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I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

blog.alyxandria.org

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Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#41

Post by voidlogic »

>>I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree

That is very true for some degrees, but I laugh when potential C-S students say this.

My first year of undergrad at well performing state university, I took loans and worked at the schools IT support center, 7.50/hr. The following summer I worked as a "Application Development Intern" and made $10/hr. For the following three years I worked part-time at a local software consulting firm and made $15/hr and part-time as a C-S TA and made 10/hr. I paid off my debt 2 months after graduation and I got lots of great experience.

My story is very typical of my C-S and IS major classmates. And now those same internships in my Alma mater's town are paying 17-18/hr.

So when people say that can't afford to get a C-S degree I think they either don't know the score or want to be one of the "too cool for school" kids in the valley, but lack the proper reasoning (I don't use that term for people with good reasons).

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#42

Post by sampo »

araftery wrote: post #15

A new form accreditation is really what's holding back a huge change in higher education. MOOCs right now, at most, can replace only traditional professional development classes. They're still not a drop-in replacement for college degrees. That's because of accreditation. Bachelors degrees are valuable, in large part, because they're a common currency: employers know when they see a potential hire has bachelor's degr…

> "so it's really hard to get a serious job in, say, software development, with just a few Coursera courses on your resumé"

Well this is not a general solution, but for Coursera's Probabilistic Graphical Models, I remember someone in the course discussion board said that this was such a demanding course that he would hire anybody, who passed the course with good points, to his company.

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#43

Post by ivansavz »

> I’m looking for an affordable degree program that is academically rigorous, and provides me the opportunity to challenge myself

If you're not going to university, you must find yourself some good books to read. Get in touch with someone who is knowledgeable in the field you're interested in and ask them for book recommendations. I remember one day my friend recommended me the sequence of books for learning physics (CM by Goldstein --> QM by Sakurai) and reading these two books did more for my physics education than what I learned in class...

If you're interested in learning first-year science in an affordable manner, check out the No bullshit guide to math and physics. I wrote this book because I was tired of watching my students suffer at the hands of mainstream textbooks. http://minireference.com/

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#44

Post by balls187 »

voidlogic wrote: post #41

>>I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree That is very true for some degrees, but I laugh when potential C-S students say this. My first year of undergrad at well performing state university, I took loans and worked at the schools IT support center, 7.50/hr. The following summer I worked as a "Application Development Intern" and made $10/hr. For the following three years I worked part-time at a local software consulting f…

eh, not everyone will be successful, even with a CS degree.

I know programs at many schools are hyper competitive, so that will weed out the ones that can't hack it, but College is expensive.

That said, I liked the line from Rich Dad, Poor Dad that explained the difference between thinking "I can't afford it." and "How can I afford it?" The former just shuts off your thinking and accepts a situation.

Granted the OP is taking a creative approach to the problem.

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#45

Post by dnautics »

I'm not sure this is what is happening with alyxandria, but Whoa. I think a peer-to-peer degree accreditation is an amazing idea, and I am a little bit sad I didn't think of it first. There might be a problem going with a strictly money-based exchange system (bad incentives) but I am certain there are solutions to this problem (some sort of rating system).

I would be willing to help. I have a PhD in chemistry/biochemistry.

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#46

Post by Crito »

voidlogic wrote: post #41

>>I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree That is very true for some degrees, but I laugh when potential C-S students say this. My first year of undergrad at well performing state university, I took loans and worked at the schools IT support center, 7.50/hr. The following summer I worked as a "Application Development Intern" and made $10/hr. For the following three years I worked part-time at a local software consulting f…

I would go so far as to say that even taking out student loans and not working through college could be reasonable for a CS student, provided that they were confident in their ability to graduate and prove their worth to employers.

I didn't do that; I worked through my CS degree much like you describe, but had I instead taken on debt then proceeded to get the same job offers that I did in this timeline, then I would have had my student loans wiped out within two years of graduating. CS grad earning potential is good enough to make taking on student loan debt not entirely insane; which is more than can be said of many majors.

(Of course that is assuming that I would have received those same offers, which is questionable if I did not have the work experience that got from working myself through college).

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#47

Post by broodbucket »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35
alphaoverlord wrote: post #27

This blog post seems like a jumble of ideas that are neither consistent or connected. It starts with colleges should be more than job training centers, then ends with trying to create an accreditation process to prove value to external entities (of which I assume employers are a big part?). It mentions the high cost of education, then describes how his current options are lacking because the number of classes in each…

Considering that it is their first degree, I made the possible inaccurate assumption that this person was just getting out of the US equivalent of high school. My thoughts at that age were pretty jumbled too. Many of my peers didn't really have any idea why they were in college until maybe their third year. It wasn't until they had the benefit of having gone through such a program and looked back on it to appreciate…

High school graduation is a rite of passage, university is not, that's the difference.

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#48

Post by grayclhn »

sampo wrote: post #42
araftery wrote: post #15

A new form accreditation is really what's holding back a huge change in higher education. MOOCs right now, at most, can replace only traditional professional development classes. They're still not a drop-in replacement for college degrees. That's because of accreditation. Bachelors degrees are valuable, in large part, because they're a common currency: employers know when they see a potential hire has bachelor's degr…

> "so it's really hard to get a serious job in, say, software development, with just a few Coursera courses on your resumé" Well this is not a general solution, but for Coursera's Probabilistic Graphical Models, I remember someone in the course discussion board said that this was such a demanding course that he would hire anybody, who passed the course with good points, to his company.

It would be fun if the general solution was making online classes absurdly hard. Unfortunately, it's hard enough to stop cheating on exams in physical lecture halls, so once a high grade guarantees students job interviews....

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#49

Post by JohnHaugeland »

Given that there are a lot of non-accredited schools filled with teachers and curricula that we don't take seriously, so I'm sure a homemade college degree by someone who thinks university is job training will go over well.

"Oh you graduated summa cum laude? From where? ... your house, you say."

Re: I Can’t Afford a Bachelor’s Degree, So I’m Making My Own

#50

Post by JohnHaugeland »

dmak wrote: post #31
oh_sigh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so fake about buying 100,000 followers on twitter? It means you're famous, right?

You can certainly fake it, but it can only hold for so long. There are degrees today that do not uphold the knowledge you would expect that person to have.

And this is one of them.

Oh wait, except for the "expect to have" part.

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