my life and as long as this naiveté is perpetuated, so will many others be.

Edit: changed perpetuates to is perpetuated

Downvote? What are you saying with this downvote?

I am arguing against the blanket statement, "accredited or GTFO." I'm not saying that accreditation doesn't have it's place. However, doing a little research on what accreditation actually is, who does the accrediting, and what the outcome is, statistically, for accredited schools will swiftly prove my point. We don't just have failing schools, we have a failing institution that is, for the most part, accredited.

Can you elaborate how a lack of accreditation lowers the effectiveness of any academic program? A lot of real-world learning that is useful is not via a "accredited" source.

At the time I went there, at least, UTCS at Austin wasn't accredited, although it was one of the top CS departments in the country. The general consensus was that accreditation was such a low bar it wasn't worth pursuing and that it would put requirements in place that would limit future flexibility. We were leading, not following, dammit!

On the other hand, accreditation is a pretty low bar and many of the courses that are not have, like this list, overwhelmingly massive chasms of missing fundamentals along with a heavy focus on things that are "trendy" and "relevant" and will thus be completely useless next year.

I couldn't disagree more. I went to an accredited college for four years and I've learned far more about programming through sources I've found online. It's embarrassing how little I was exposed to at such a high price.

Don't discount the possibility that you're learning more because you are now more experienced [and perhaps more mature] than during your undergraduate years - e.g. your current educational decision making is informed by your time in the field and your motivations are more likely to be internal than due to external expectations of the type younger people experience.

That definitely factors into it but I can still look back at my course curriculum and make an opinion based off of that regardless of how much I've matured.

Having had the experience of being both a traditional aged an a non-traditional aged student before I finished my undergraduate education, the qualitative difference between those experiences was that when I was older, I tended to treat my classes as a starting point, not as a step toward a grade.

That attitude was more common among my cohort in graduate school, and it's very common in those MOOC's which achieve an active learning community (i.e. courses that are not self paced self study).

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