251–260 of 387 posts
Seems like the biggest accomplishment here is getting to the top of the front page on HN. But seriously, if you have 10 years of software engineering experience, what do you gain by doing a bachelors CS program?
I 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…
Reputable colleges won't give you credit for that, beyond skipping first year prerequisites. But you can get "a degree" for employers like government that pay based a formula based on credentials.
But yeah, per OP, you can't get a degree with it.
I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.' This seems feasible only for a specific set of people: those with previous experience & looking specifically for the credential and not so much the learning experience that comes with a traditional 4 year degree. Not to take away from the author's achievement, I just think it would be misleading…
A degree does show that you're committed and willing to jump through hoops (even if only because you don't know any better).
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You don't pay for the slides, you pay for the course design, the office hours, and access to experts in the field that not only know the course material but can also guide you to further learning outside the syllabus. ...But you have to actually show up and talk to your professor.
I would say that the idea is you pay for those things. Sadly however a lot of Universities put together programs for the sole purpose of offering that program. Often times CS programs (like the ones at my University) are put together for that reason. I've had an inordinate number of instructors who treat the lecture as the only teaching duty they have. No matter how much you would like to engage outside, the instruct…
I'm just sad to see comments from students that have no idea what a university has available outside the lecture. I'm also quite surprised by it. Did these people never talk to a teacher in grade school?
Almost 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 u…
As someone in the same position that the author was in (dropped out of college, have had a successful career in Silicon Valley) I can understand the allure of doing a 'speedrun' to get a degree. For one, if you want to emigrate to Europe, most work visas will require you to have a degree, no matter how many years of experience you've had in the US. You might also be tempted to do a masters or PhD in a particular topi…
While I praise the author's effort, as a professor myself (I teach CS in a local polytechnic school - something like the US community colleges) I really doubt the quality of either the WGU and of the knowledge retention. As an example, this semester I'm teaching Operating Systems concepts (definitions, processes, threads, semaphores, mutexes, signals, memory layouts, IO, etc.), and even if I take the theoretical conc…
The sad thing is that no one cares abou the quality of the degree outside of academia. All they care about is seeing the BS on your resume.
Yes if you have MIT or Harvard on your resume it will be memorable and stand out, but other than that... they are all basically looked at equally.
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At the risk of more down votes, I'll disagree with you. There are certainly smarter people than me who are less lucky than me. However, its a much smaller subset than many would believe. Many claim unlucky when in reality their luck is a consequence of their past choices. They've taken risks and those risks didn't work out.
You can only get downvoted on a post to -4, fyi. I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that. For what it's worth, congrats on what you did. I'm in a similar position and I completely agree that for the majority of people here it wouldn't take anything beyond stopping making bad choices.
The score is just some meaningless internet dick measuring, so why care at all?
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You can only get downvoted on a post to -4, fyi. I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that. For what it's worth, congrats on what you did. I'm in a similar position and I completely agree that for the majority of people here it wouldn't take anything beyond stopping making bad choices.
> I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that. The score is just some meaningless internet dick measuring, so why care at all?
I think the subheading may be a better title -- 'This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.' This seems feasible only for a specific set of people: those with previous experience & looking specifically for the credential and not so much the learning experience that comes with a traditional 4 year degree. Not to take away from the author's achievement, I just think it would be misleading…
I really like WGU because it focuses on competency rather than time in a classroom. I hope more educational orgs follow suit.
That said, my wife, who is getting a Master's in Nursing from WGU, is learning plenty -- but she can focus on the actual learning while testing out of areas that she already knows well.
I wonder what his earnings were last year to approximate his opportunity costs. A $100 an hour job at 600 hours would've cost him $60k in opportunity costs. In my personal experience (I did go to uni right after highschool and graduated) it was important for my entry-level job, but once I gained 6 years of experience, nobody cared, discussed or looked at your credentials. The hiring/promotion stuff was done entirely…