Does anyone know about similar programs for non-US residents? I understand the original author is Canadian, but it seems they got granted a "special exception" that is unlikely to be available to, say, people from the EU (my case), or other countries.
I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
31–40 of 387 posts
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#32Almost seems like the writer treated the process like playing a video game, without all the pretty colors and sounds that give you that dopamine hit.
I feel like I did get a lot out of my Computer Science degree. I got it in 2004 and I picked up a lot of stuff I don't think I would have learned on my own. I also went to a small state University in the middle of nowhere that' wasn't very expensive, and I didn't rack up any debt (a little in grad school, but still not more that I couldn't pay off in ~2 years).
But you get out of your education what you put into it. I worked with people who went to 2-year associate programs who didn't understand BigO notation, and people who didn't go to college at all, but who knew their algorithms inside and out (one who even got in at Google in the early days).
I'm glad I got my degree, but I'm not sure it's worth the cost some people are paying now. I shared my concerns with my nephew and he ended up getting his CS degree at a smaller/cheaper state university. I'd say if you can't get a degree without going into excessive debt, it's really not worth it today.
I know I'm just guessing, but the writer of this article seems crazy driven. Maybe, this is the type of person who could start their own small business out of nowhere, or survive long hours at SpaceX for the pure thrill of successful rocket launches? If you have the drive to run through something like this, there really aren't any limits to what you can do. I've done pretty well at all my jobs and have learned a lot of cool stuff, worked in three countries ... but on a scale of Wally (from Dilbert) to Elon, I'm certainly more towards the Wally side.
Going back to games; I wonder if this type of education and training would be more accessibl if it was gameified. McDonalds Japan briefly tried to turn their training program into a Nintendo DS game (failed terrible and the game is very rare). That might be a model for new typed of education going forward.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#33I read something ages back about a lesser known process called 'testing out' where you are basically able to just do the exams at universities to get a degree. It's suppose to encourage life-long learning and its based on the assumption that many professionals and adults accrue relevant experience outside of academia. I had always wanted to look more into this myself but it seemed to require too much bureaucracy. OPs university sounds like it might be an actual working alternative to this. I find this fascinating and wonder what other degrees might be possible
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the author, but I will say that in my experience having the paper has helped open a lot of doors, especially early in my career, that I otherwise would have had to push harder to get through. It gives you a bit of default credibility. Perhaps unjustified, that's a matter of opinion, but it's definitely real.
Just seems like a competent GitHub serves the job better, at lower cost...
Hardly. The only people who care about your GitHub are technical people. Most of the gatekeepers at any decent size company are not going to care one bit about GitHub, but they will recognize the degree. By the time you get to the hiring manager the degree doesn't matter. It's getting to that level that's the obstacle.
And frankly, when you have more experience, GitHub is also useless, because your network matters 1000x more than your portfolio.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#35Could I do the same with a masters?
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#36> In 2012, I studied computer science at Concordia University and dropped out after 1 semester.
> On my first day, I attended 2 lectures. I quickly realized that a 2-hour commute to listen to someone slowly recite a PowerPoint wasn’t the best use of my time.
It's so depressing that a lot of expensive higher education is this pathetic. I wish our education system worked enough like a market that it could hold lecturers, programs, and schools that to a higher standard, and destroy them if they cheated their students like this.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#37Does anyone have a good sense how online degrees are perceived by employers? Or graduate programs? I wonder if the pandemic will be shifting these attitudes.
When you're given a resume, do you look at the education, other that briefly? If it doesn't sound like an online program (e.g. University of Phoenix) I doubt most would notice.
But then again, I never see resumes until someone asks me to do a phone screening. Even then, I kinda glance at them enough to figure out which set of questions to pull out.
So I guess that decision is made well before me. Getting to the actual phone/in-person interview is the challenging part. I've discovered it's often more about who you know than anything else.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#38Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.
Any luck finding an online PhD? I've been looking for those. As much as I'd love to do a formal PhD program, I cannot with family, but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities.
> but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities
I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did.
Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a PhD on paper but didn't really achieve much they're going to say 'huh but I've never seen your work in the community?'
> from whichever accredited university
I'd say the single most important thing on a PhD is where you did it and who your advisor was, so I would caution about this as well.
Having said all that, I did all my PhD remotely, and I did it while working mostly full-time for half of it, and while buying a house and building a family and serving part-time in the military on top of all that, so it can be combined with other things.
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#39The course collection required for your graduation is fairly good, assuming the student actually learned the topics covered as opposed to simply prepping for exams.
It is however not at all comparable to what's required in traditional programs. You can compare the course requirements between traditional curriculums and this one...the gap is wide.
Of course one can argue that a lot of time and money is wasted pursuing traditional Comp Sci degrees:)
Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months
#40Author here. I'd be happy to answer your questions.
why bother getting the degree?
I've had a successful career without a degree, and while I'm unaware of any opportunity I've missed out on, there's no way to be sure. No one's ever mentioned it at an interview, but there may very well be interviews I never got because I didn't have the credential. At this point, it's not worth the time or money for me to get a degree the traditional way. If I could have done it in six months for a few thousand dollars, it would have made sense earlier in my career.