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AviationAtom
blagie
I didn't read the article that way (although it's clear many posters did).
The author learned a lot independently. There's a question of what to do with that knowledge. A system like WGU does a few things:
1) Identify gaps and help fill them. Independent learners almost always develop gaps. One benefits from bringing that knowledge to a uniform "undergrad CS degree" level
2) Provide a certification once that's done.
A traditional university degree takes 4 years, costs $200k, and has mixed quality. Being able to do 75% of that independently, and having an institution gap-fill for a few grand? That sounds awesome.
For brand recognition, I don't see WGU as any better or worse than the 4500+ other random universities and colleges in the US. It doesn't match the top few hundred, but that's okay. Most don't.
I'm not sure who would compare it to Phoenix, ITT Tech, DeVry, or other scams like that.
I'd much more place WGU as more a competitor to ASU. ASU is awesome, and is really trying to pioneer models of innovative, quality, low-cost, scalable education.
I hope one of them succeeds.
By the way, yourself being a former WGU student, would you recommend WGU to a super-gifted kid? E.g. having someone start college there at e.g. age 13? That, plus CMU OMSCS, seems like something they could finish by age 17. Socially, I'm not sure they'd do well starting traditional college early. Academically, middle / high school seems like a waste of time.
cperciva
Socially, I'm not sure they'd do well starting traditional college early.
Speaking as someone who went to university at 13: Socially I fit in better with my intellectual peers than my chronological peers. Which isn't to say that I fit in well... but at least there was a level of mutual respect. Few educators appreciate the social distance created by a large IQ gap, probably because they haven't experienced it themselves.
smeej
Speaking as someone whose school administrators wanted me to start university by 13 but whose parents objected and held me back, being the same age as my chronological peers was meaningless and did not help me relate to them.
The odds that an 18-22yo traditional college student will overlook a 5-9 year age gap because you share a lot of interests and can have interesting conversations are much higher than the odds that another 13yo will overlook the fact that you have no shared interests at all because hey, you're the same age.
I found it extremely difficult to make friends until I got out from under the limiting influence of my parents who didn't want their kid to be "weird."
Now I have a whole bunch of weird friends who are fascinating, joyful dorks, so it's not hopeless either way, but I'd have loved to experience this much sooner.
screye
> social distance created by a large IQ gap
A few genuine questions.
Have you found the gap to be self-imposed (the kind where you struggle to keep a conversation going with a stupid person) or is the result of projection by your peers (where they feel uncomfortable having you around because you are smarter, and that makes them insecure about themselves)?
Is the social distance visible only in domains where you have devoted time to excelling in, or do you experience it in domains outside your expertise / in random conversions too ?
Do you think you benefitted from jumping to university so soon in life ?
freedomben
I think you nailed the key with "mutual respect." That to me is what distinguishes children from adults. Some people achieve it at age 12, others maybe never in life. I'd rather be around a mutually respectful 12 year old than a same-aged person who still thinks and acts like a child.
Mezzie
Agree, and that large IQ gap can be even more brutal in children/adolescents. In elementary school, I compared my 'peers' to chimpanzees. That's not exactly conducive to learning things like empathy or teamwork. How well would the average adult work in teams if it were them and 5 8-year olds? There are multiple important life skills that require some form of peer group to learn.
People like genius children/prodigies that don't have a natural peer group require trade offs find them one or else they lose out on important non-intellectual skills.
sannee
Indeed. I was completely miserable in high school, instead getting my dose of social interaction by visiting a hackerspace. Genuinely believe that was the only thing that kept me from going insane at that point in life.
Now of course interacting with people that are twice my age during my teens has produced some bonus problems in my social skills, but the alternative here is feeling completely isolated, not somehow magically learning to be normal™ person™ as many educators seem to think.
vampiretooth1
Even as someone who's gifted, how do you manage to get into a university at 13? I'm assuming you're non-American? Is it just a matter of taking entrance exams, showcasing aptitude at the college level, then matriculating?
ghostbrainalpha
Looks at your profile.
*Thinks of course the creator of Tarsnap was a child prodigy.
lostlogin
> Few educators appreciate the social distance created by a large IQ gap
Large social gaps are hard to bridge too, and I’d imagine that age is one of those things.
suresk
I think that is a pretty fair and accurate assessment of it. For me, with a lot of experience, the credential + filling in some gaps were what I really needed and the WGU degree was a great way to take care of both.
As for recommending it to a super-gifted kid - I don't think the program is setup to allow that. You have to have a high-school diploma and at least a bit of work experience to even be admitted. I also think that one drawback of the program is that you can graduate without having written a ton of code, which is fine for someone who's been doing it for a long time, but less ideal for someone who hasn't?
blagie
As two points:
1) A GED would be trivial for this kid. So the high school diploma, I'm not worried about.
2) Kid started doing (real, not Scratch) programming in 1st grade. I'm not worried about coding experience or computer science background. I am worried about software engineering background, but that could come later.
triyambakam
> Independent learners almost always develop gaps.
I think that goes for any leanrer, independent or traditional. Ask a random sample of college graduates to lecture for an hour on their degree focus and you will see the evidence of this.
randcraw
The purpose of national college accreditation standards (as ABET does for engineering) is to avoid those gaps. This is accomplished publicly by their specifying core courses and syllabi that span the competencies expected from anyone earning a given degree (BS, BA, etc). Accreditation leaves schools little wiggle room when creating compliant courses and content. By delivering on a base set of cores that span essential theory and skills, students and employers are assured that anyone who earns that degree in an accredited school will indeed possess a standard set of core skills and thus will not suffer from gaps.
Accreditation is important, especially if the school is not well known nationally.
randcraw
I know very few graduates of schools outside the "top few hundred" in the US who received thorough grounding in core skills unless they took the personal initiative to fill those gaps through self study. That's hardly a rousing endorsement for that track, if the student has to later plug the holes that a poor school left in their education.
I have no personal experience with WGU or Phoenix or other online unis. But I've met a few folks who graduated from lesser schools (outside the top 200) on traditional campuses. Unless those kids were preternaturally bright and took the initiative to teach themselves (fill the gaps), they often face an uphill battle to recover from the poor preparation that an undemanding and incomplete academic program can inflict on 1) their ability to compete in those skills on the open market and 2) their passion for learning. IMHO, that's a high price to pay.
My advice: don't cheap out on your education.
jwilber
Doesn’t starting someone at 13 fly in the face of the whole “prerequisite experience learned on the job” bit?
macksd
"on the job"? Most likely. But I spent a lot of time and money getting a degree from an accredited university, where I was bored the whole time and maxing out the number of credit hours they would let me take while also working as much as I could. Why? Because I could've aced the first 2 years of CS classes by the time I was 13. I would imagine that's not uncommon among people who grew up with a hacker mindset and had the resources to explore it. I surely had gaps in my knowledge - not saying I didn't learn anything from the college experience. But I would love to live in a world where I didn't feel like I would, at some point, be better off with an accredited 4-year degree just to get or keep a job in the first place.
throwawaygh
13 seems low, but I had 3 years of full time programming experience by the time I was 17.
It's really important to note that I'm not particularly gifted. I was required to work "real jobs" over the summer starting at 15 and the only way to convince my parents that programming was a "real job" was to make as much as I could working at the community pool. After the first summer I kept working over the semesters nearly full time. I was doing freelance Perl CGI and PHP+HTML+JS junk. my main advantages were:
1) I could do piece work for $8/hr,
(2) I presented professionally because I was usually the only native English speaker bidding on the project,
(3) I was a single person doing full stack + sales/bidding (the competing offshore outfits mostly sliced up labor between backend, frontend, and sales due to language barriers and extremely low-skilled programming labor. For projects of the size I was bidding on this introduced a lot of expenses/overhead without any real advantages), and
(4) I was available in US time zones when bidding on these projects. Even during the school year my after-school availability was way better than the offshore shops could usually offer, and I could answer emails during the school day.
To reiterate: not a genius! Just a kid slinging super simple HTML+JS+SQL+PHP/Perl. I didn't even know SQL for real; I knew CREATE, SELECT (without joins), UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE. Joins were implemented using multiple queries and for loops. Didn't matter for my clients, who just wanted cheap CMSes/ordering systems/etc. for random folks' .com get rich quick schemes, pizza shops who thought they really needed a customer website, etc. I'm pretty sure grubhub/slice/google maps/social media destroyed my old market a decade ago ;)
So a real genius getting there by 13 seems like an extreme outlier but not at all impossible.
nnoitra
A university doesn't cost 200K. Even in the US residents pay less than that and if you take into account community college for the first 2 years it's not really as absurdly expensive as it's made out to be. Please don't spread half-baked misinformation.
>That, plus CMU OMSCS, seems like something they could finish by age 17. Socially, I'm not sure they'd do well starting traditional college early. Academically, middle / high school seems like a waste of time.
Apparently even high school is a waste of time. What's not a waste of time for you? Are you to be put directly as head of engineering at Tesla so that someone as gifted as you doesn't "waste" their precious time?
bombcar
4 years at a random WI university as a resident sets you back $60k.
Swap that for a random CA university and we're at $150k (using their numbers!)
If you focus on tuition alone it's cheaper, but room and board do add up, and if you come from out-of-state you're even worse off.
raunak
Average 4-year private school would cost 200k, if not more if you're going to any private T100. Average person in this community also wouldn't go to CC.
Cerealkiller050
Just as a data point, I did just this
2 years community college: 4 semesters, ~$1,400
2 years university: 9 quarters (took 1 summer), ~$12,500
These are early 2010's numbers in California, not a private university.
I look back and I am pleased with the education I received for the most part, especially in my major (CS)
alfiedotwtf
> costs $200k
Jesus. Is this how much CS degrees cost in America? I thought that price was only for Medicine :headexplode:
miguelrochefort
For what it’s worth, many people reached out to me after reading the article to thank me for introducing them to the idea that they could earn their missing degree in less than 4 years and/or without student debt. Many of them are self-taught developers with decades of experience that can’t move up the corporate ladder, work abroad, or pursue graduate studies because they lack this important piece of paper.
skeeter2020
>> or pursue graduate studies because they lack this important piece of paper.
It's pretty disingenious to imply the only thing traditional degree-holding grad students have over somebody with only industry is a "piece of paper". I say this as a former grad student who (with a degree) came out of industry. There are plenty of underwhelming students with only academic experience, but if you had industry-credit and a few terms, where would you get the other skills that I'd argue are far more important than practical experience?
wpietri
They did not imply that. They just said the piece of paper was a barrier to other things they wanted to do.
That's the situation I'm in, and somebody recently suggested I check out WGU. I was thinking of doing a Master's degree, and it is an absolute bedrock requirement everywhere I've looked that you have a Bachelor's to apply to the Master's program. Would I get more out of spending 8 years doing a BS part time in the traditional way? I'm sure. Am I going to do that just so I can do a Master's? Fuck no. But if I can get the piece of paper in 6 months, that's starting to seem doable.
thesuitonym
You took it the wrong way--and I get why you did. There is definitely a lot more to university than "a piece of paper."
But there is not more to being locked out of working abroad, high-level corporate jobs, and certain fields than a piece of paper. A seriously below average traditional student has access to all of these things, while a high performing, high knowledge person doesn't, simply because they took a different life path.
ljwojfapsdiof
No, he said you can't pursue graduate studies unless you have an undergrad degree. Let's be real, most undergrad programs are trash, and only exist to satisfy industry filters. Wow you learned all these topics on your own but do not have a paper? Too bad!!!! . I respect graduate studies, but I have zero respect for undergrad.
geraldwhen
I disagree. I have worked with great developers who could not be promoted or hired due to missing a few credits in a communications class.
They assumed they could just continue working, as they started without a degree and made a career out of it.
Then they hit hard walls. Because they never finished out a couple credits in nonsense courses.
chaostheory
I don't feel that he's being disingenuous. He just doesn't have the experience or the context. University prestige and your uni social circle can dramatically improve your professional life, but you're not going to know that if you haven't experienced it yourself or personally know anyone who's had the privilege.
VMtest
I checked the admission page but it doesn't mention whether people outside of US/EU can apply or not
VMtest
Correction: it doesn't mention whether people outside of US/*Canada* can apply or not
formerkrogemp
You cannot study outside of the US or enroll as a non-US citizen at WGU.
gzer0
> WGU is regionally accredited, not nationally, and it's a non-profit. So it cannot be compared to University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, DeVry, etc.
Just want to point out for those that may not know, 85% of universities in the U.S. are regionally accredited [1]. Regional accreditation, which WGU has, is the most prestigious and widely-recognized [1]. Some folks may mistake that nationally is "better", but, as you'll see from the link below, that simply is not the case.
[1] https://www.online.drexel.edu/news/national-vs-regional-accr...
throw10920
> Many WGU students HATE these types of articles, because they undermine the legitimacy of WGU.
What is "these types of articles"? How does this one "undermine the legitimacy of WGU"? Even a cursory skim-through of the article would show that the author worked hard and learned all of the material that they then passed exams on at WGU. They don't make it out to be a "degree mill" in any way whatsoever.
mdasen
It might have to do with the title. "I got a Computer Science degree in 3 months" makes it sound like it isn't serious. As you note, reading the article shows that the author worked hard, learned the material, already had an associates degree in the field, already did a semester in CS at a major university, and took 4 study.com CS/IT courses and 3 Sophia Learning CS/IT.
So the headline makes it sound like "look, here's an easy way to get a piece of paper that says you have a CS degree" when the reality is that they'd already done a lot of the work before enrolling and as AviationAtom notes, WGU works off demonstrating that you have the knowledge.
This isn't "go from zero to CS degree in 3 months". This is "if you already know a lot of your CS stuff, you can work really hard filling in the remaining gaps and showing that you know what you're doing and get a degree in 3 months." Between the associate's degree, a semester at Concordia, and the pre-WGU online courses, they'd probably spent 2-3 years learning.
I think the issue is that the title makes it seem like it's easy. It probably isn't the hardest program, but a decent amount of the author's ease comes from the fact that they had already filled most of the requirements - and just needed to demonstrate their competency. Which seems like it's part of the point according to AviationAtom.
sophacles
Random data point - my first thought reading the title was "what sort of scam is this?"
AviationAtom
More pointing to the clickbait title they chose. It implies that WGU is a cakewalk, that can be breezed through. Very few people complete their degree there in a very small timeframe. It takes great dedication to complete it rapidly.
That said, those that have ample available time, and are driven, can benefit greatly from the flexibility of the model. You only pay for the amount of credits you enrolled in for the semester, but when you complete those classes you can accelerate your other classes, without paying extra. It must be done with care though, as you could find yourself with all the classes you were versed in already knocked out for the next semester, and only tougher classes left over. I found that out the hard way.
sandworm101
A headline stating that a 4-year degree can be earned in 3-months? That alone is a huge red flag suggesting a degree mill. Lack of national accreditation is red flag #2. I don't mean to say that this is a degree mill, but the nature of the article does raise reasonable suspicions. Alumni are rightly critical of such articles that make their school sound like something it probably is not.
suresk
The speed at which you can get a degree can look like a red flag, but you are mistaken about the accreditation. Regional accreditation is actually what you want, not national. Most universities you think of are regionally accredited, whereas the for-profit ones that you can't transfer credit from are nationally accredited. Ie, Stanford = regionally accredited, DeVry = nationally acccredited.
WGU is accredited by NWCCU, which is the same as the University of Utah, University of Washington, etc.. See: https://nwccu.org/member-institutions/directory/
AviationAtom
Read about national accreditation elsewhere in the comments. It is not what you think. Regional accreditation is more desirable.
dragonwriter
> Lack of national accreditation is red flag #2.
No, having national accreditation would be a red flag.
Regional is the gold standard. (Yes, the names make it sound backwards; it is what it is.)
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light_hue_1
These types of article that show how shallow the education at WGU is.
It is a degree mill.
The difficulty and material of the courses does not in any way compare to what you would get at a real university.
triyambakam
Haha, a real university? Unless you mean a handful like MIT and Stanford, most no name colleges are not going to be any better.
arkades
> Many WGU students HATE these types of articles, because they undermine the legitimacy of WGU.
> Their model is competency-based, so you must demonstrate you posses knowledge in any given domain.
The guy took courses at college, online, and worked in the field for over a decade before speedrunning WGU. It seems to me he’s the exact model of “demonstrating competence” that you mention - I don’t see how that makes WGU out to be a degree mill.
PheonixPharts
This sounds like a surprisingly good idea, something I hope we see more of (but of course I'll remain pessimistic).
What's crazy to me is that it wasn't always the case that you had to go through the formal process of school to achieve credentialing. If you were truly exceptional, and could prove that, you could then get the required credential.
For example it used to be the case that you didn't need to go to law school to take the bar exam. You still don't in a few US states. Law school might make it a million times easier to learn the law and pass, but if you already know it why not go straight to the test?
Another, admittedly extreme, case was Ludwig Wittgenstein getting his PhD from Trinity College. He had already written the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on his own, then basically showed up and presented it as his dissertation, defended it, mocked his friend Bertrand Russel during defense and got the PhD.
What's crazy to me is that if Wittgenstein was alive today he would not be able to achieve this anywhere. There are plenty of people out there who have done ground breaking work in their field, but because of the orthodoxy today, have zero chance of getting a PhD without going through the entire process.
There's such a huge difference between schools saying "you technically don't need us to get the credential, but it's going to be much, much harder to go it your own way" than "it doesn't matter what you do, if you don't sit here and play by our rules you will never be recognized".
This is where it's hard not to get pretty cynical about the state of higher education today.
mkl
> Another, admittedly extreme, case was Ludwig Wittgenstein getting his PhD from Trinity College. He had already written the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on his own, then basically showed up and presented it as his dissertation, defended it, mocked his friend Bertrand Russel during defense and got the PhD.
> What's crazy to me is that if Wittgenstein was alive today he would not be able to achieve this anywhere.
Not so. Cambridge still does it, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey in 2000.
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dimgl
Hey, does this exist for video game animation? I was extremely disappointed with an online school I recently went to for video game animation (the classes were way too spread apart and while the modeling sections were interesting, I really just need to work on animation for the models I purchased).
I know this is tangentially related, but this was so demoralizing I kind of gave up on game dev altogether.
johnnyanmac
>As long as a bar is set
that's a big problem in software TBF. The bar is all over which ways and changes dramatically based on the domain. If we can't agree on a bar, there's not much point in the endless arguments that result while pointing to our own interpretations
> Does it really matter if a person that has knowledge got it from sitting in a seat, paying ungodly amounts of tuition, or if they got it from life experience?
well, the real life experience is much more preferable. But the general model of professional industries unfortunately require sitting in a seat for years and getting a piece of paper before resetting 80% of what you learned with imperfect realities.
I'm glad there is an option like this for a developer thrown out of the market without a degree to fast track their way to that piece of paper, but it's a shame that piece of paper is held in such high regards
hammock
> On my first day, I completed 4 courses in the span of 4 hours. At a traditional school, it would have taken 4 months. It made me realize…I had underestimated how much knowledge I had gained from previous schools, jobs, projects, books, papers, and talks.
This passage underscores how, for this guy and whoever he was selling himself to, a CS degree was just a credential. He did not have much intention of actually learning anything. That’s (I believe) fundamentally different than most people who seek college degrees.
csa
> That’s (I believe) fundamentally different than most people who seek college degrees.
For many/most degrees in the US, most folks are just going through the academic motions for the piece of paper and/or the college social experience.
“Serious” students are largely only found in degree programs that have weeder courses.
colinmhayes
> “Serious” students are largely only found in degree programs that have weeder courses.
I went to a top 20 university, even higher ranked CS program. There were plenty of weeder courses. There were also plenty of students that were only there to get the piece of paper they believed, probably rightly, was necessary to get the job they wanted. All of the CS courses were recorded, attendance never mandatory for lectures. It was not uncommon at all for lectures to be less than half full due to students watching a months worth of lectures right before exams.
grogenaut
I'm not sure this is out of alignment with being a serious student, it's just out of alignment with how the uni wants to teach classes. This is how I did school in 2000, even when classes were not recorded.
This is a problem I have with online classes as well, the material is all done already, why are we running it temporally, instead of DVR style.
You can still weed people out and have a strong "certification" program without requiring real time in person attendance.
I'm a serious viewer of Better Call Saul, but I watched it all right before exam time.
kennethologist
Which Uni? I would like to shared this with soon to be university students who want to pursue a CS major.
voakbasda
How many programs weed out students anymore? None that I have heard of, and the notion seems unlikely given that most are happy to take their students’ money all the way through graduation.
skrtskrt
I would say most of the STEM majors at my university (top 20 US school) pushed students to the absolute brink in the first year, jam packed with advanced math, physics, and chemistry. It was pretty normal to come out of freshman year engineering, CS, or chemistry with a sub-2.75 GPA and the joy of learning completely stomped out of you.
I don't know if it was intentional or just the collective effect of having a bunch of professors with no teaching skills and god complexes who hated engaging with undergrads, happy to assign 40 hours of work per week per class with no regard to the fact that students are in 3 other equally-difficult classes.
Mostly (that I know of) people didn't switch out though, they just took the terrible treatment as it was supposedly normal to have a terrible GPA and terrible time in the STEM majors there. Also there were a lot of international students in the programs - I doubt going to America to study engineering and coming back with a liberal arts degree was an option for them.
Personally, I switched into Industrial Engineering which had notably fewer hard sciences requirements. Still miserable, but less so.
I also managed to find a loophole where each engineering major had its own stats class that was 95% the same content, then vaguely applying it to a problem in that field of study in a final project. So I satisfied my Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, etc. requirements by just taking MechE Stats and ChemE Stats.
They closed that loophole by the time I graduated by having one unified Stats course for all engineering majors.
erdos4d
I taught university (big state school) about 10 years ago and it was department policy to flunk >= 40% of each calculus class. We curved to accomplish this and every class was told this was the policy on day 1. We got a mix of students at my school and this was to keep the dopes from designing airplanes and such. I personally would have been happier letting engineering do their own dirty work, but that was math's job and I like my plane flights to be uneventful, so yeah.
hemloc_io
Decent bit! I can only speak to my somewhat recent experience but the CS program had like a 30% attrition rate for year 1 + 2 b/c each year had a weeder course
nostrebored
Georgia Tech retention rate for first year CS students is 60% IIRC. Now, many of these will go to other majors and not drop out. But these majors are widely known at the school (e.g. riding the management train). While many of these students will go on to graduate, 12.2% of enrolled first year students are not on graduation rosters 4 years later.
wara23arish
The uni I went to definitely had 2-3 weed out courses.
Probably the hardest one was Operating Systems. First day of class, you’re told not all of you will be here by the end of the class and it was true.
dev_tty01
Many state universities are forced by state law to reduce the admittance requirements, especially for in-state students. State taxes are paying part of the university budget and it is politically valuable to keep those universities widely accessible. As a result, the schools are forced to do additional screening in the first year.
I think this is actually a reasonable policy since it allows for someone who has great potential but lacks the maturity to apply themselves in lower grades. They still have an opportunity to turn things around and become substantial contributors.
matwood
I was 'weeded' out of pre-med and landed in software. The problem with pre-med was the insane number of hours per semester I was going to have to take while I was also working. I had an interest in computers so tried out the first programming classes and it was relatively easy so the rest is history.
IIRC, for software/programming, any early class heavy with pointers/hardware/math served as a weeding function. So I'm not sure how students won't be pushed out at some point if they can't do the work.
wollsmoth
It's been a while since I graduated but for those wanting a high demand major from a dept with limited resources, it seemed normal for one of the 100 level courses to be a step up in difficulty. Pushed out a lot of people from pursuing CS at my school.
Other schools make you apply to the major, and that process just weeds out those the dept thinks are not suited for the program.
wutangson1
> "Serious students are largely only found in degree programs that have weeder courses". I am unconvinced by that logic. Serious students are there to learn from competent teachers- i.e. someone that is proficient in the art of conveying knowledge, not merely possessing knowledge or having successfully brought grant monies to their university. Weed out courses are not for serious students, but are a rite of passage that many times are themselves gamed.
csa
> Serious students are there to learn from competent teachers- i.e. someone that is proficient in the art of conveying knowledge, not merely possessing knowledge or having successfully brought grant monies to their university.
These two are largely diametrically opposed.
- Any professor bringing in significant grant money is at an R1 school.
- R1 schools are famous for bad teaching by the tenured faculty, largely because quality teaching doesn’t gain them much.
- Quality teaching can be found, often in abundance, at small colleges. Some of these colleges do not have weeder courses. There are some serious students at these colleges. These are the rare exceptions, imho.
bena
There's weeder courses and then there's weeder courses.
Some courses are just hard because the concepts are hard. If you're not down to clown, you're not going to make it past it.
Some courses are deliberate obstacles. The degree program at the university I attended had a single course that essentially pivoted you from the 200 level courses to the 300 level courses. It was always full due to it being a requirement and having a high failure rate necessitating people to retake it multiple times.
I never got a chance to take it because I ran out of lower level courses and electives to take to maintain full time status. Without full time status, I couldn't maintain my financial aid. Without my financial aid, I couldn't afford college.
A couple of years later, the program was restructured and the "pivot" was removed. As was other bullshit one was forced to take. If I had started the program a year later, I could have actually completed it. Or if I could have just taken the class. I never struggled with the material.
jseliger
True, and an underrated point: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-eliz...
welshwelsh
>He did not have much intention of actually learning anything.
I strongly disagree, you are missing the point of competency based education.
It's important to understand that an undergraduate CS degree needs to be accessible even to people without much IT experience. Some people come in with no experience with computers at all.
Look at the names of the first four courses:
C182: Introduction to IT
C172: Network and Security - Foundations
C779: Web Development Foundations
C173: Scripting and Programming - Foundations
Most people on Hacker News would be bored out of their minds taking these courses. Do you know what a computer is? Do you know the difference between HTML and Javascript? Can you write basic scripts using Bash or Python? That's what foundational courses are for.
If you are already beyond this level- which the author clearly was- you can just test out of them. Pass an exam to prove that you already know this stuff, so then you can move on to more advanced material that's more appropriate for you.
ravenstine
> That’s (I believe) fundamentally different than most people who seek college degrees.
My experience talking with people suggests otherwise. When I became an adult and got a few years into my career, it was surprising to me how few people had anything interesting to say about their line of work even to the point of actual disinterest. Yeah, I know that a lot of people don't like to talk about work, but I'm saying that many people not only avoid the topic of their career but will even tell you they don't really care about or like what they do. I've had so many girls I went on dates with who were completely disengaged with their careers and even admitted they got a degree just to make money. I'm talking girls who were chemical engineers, biologists and so forth. Some genuinely liked what they do, but I think ~70% didn't give a f---.
I'm not blaming people in any way, but I think the reality is that not everyone, or even most, are doing what they do as part of a greater calling. They're just humans trying to get by and maybe have a family. The appreciating value of intellectual work along with the idea that everyone should be well-rounded contributes to this impression that people are doing things like getting degrees for reasons that aren't merely utilitarian, but most of the time I think that's not the case.
randrews
Part of this might be the context of a date: I spend long hours outside work learning and building things just because I find my profession interesting, but when most people ask about it I change the subject quickly because I know exactly how boring my interests are to most people: I assume they're asking to be polite and don't want an in-depth discourse on CPU design.
robocat
> so many girls I went on dates with who were completely disengaged with their careers
Any reason not to think that there was a selection bias for the sample of women who choose to go on a date via the platform you used, or choose to try a date with you?
Mathnerd314
Right, most people are there for the parties and get degrees in underwater basket weaving. But the hard sciences and engineering are usually for the credentials.
This is also how the programs are designed - if you fail the course there's no hand holding, you have to do it again or give up the degree. And the support that large universities give for their introductory courses is minimal, so generally your resources consist of the textbook and your lecture notes. The lectures online are just as good if you actually want to learn the material.
robbyking
Off topic, but where did the "underwater basketweaving" meme (in the traditional sense) come from? My dad used to say that all the time in reference to what he considered frivolous academic pursuits.
kodah
The term came about in the 50s and is mainly used to highlight problems with the exploitative nature of the NCAA. Basically, athletes aren't being told to, or put in environment where they can, balance education and sports. Sports and selling the colleges brand take priority and colleges were known to make it easier for athletes to get through or with passing grades. Sometimes making up entire coursework for their athletes to take. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/16/breaking-ncaa... That obviously undermines and frustrates anyone who had a hard time in college.
My dad, who was a college athlete, used that term a lot to express frustration at systems which no longer served their purpose and were acting performatively.
texuf
When you weave baskets you have to keep the reeds wet. It’s the hardest part other than the design itself I guess. Doing it under water would be easy. (From personal experience, no idea if this is actually correct)
mwint
Looks like the 50's, originally coming from an Alaskan practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_basket_weaving#Poss...
gumby
> Right, most people are there for the parties and get degrees in underwater basket weaving. But the hard sciences and engineering are usually for the credentials.
Did you intend to include a "not" as in "not for the credentials"? I would think you do a tough EE or Physics (or Classics) because you want to learn the stuff.
That seemed to be the case when I was at MIT, though that was a generation ago. Everybody seemed into their work, despite claiming to be upset by the course load. Complaining about it (IHTFP) seemed to be more of a ritual or social activity rather than earnest protest.
Mathnerd314
No, I meant "for". If you just want to learn the material, you can learn it about as effectively for free with self-study and online MOOCs. It's the credentials that cost money, and the economic assumption is that the credentials are why people attend universities. Did you go to MIT because you wanted a high course load or because you wanted a prestigious degree?
t-3
There's probably a pretty big correlation between expense and how interested you are in actually learning. A super-famous super-expensive MIT is obviously going to have a different student population than a cheaper and less prestigious institution.
triyambakam
> That’s (I believe) fundamentally different than most people who seek college degrees.
Actually I'd bet it's fundamentally the same reason most people get a degree. Especially lately, it has become in the US nearly the default post highschool choice, mostly due to implicit social pressure and America's unique lack of technical training schools like in e.g. Switzerland
shkkmo
> This passage underscores how, for this guy and whoever he was selling himself to, a CS degree was just a credential. He did not have much intention of actually learning anything.
That directly contradicts what the author said about his intentions and experience:
>> While I had some PAs returned for improvements, I made sure to never fail an OA – even if retakes (up to 3-4) were allowed. It wasn’t a race, and my goal wasn’t to brute force my way into a degree. I came for the piece of paper, sure, but I also used it as an opportunity to assess and fill gaps in my knowledge. As a result, I never came close to failing an exam.
pessimizer
And there's nothing wrong with that. There's something fundamentally ritualistic about asserting that people who already have the knowledge required for a credential are somehow debasing the credentialing system by testing out of it.
I'd say that some people are looking for the "college experience." That's unrelated to education other than by proximity to it.
jdbernard
As someone who has spent almost 20 years in software professionally, yeah. I'm considering doing the same thing because there are still plenty of people and employers out there that advantage people who have the paper. I highly doubt that there is anything in the course of study for a bachelors that will truly be new to me (especially since I already completed most of that study once). But if I did want to actually learn something, say by pursuing education at the graduate level, I have to get that credential rubber-stamping my existing knowledge.
alasdair_
>But if I did want to actually learn something, say by pursuing education at the graduate level, I have to get that credential rubber-stamping my existing knowledge.
Most universities will let you audit a course, even graduate courses (if you can convince the professor you have experience in the area) just by paying a fee for that one class. You don't need a credential to do this.
giraffe_lady
I also didn't go to college but did a pretty solid set of online CS and math classes while working as a software developer. I'd love to get a masters degree, and it would benefit my career quite a lot.
Auditing classes is fine¹ but probably not enough value for me on its own to be worth the time and opportunity cost. I'd want the degree and I'm fairly sure I have the skills and knowledge to begin a CS masters. But I can't get one without doing a BS first, which makes it overall just not worth the effort.
¹ Actually is it? I hear this recommended a lot but I don't know anyone who has audited a university course while not being a student. I tried it once at my local state school but it was an amazingly complex process to get signed up, and then I was told I could have a slot if there was ever an open one. There never was.
rtkwe
Some context on WGU
> An audit by the Department of Education's Office of Inspector General, released on September 21, 2017, "concluded that Western Governors University did not comply with the institutional eligibility requirement that limits the percentage of regular students who may enroll in correspondence courses" and that "at least 69 of the 102 courses were not designed to offer regular and substantive interaction with an instructor and, therefore, did not meet the regulatory definition of distance education."
They later kept their federal loan eligibility but it sounds like it might have been a case where they skated by due to a lack of clear guidance.
adamisom
Lack of clear guidance is right. The existing outdated laws or regulations just didn’t make sense for their business model or for the Internet age. WGU is regionally accredited in all regions. Not to say it’s good-quality education; it’s not. But frankly most colleges aren’t and I think it meets the same (low) bar that most colleges do—and does better for job-readiness and cost. I have most of a degree from it. I’m still not sure I’d recommend it to others though. I’m not even 100% sure I’ll finish!—but I’m leaning toward finishing to make it easier to get into OMSCS or similar. It’s not what got me my job and career. But if you don’t already have a degree (I did, psychology) it’s probably worth it if you think checking the box can help your career or even just help you hunt for your first paid job.
no_wizard
It’s fine education if you make it so. My direct experience is that I can attain the same knowledge (and then some) as I would at a traditional university I had to seek it actively however.
I think outside of the most elite schools this holds true no matter what. Most people just go through the course motions and that’s that, even engineering students
triyambakam
I was in disbelief when I found out that some people are in a dilemma about getting a CS degree or not, when they already have some other degree. And here I am with no degree in anything, working as a SWE. I've gone back and forth about it - mostly I don't care about the fake degree from WGU and similar schools and then to get a degree where I'd actually learn something new (MIT maybe?) it would be a huge time sync, cost and I'm not sure I'd even be accepted.
no_wizard
I can tell you from experience that every company, from Meta to Apple to hell, even 90% of startups, will just accept the CS degree as is. I'd say to working professionals (those with a couple years experience in the industry now) its a bigger win because it matters astronomically less where you got your degree than when you are first starting out as an engineer. It keeps the gatekeepers away and checks all the recruitment boxes across the board.
Its also a good gateway to get a useful Masters degree, like the two year Computer Science and Engineering degree from Georgia Tech, which if I recall correctly is very cost effective and highly regarded
miguelrochefort
My motivations:
- Canadians need a bachelor’s degree to work in the USA.
- Graduate programs typically require a bachelor’s degree.
foolinaround
> the fake degree from WGU > get a degree where I'd actually learn something new
What is fake about this? And who prevents you from listening to MIT lectures, if you choose to?
fckgw
FWIW I have a bachelors from WGU in IT Security was was accepted into GA Tech's Online Masters Cybersecurity program.
_caw
I just put in a couple hours of studying @ WGU for Discrete Math II last night, and I'm happy that the school exists.
I spent months trying to get my brick-and-mortar to allow me to complete my B.S. remotely; I had dropped out after junior year for startup reasons.
Long story short, the idea that an adult working full time might want to complete their degree without dropping $65k wasn't acceptable (of course COVID forced the university remote.)
Then my partner began a WGU Master's program and told me about it.
Although I wasn't able to transfer in most of my courses (older than 5 years), I was able to transfer a chunk of gen-eds. Now I'm slowly but surely working through the degree, diving much deeper into math topics than I ever did before.
I have the time to actually understand things instead of passing by the skin of my teeth. I also have the choice to skip a topic entirely if I know its contents.
It can be a slog, and there are times where it appears a gargantuan task. But I'm learning, and the challenge of doing it while working full time gives me great confidence.
Make sure you match with an excellent mentor to cheer you on while holding you accountable.
Now, some things to consider:
* I value the friends and shared experience I made @ brick-and-mortar university. This doesn't replicate that at all.
* Prices, although relatively low, have risen.
* Self-motivation is critical.
* No detailed feedback on projects.
I appreciate it for what it is: a self-motivated, self-paced escape hatch for those who want to earn a degree, where your experience is valued, and your bank account is respected.
xriddle
OP is a class act. I reached out to him the first time he posted this and he was really helpful with answering my questions. I applied then and am now one class away from finishing my Masters in Cybersecurity. I have 20 years experience in the field and am in a stable, well paying position that I don't plan to leave. This was a vanity degree for me but I also wanted to learn something in the process. So I took my time an emersed myself in the course material even though I could have probably tested out of most courses within a few days. Like any school, WGU will allow you to get what you want out of it. You want a checkmark? WGU will allow you to can get that cheaper than anywhere else. You want to really learn and get credit for it? Then take your time and you wont be disappointed. Are you done learning after your degree? Nope, but as a lifelong learner my experience at WGU was great and am glad I went for it.
aidenn0
When I was in undergrad (20ish years ago) it was absolutely possible for a motivated student to graduate at a highly accelerated rate. I know someone who had approximately 5 semesters worth of classes done at the end of his freshman year, having taken about 40 credits worth of classes each semester (12 credits was considered "full time" and you needed to average slightly more than that per semester to graduate in 4 years in most degrees).
He was able to do this because:
1. Only foreign language classes and lab sciences had class-participation requirements
2. All classes published a syllabus so where possible he could start the major projects early
3. Most of the lower-division classes were a joke to a smart and motivated person anyways.
4. He convinced an academic advisor to sign off on it (this was arguably the hardest part).
brimble
At a lot of schools, you can take CLEP tests to get out of (especially) 100 and 200 level courses. Take the test, pay a (somewhat lower) rate for the credit without taking the actual class, and it's done.
If you're capable of completing 5 semesters worth in 2 semesters, you're probably capable of passing several of those tests with only a little studying over a Summer.
aidenn0
At this Univiersity, at this time, you could not take CLEP tests for credit in any classes that were in the same school as your major. So e.g. a Physics major (school of science) could not get credit for the e.g. Math and Chemistry (also school of science) requirements without signing up for the actual course.
There were other classes without any official CLEP, so the process was to convince a board of professors to orally examine you on a day that they'd rather be with their family on vacation or doing research.
gravypod
Most colleges are a "scam". When doing my degree I tested out of the maximum number of classes which, in my opinion, is infuriating and a perfect example of how dishonest the industry is. If you know the material you should get the degree.
That, in my opinion, is how a merit based education should work. Instead, our system asks: Do you have the support system to and finances to enable you to spend 4 years without earning an income to complete a degree program?
schroeding
Impressive! How many credits did a "normal" class (like linear algebra or calculus I) have? Or how many classes did he have to take to get 40 credits in one semester? The exam taking phase must have been hell :P
The best I once did was only 48 credits (with the baseline for full-time study being 30 per semester, "normal" class giving 6 credits, european university so only a 3 year bachelors degree) and I was very tired after that semester :D
aidenn0
3 credits was a normal lecture, 1 credit was a normal lab; 4 credits for e.g. freshman chemistry which was a lecture plus a lab.
schroeding
Wow, ~13 classes in one semester! That's amazing! :D
suresk
I just graduated from WGU 2 days ago, after almost 20 years in the industry. I didn't rush through it was quickly - I finished in just under a year. I studied finance my first time around in college and have tried to do a CS degree a few times since, but juggling a full-time job and now a family makes that tough. The flexibility the WGU program offered was honestly more important than the raw speed at which I could go through it.
Some of it was stuff I knew really well and only spent an hour or two on, some of it was filler (I now have ITIL v4 and Project+ certifications that were annoying to get and mostly useless?), and some of it was new and interesting (Discrete Math, Computer Architecture, etc..). Overall, it didn't feel like markedly different curriculum from the in-person courses I took at other schools.
Aside from a few terrible classes (the AI course is just a horrendous waste of time), most of them were decent and I felt like I learned something from them. The overall curriculum is a little odd and probably not ideal for someone who has little programming experience. For example, the very first "scripting and programming" course uses C++ to build a simple command-line application, but then you never do anything with C++ again. What is the point of that? I understand how C++ can be useful in a learning context, but I don't think a brief introduction to it really does any good. Two of the biggest courses are big JavaFX projects, which ughh.. fine, but I think there are probably more useful things to teach.
I understand that a CS degree is more about theory than getting job-related skills, but a few of the decisions made serve neither very well. So if I had one knock on the program, it is that someone who comes in with little programming experience is probably going to come out of it without having written much code that resembles what they'd be doing in a job.
Overall, it was a really good experience and it feels good to finally finish up after all these years. I am currently applying for the Georgia Tech OMSCS program, which is a common route for WGU graduates. That one is fairly rigorous and cannot be sped through, so looking at several more years for that, but at the end of it all, a BS + MS in Computer Science in around 5 years and under $20k total seems like a decent result?
triyambakam
Can you share more of your reasoning behind getting the degree after so long in the industry?
suresk
That's a good question, given that it hasn't been a huge deal so far in my career. Two things:
First, I realized I wanted to dig deeper into CS topics. I love this field more every year I am in it and wanted to round out my knowledge in some areas. Getting a master's degree and the courses that are part of that seemed like a good way to accomplish that - I've taught myself a lot over the years, but that route leaves some areas untouched. You don't always know what you don't know, plus having deadlines, goals, etc helps keep me on task even when something feels like it isn't immediately relevant. So, getting a BS was the first step in that goal.
Second, as I progress more through my career, there are some interesting positions that require, or at least favor, some kind of degree. I feel like having one or both gives me more options and flexibility.
AviationAtom
I know in my field (Information Security) it ends up being a check the box. Having it sets you apart from those that don't.
markus_zhang
Still sounds a bit lengthy to me.
What I would like to have is a topic approach one. It should be fully online with facilities for student communication such as Discord and online assignment/project submission.
One example: let's say I want to learn OS. The course chain will look like this: Programming class, Comp arch using C and assembly, Data structure, and then straight into OS.
In modern universities you can apply as independent students but the process is often a bit tedious. Also you have to go through a lot of red tapes just to remove some pre-requisite, e.g. as a Math student I don't need Discrete math, and as a Data Engineer I don't need the basic programming class at least, but in reality it's really difficult to get these done easily, if at all.
Of course I can just go to say Berkeley and download their course materials and learn for free. I figured I'm not smart/persistent enough to go through it on my own, so paying some $$ to get a proper learning platform is a better option. Really wish universities such as MIT or Berkeley has such options but I know it's too much for them. Once they open the gate there will be too large a demand to handle.
BizarroLand
I went to WGU for my BSIT. I didn't learn much there, but the degree and certifications helped my job prospects. Spent about $10,000 going for 3 semesters (already had my AS from a community college), walked out with 13 certifications and a boost in pay from being headhunted within weeks.
I've had another job since then and am earning more still. I would say at least for IT degrees WGU is worth it. It gives you the sheet of paper HR needs to let you in through the door for cheap, plus a bunch of certs that helps your resume stand out. Not a bad deal if you have any autodidactive capability.
50208
WGU BS / MS Graduate here: I attended 3 other "traditional, B&M" Uni's in years past (~60 credits). I also attended a couple Community Colleges (16 credits).
I created a career in IT by getting a job (2000) and working full time over the years. I got certifications on my own that I transferred in for credit with WGU.
I have now been teaching full time in an IT program at a community college for 2 years and have also developed and manage 2 different MS level online classes for a traditional B&M university you have definitely heard of.
I can tell you, unequivocally, that what I had to do to complete my degrees with WGU was more rigorous than what I am requiring my students to do now (not my choice ... chain of command). The grading was harder at WGU than what I am permitted to do now with my students in the CC and B&M MS classes. I have now been on each side of the "WGU is not legit" argument. Anyone who thinks this is very wrong. No, it's not Stanford or MIT, it's not supposed to be ... though I'm sure grade inflation and special treatment happens at those places. There is no special treatment or grade inflation at WGU. You take a cert exam, take a test, or submit a paper to an unknown grader. You either pass or you don't. Simple as that. If you know your stuff, move on. If you don't ... learn it to move forward. It's meritocracy at its best. That is NOT the traditional University way.
I would included the OP in this ... he states in the end of his blog post that "The program is not the most rigorous." How does he know this having not attended other university recently? How does he know this not having developed or taught classes at other universities or colleges. He's right about the clear value that can be attained from combining knowledge, experience and work ethic to a WGU degree. He's wrong about the rigor.
IMO: WGU is not the place to LEARN, it's the place you PROVE WHAT YOU KNOW.
tristor
This article was interesting to me because it helped me learn about WGU. I dropped out of college just one semester prior to graduating (and had a 3.7gpa at the time). I've had nearly two decades of experience in industry, and it'd be great to be able to get a degree at this point in my life just to get the credential to match my work experience. WGU seems like a really reasonable program for someone in my situation, compared to taking time off from work to go back to school or hoping I get famous enough someday to get an honorary degree.
triyambakam
Also look into TESU
dang
Discussed at the time:
I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25467900 - Dec 2020 (374 comments)
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So, former WGU student here, though I hadn't completed my degree.
Many WGU students HATE these types of articles, because they undermine the legitimacy of WGU.
WGU was not designed for traditional students, it was 100% designed for working professionals, where WGU will only admit you with a reasonable amount of experience in your field.
WGU is regionally accredited, not nationally, and it's a non-profit. So it cannot be compared to University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, DeVry, etc.
It was founded by a group of governors out west, hence the name. They realized that there were many working adults who possessed a great depth of knowledge, from long working in their fields, yet they had no paper credentials to show for that knowledge.
Their model is competency-based, so you must demonstrate you posses knowledge in any given domain. If you can prove you do then you can test out right away, if you fail to then they offer a variety of resources to allow you to get up to par. In many cases classes are tied to obtaining industry certifications.
It's not for everyone, but it is a far cry from a "degree mill." Does it really matter if a person that has knowledge got it from sitting in a seat, paying ungodly amounts of tuition, or if they got it from life experience? As long as a bar is set, and you can meet it, then that should be what really matters.
Just my personal experience, from having attended the university. Unfortunately life sidetracked my completion, but I hope to return one day soon, and complete my program.