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I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

2020-12-1815:20425374miguelrochefort.com

This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months. In 2012, I dropped out of college, where I was studying computer science, after just one semester. I already knew how to…

This is the story of how I prepared for a decade to graduate in 3 months.

In 2012, I dropped out of college, where I was studying computer science, after just one semester. I already knew how to program and I thought I’d never need a degree.

Over the years, I found myself complaining a lot about it. I saw many opportunities, especially abroad, that were out of reach because I didn’t have the required papers. I felt ready for graduate school but couldn’t get admitted. I had to work harder to prove myself to employers. Although I never noticed any serious gap in my knowledge, I felt that something was missing. I started to resent my decision.

In June 2020, I attended a virtual Slate Star Codex meetup. As usual, I complained about not having a degree. This is when I first heard about Western Governors University (WGU). Apparently, their online programs had no speed limit and students could graduate as quickly as they could pass all the exams. I was skeptical, so I did some research.

Here’s what I found:

  • It’s accredited. Their programs are accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), the same accreditation body used by the University of Washington (#24) and the University of Oregon (#94).

  • It’s self-paced. Their competency-based approach allows students to complete courses as quickly as they can show mastery of the material.

  • It’s affordable. Their flat-rate tuition of $3,200 per 6-month term means that the faster you complete the degree, the more money you save.

It seemed too good to be true. I immediately submitted my application.

The next day, I received a phone call from an enrollment counselor. They confirmed everything I had read and told me that although they didn’t officially accept foreign students (I’m Canadian), they would try to make an exception. After a dozen phone calls, transfer/translation/evaluation of transcripts, proof of English proficiency, and tuition payments, I was officially enrolled in their Bachelor of Science in Computer Science program.

I now had the opportunity to apply everything I had learned from Scott H. Young’s MIT Challenge, in which he completed MIT’s 4-year CS curriculum in just 12 months. Of course, my achievement wouldn’t be as impressive, given WGU’s less rigorous program and my prior experience in the field. Indeed, I wrote my first program at 10, I had years of professional experience as a software developer, and I had even studied the subject in college. Still, I would get a real CS degree in just 3 months.

Academic Journey

In this post, I will take you through my entire academic journey, describing when, where, and how I completed each of the 34 courses (120 credits) required for this degree. Note that credits awarded for the first 3 courses (9 credits), taken between 2009 and 2012, were excluded from the quoted 3 months and $5000 total. “How I Got a Computer Science Degree in 11 Years for More Than $5000” didn’t sound right.

When consulting the tables below, “CUs” stands for “Competency Units”, which is WGU’s time-agnostic equivalent to “Credit Hours”. “Effort” represents the total amount of time (in hours) invested in a given course, from initial research to final assessment.

Cégep Édouard-Montpetit (2009-2012)

From 2009 to 2012, I studied IT at Cégep Édouard-Montpetit and graduated with a Diploma of College Studies, which is roughly equivalent to an Associate’s degree in the US. From there, a Bachelor’s degree typically requires an additional 3 years of study.

My biggest gripe with the program, other than mandatory class attendance, was its focus on Microsoft technologies: Visual Studio, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server, IIS, etc. I was a die-hard Linux user who wrote essays about the evil of proprietary software in high school. Despite my initial resistance, I ended up learning quite a bit. Who knew I would later fall in love with Windows Phone, build a bunch of apps for it (including its first Bitcoin wallet), work as a Xamarin developer, and even spend 3 years porting WinUI to Android and iOS (Uno).

Out of 39 courses, I only managed to transfer 2 courses' worth of credits (6 credits) to WGU. They wouldn’t transfer any IT course. They wouldn’t take my calculus course because it was over 5 years old. Unlike a US Associate’s degree, which would satisfy all of WGU’s general education requirements, my foreign degree wouldn’t. Also, the subject and level of some of the courses were lost in translation, after going through a translation agency (French → English) and an international credential evaluation service (Québec → USA). If I had a recent (less than 5 years old) Associate’s degree, I could have expected to receive 10 courses' worth of credits.

Start Course CUs Satisfied by
2009 C464: Introduction to Communication 3 English Language and Culture
2009 C100: Introduction to Humanities 3 Québec Literature

Concordia University (2012)

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. Lectures might exist for good reasons, but I wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate them. Instead, I read the PowerPoints myself, at home, and used Wikipedia to fill in the gaps. I only set foot on campus 3 more times, to take the midterm and final exams. Although I passed all 4 courses, I felt very confused about this whole university thing, where you spend a lot of time learning very little. So, I dropped out and gave up my scholarship.

Out of 4 courses, I only managed to transfer 1 courses' worth of credits (3 credits) to WGU.

Start Course CUs Satisfied by
2012 C255: Introduction to Geography 3 Introduction to Political Science

Study.com

(2020)

In July 2020, as I was going through WGU’s admission process, I decided to get a head-start by taking some courses online for academic credits. At that point, I was still hoping to graduate in 12 months (2 terms of 6 months). I figured that the more credits I transferred, the more likely I would complete the program in 2 terms. I still had no idea that 1 term would be more than enough.

Thankfully, US students have access to a lot of affordable options when it comes to taking online courses for credits. These are just a few of the many websites that offer courses with ACE credits in the $25-$200 per course range:

I chose Study.com because they had the largest course catalog (180+) and the most comprehensive transfer agreements with WGU. Their College Acceleration Edition plan costs $199/month and includes 2 exams, on top of which you can add up to 3 additional exams per month for $70 each.

Their courses are not the best I’ve taken, but they get the job done. They’re split into bite-size units, each with animated lectures and mandatory quizzes. The number of quizzes can be overwhelming, and I recommend looking elsewhere if you already know the material and just want to take the final exam. Some courses have projects, and most courses have a proctored final exam. Proctoring is done using your computer’s webcam, but the footage is only reviewed 7-10 days later, which can be a problem if you need to transfer credits quickly.

Unfortunately, they limit students to 5 courses per month, which is where I stopped.

Sophia Learning (2020)

On July 29th, after reaching Study.com’s monthly 5-course limit, I started looking for alternatives. Luckily, Sophia Learning had made all their courses free until the end of July due to COVID-19.

The quality of their courses is better than average, and you can even choose from multiple lecturers. Courses are broken down into logical units, each with a set of challenges (quizzes) and a milestone (unit exam). Each course ends with a final milestone which is non-proctored (no webcam) and open-book, making them almost too easy.

I managed to complete 3 courses before the promotion ended.

Western Governors University (2020)

On September 1st, I finally started my first and only term at WGU, with 23 courses (83 credits) left to go.

By then, I had already passed 9 pre-assessments (practice exams), which unlike course material were already available before the start of the term. 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 a few things:

  • I had underestimated how much knowledge I had gained from previous schools, jobs, projects, books, papers, and talks.

  • I was much more productive and motivated without an arbitrary speed limit.

  • I could probably graduate in a single term of 6 months.

Each student at WGU gets assigned a program mentor, who supports them from their first day through graduation. I had a phone call with mine every week, in which we discussed my progress and planned the week ahead. She quickly adapted to my pace of study and made sure I never got stuck waiting for an answer or for the next set of courses to be approved. I never expected that this human point of contact would have such a positive impact on my experience at WGU. Course instructors were also available on-demand, sometimes on surprisingly short notice.

The quality and difficulty of courses at WGU varies a lot. They’re sourced from different providers, sometimes using different platforms for material and assessments. Some certification courses, such as Axelos ITIL 4 Foundation and Oracle Database SQL 1Z0-071, probably don’t belong in a CS program. On the other hand, a compilers course and a programming languages course would have been welcome additions.

Given my prior experience in the field, I was able to skip a lot of material. For 1/5 of courses, I simply ignored the material. For another 3/5 of courses, I quickly skimmed through it. For the last 1/5 of courses, I basically read the whole text book. Sometimes, I prefered third-party resources over the provided material. Fortunately, WGU’s student community curates a lot of them (tips, notes, flashcards, quizzes, abridged text books, YouTube playlists, etc.)

Each course assesses a student’s competency in 1 of 2 ways:

  • Objective Assessment (OA): Usually takes the form of a single final exam, proctored in real-time using the student’s webcam. Can be scheduled at any time (24/7), even minutes before taking place.

  • Performance Assessment (PA): Usually takes the form of one or more projects, submitted by the student for grading. Feedback is returned within 1-3 days, allowing the student to make any required modifications to satisfy all aspects of the rubric.

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.

During my time at WGU, I focused on a single course at a time and made sure to complete it before starting a new one. I made some progress every single day (except for one weekend and on my birthday), which I believe was key to maintaining momentum. On average, I studied for 40 hours a week and completed a course every 3 days.

On November 3rd, after just over 2 months at WGU, I submitted my capstone project and completed the program.

Start Course CUs Effort
9/1 C182: Introduction to IT 4 1:30
9/1 C172: Network and Security - Foundations 3 2:30
9/1 C779: Web Development Foundations 3 2:00
9/1 C173: Scripting and Programming - Foundations 3 1:45
9/2 C683: Natural Science Lab 2 9:45
9/1 C867: Scripting and Programming - Applications 4 12:15
9/3 C836: Fundamentals of Information Security 3 2:00
9/3 C959: Discrete Mathematics I 4 9:30
9/4 C482: Software I 6 9:30
9/7 C195: Software II - Advanced Java Concepts 6 20:30
9/9 C949: Data Structures and Algorithms I 4 6:30
9/10 C952: Computer Architecture 3 19:45
9/10 C961: Ethics in Technology 3 2:30
9/13 C191: Operating Systems for Programmers 3 15:00
9/16 C455: English Composition I 3 25:15
9/19 C960: Discrete Mathematics 2 4 16:45
9/21 C950: Data Structures and Algorithms II 4 47:45
9/30 C188: Software Engineering 4 8:15
10/2 C846: Business of IT - Applications 4 19:30
10/8 C768: Technical Communication 3 12:00
10/10 C951: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence 3 12:45
10/12 C857: Software Quality Assurance 3 14:15
10/19 C964: Computer Science Capstone 4 128:30

From July 11th to August 3rd (23 days) and from September 1st to November 3rd (63 days), I completed 31 courses (111 credits) online across Study.com, Sophia Learning, and Western Governors University. Combined with 3 college courses (9 credits) completed between 2009 and 2012 (not accounted for in the 3 months and $5000 total), I received an accredited Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree from Western Governors University for less than $5000.

Experience

My experience was very positive overall. Compared to my time at traditional brick and mortar schools, it was night and day. The ability to study when, where, and how you want, without arbitrary speed limits, is extremely empowering. I believe that separating training from testing makes a lot of sense and should be more common.

Due to COVID-19, I stayed home the entire time. I wasn’t working either, which meant that I had plenty of undistracted time to study. If I had wanted, I could have done nothing but sleep, eat, and study. However, without a speed limit, I was at risk of burning out. The rapid feedback and progress enabled by these online schools can make learning, or at least taking tests, quite addictive.

Although I didn’t stick to any strict schedule, most days looked the same. I did most of my deep work (practice tests, projects, papers, exams) in my home office, which I usually occupied from 10 AM to 5 PM. I often time-blocked study sessions, during which I forced myself not to do anything else. When I finished a course, I usually called it a day. Otherwise, about 6 hours study was all I could take. Then, I usually exercised, showered, cooked, and ate dinner. I rarely studied in the evening, but I occassionally watched lectures. On average, I slept 7 and a half hours a night, which is an hour less than usual. I never came close to burning out.

While everything went smoothly, I wouldn’t say it was easy. After all, I invested over 600 hours in this project. But I recognize that it would have been a lot more challenging if I hadn’t been exposed to pretty much the entire curriculum before. Years of programming, watching MIT lectures, reading research papers, refreshing Hacker News, and going down Wikipedia rabbit holes all added up to something. I did learn new things, and it definitely reinforced some existing knowledge, but I wouldn’t say it was transformative. The bulk of the effort was memorizing things that I normally would have Googled. In fact, I might have learned more about learning than about computer science, but the experience was worth it.

Overall, I never felt rushed, overwhelmed, or stressed. My motivation remained stable the entire time, which I attribute to clear goals and a challenging pace. It gave me confidence and helped me appreciate the power of focus. I’m not sure I could have emulated this experience anywhere else, and I’m very grateful that institutions like WGU exist.

Numbers

As a quantified self enthusiast, I tracked a lot of data while completing this degree, including all invested time and money.

Time

I tracked every minute spent on each course/activity related to this degree.

  • Total duration: 86 days

  • Total sessions: 503 sessions

  • Total effort: 617 hours

  • Weekly effort: 40 hours

Effort per day
Effort per course

Money

I tracked every dollar spent on each expense related to this degree.

Description Cost (USD)
WGU application fee $0.00
Cégep Édouard-Montpetit transcripts $0.00
Concordia University transcripts $10.00
RushTranslate transcripts translation $74.85
Ucredo transcripts evaluation $240.00
TOEFL iBT Home Edition $245.00

Study.com

courses (5)		 $410.00
Sophia Learning courses (3) $0.00
Parchment credit transfer $3.10
WGU tuition + fees $3,520.00
Western Union + TransferWise fees $30.00
Total $4,532.95

Final thoughts

If you’re thinking about getting a Bachelor’s degree in CS, already have experience in the field, and live in the US/Canada, you should seriously consider Western Governors University’s Bachelor of Science in Computer Science program.

Please, however, keep the following compromises in mind when making your decision:

  • The program is not ABET accredited.

  • The program is not the most rigorous.

  • The program is not the most prestigious.

  • The program grants all graduates the same 3.0 GPA.

If necessary, many of these shortcomings can be offset by using the 3+ years you’ve saved to do an Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) at Georgia Tech (<$10,000).

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out at miguelrochefort@gmail.com.

You can also discuss this post on Hacker News.

Chinese version (CSDN): https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/nfE-YmKbUwY3rsi4HV-P4Q

Thanks to Barry Cotter for reading drafts of this post.


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miguelrochefort

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Comments

  • By Buttons840 2020-12-1817:342 reply

    I'll repost my WGU experience from another comment:

    I dropped out of traditional college. Last class I remember they were talking about what a GET and POST request were. I had been a professional web developer for years at that point. I felt it was a waste of time.

    In WGU I had a similar easy class, stuff that was "way below me". Not to worry, I passed the class in a day and stopped worrying about wasted time.

    I recently did a C++ assignment that was filled with artificial requirements making it artificially difficult, yet I learned some things about pointers and figured out the basics of CMake for the first time. Useful stuff. Now I'm doing a similar assignment with Java. I knew I would have to set aside my distaste for things like Java (gross!), and with that mindset things aren't so bad. I'm actually enjoying JavaFX.

    WGU's calculus class was harder than calc 1 at my brick and mortar university, but easier than calc 2. Once again, I knew most of the material and passed after only a few weeks of casual review. I also found a calculus text book I personally like (and will happily refer to again in the future), rather that just using whatever the department chose.

    I do agree that a CS degree doesn't teach as much as it sometimes gets credit for. I do believe WGU's CS degree is as good as many brick and mortar CS degrees, but with minimal "bullshit", though there is still some.

    • By jimbokun 2020-12-1821:124 reply

      From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners.

      Of course, if the goal is 4 years of fun social life and putting off "adult" responsibilities, the WGU approach is counter productive.

      But for people who want the benefit of a degree as an employment credential, looks like this is the fastest and cheapest way to attain it, and I don't think many other existing four year colleges are prepared to compete with this model. Their cost structure doesn't allow it.

      • By Mandatum 2020-12-193:14

        I think you'll enjoy this: https://tracingwoodgrains.medium.com/speedrunning-college-my...

        There's actually a bit of a college speed running community.

      • By wasdfff 2020-12-1915:34

        If the goal is employment, a lot of the times an internship is becoming expected. This is easier to secure at a larger school, where recruiters visit to make face time on campus.

      • By dumpHero2 2020-12-197:20

        Considering that most of my social life (in late 20s) is made of people I met and worked with in bachelors and grad school, I am really unsure about this approach. Apart from the social factor, I was also got immense support and motivation from my peers. Given the emotional/social support a brick and mortar education institute gives, their graduates will fare better at jobs.

      • By rualca 2020-12-198:37

        > From your comments and the article, seems like the WGU model could completely disrupt the normal 4 year university experience, for self motivated learners.

        I don't agree at all. The "normal" university experience is designed around the assumption that the student is not familiar with the subject, and thus they specify a path comprised of a combination of lessons and assignments that allows everyone to get up to speed on a topic and share a common base level of all the fundamentals at a given stage.

        The OP's comments mention nothing of the sort. They show that, even though the student lacked some fundamentals, the preliminary work already had covered most of the topics.

        Thus OP's story is one mostly about getting a certification instead of actually learning something new. It involves learning stuff at their own pace instead of being forced to ramp um on a time budget with hard constraints on where the acceptable speed of growth must be.

        We should not confuse the two, and we should certainly not mistake being able to pass a certification as a reflexion of intelligence or capability. The challenge of getting from cluelessness to have a solid command of the fundamentals of a topic in less than 4 months is incomparably higher than just casually cruising on a topic for 10 years.

    • By Scarbutt 2020-12-1917:55

      Can you please share the name of Calculus textbook?

  • By pokler 2020-12-1815:5310 reply

    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 to imply that this is a path that most people can take.

    • By astura 2020-12-1816:291 reply

      Reminds me of every single one of those "how I paid off $100,000 in debt in 1 year" articles. It's always like "dad got me an executive job at his company and grandma gave me a condo as a graduation gift so instead of living in it I moved in with my parents rent free and turned the condo into income stream. (Aren't I smart!?!) Since mom always had a gourmet hot meal prepared for me I could put all my income into my loans instead of silly things like buying food and worrying about preparing meals."

      These sorts of writings have their audience (I guess) but they aren't written for normal people. What I mean is, normal (or even above average) people can't follow a similar path and get similar results - it's extraordinary people getting extraordinary results.

      • By abfan1127 2020-12-1816:4010 reply

        I paid off $240,000 in 3 years by not being an idiot with my money. I got on a budget with my wife. We cut up our credit cards because we always double or triple spent our money. We budgeted for things like Christmas. We followed Dave Ramsey's plan. We're 2 months from paying off our house now.

        Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.

        • By cxr 2020-12-1817:084 reply

          Heads up: this is a common pattern of expression that makes you come off as really obnoxious to people who will never tell you that that's what's happening. If you can't understand why people have a problem with this, here's the explanation: there are almost certainly smarter people than you who happened to be more unlucky than you.

          You were lucky-but-stupid before, so you stopped being so stupid, and now your messages carry the undertone that anyone else is some variation of the person you were back in the stage before you wised up. It's a view that doesn't provide any space for people who were wise from the beginning. When you say things like what you said above, you're not highlighting how smart you are or getting down to how dumb other people are; you're just highlighting how lucky you were to even have the circumstances where you were allowed to be that stupid in the beginning.

          • By fnord77 2020-12-1817:192 reply

            Do you do social skills coaching? Plenty of tone deaf people (myself included) who would gladly pay for this.

            • By ambicapter 2020-12-1817:22

              Seriously, what an amazing comment. Imagine if we had someone like this in every discussion on the internet.

          • By oAlbe 2020-12-190:47

            This is one of the best comments I've ever read on HN, bar none. Thank you for that.

          • By war1025 2020-12-1817:341 reply

            I would guess he is actually getting downvoted because he is pointing out an uncomfortable truth.

            The majority of the people that frequent this site are above the median income. Being in the tech field gives you a huge leg up economically.

            You can either squander that, or you can use it to stay out of debt and build wealth.

            Having someone point out that you maybe don't actually make the best financial decisions is uncomfortable and makes people defensive.

            Doesn't make the statement any less true. Most people on a tech salary (even outside the unicorn tech hubs) have the means to be debt free and live quite comfortably besides.

          • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:272 reply

            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.

            • By cxr 2020-12-1817:541 reply

              I once read some advice that I'll try to repeat, but without knowing whether I can do a great job capturing it, but here it goes. The general idea was that if you're on a date with someone, then you should avoid asking or saying things that subtly insist that something is true if you don't know it to be true. An example is that if you don't know whether your date was molested by their father as a child, you should tread carefully with any questions or comments that carry the presumption that they weren't.

              Here's some more sage wisdom: the average human has approximately one testicle. Except not, right? Because that's not how numbers work. So, it doesn't matter if, say, only 4% of the people you interact with are unlucky and 96% aren't. This is not an engineering problem. If you do meet someone who is (or was) unlucky, and you have an interaction with them like this, then even though they're in the 4%, their circumstances are still 100% at odds with your assumption.

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1818:01

                interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing!

            • By war1025 2020-12-1817:372 reply

              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.

              • By dkersten 2020-12-1817:461 reply

                > 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?

                • By war1025 2020-12-1817:47

                  Psychological junk, you know.

              • By imtringued 2020-12-1821:001 reply

                If staying in my home country is a bad decision then nothing will change my mind.

                • By war1025 2020-12-1823:00

                  I think it's important to make a distinction here that I didn't think to make initially:

                  I am not saying "everyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year if they stop being dumb."

                  What I am trying to say is "Most people can avoid being massively in debt by making better spending decisions."

        • By rfrey 2020-12-1816:462 reply

          That means you earned more than $80,000 post-tax income surplus to your needs. That surplus is a third more than the US average total household pre-tax income.

          • By trophycase 2020-12-1817:015 reply

            But the average household probably also isn't in 240k of debt unless they made very very poor financial choices.

            • By leetcrew 2020-12-1817:182 reply

              this is correct, the median household has a (positive!) net worth of ~$120k. you have to go down to the tenth percentile and below to find households that actually have negative net worths.

              https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/#...

              • By theplague42 2020-12-1817:23

                I do not think that "240k in debt" (he clarifies it was 140k in another comment) actually means owing 240k more than your total assets.

                As far as the median net worth, that's just someone most of the way through paying off their mortgage...

              • By 93po 2020-12-1819:131 reply

                I find it really hard to believe that only the tenth percentile has more student debt than savings. Virtually everyone I know in the 20s, and many in their 30s with advanced degrees, all have more debt than savings.

                • By leetcrew 2020-12-1819:26

                  that shouldn't be too surprising. the lower net worth buckets are made up disproportionately of younger people who a.) are still paying off student loans (if they took them), b.) have yet to reach their life peak income, and c.) haven't had as much time to accumulate savings. if you look at the breakdown by age on the page I linked, you'll see that median net worth increases almost monotonically by age bracket.

                  you might also consider that there is probably some sampling bias in your social circle. I'd guess it disproportionately consists of people who have advanced degrees, possibly from more expensive schools. as a counter-anecdote, most of my friends got STEM degrees at a state university. the ones who took out loans paid them off completely within two years of graduation.

            • By theplague42 2020-12-1817:161 reply

              Or student debt; a doctor going 200k into debt for med school probably isn't exactly in dire financial straits.

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:38

                I'd feel bad for a med student halfway through that gets sick. 100k of debt and no degree. yikes!

            • By ljm 2020-12-1817:13

              Or they're in the US and had to go to hospital for treatment?

            • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:121 reply

              I went back and checked my records. It was 140K! oops. Anyways, here is my list.

              85k in student loans 30k 401k loan 20k car loan 30k car loan

              • By alistairSH 2020-12-1817:521 reply

                So 46,000 in disposable income? That's a massive amount of money by normal-person standards.

                Hell, the fact that you had $30k in a 401k that you could borrow from yourself already makes you exceptional.

                • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:591 reply

                  Yes. I had ~$500 payments for each of those every month. Luckily, once I got the first one paid off, I was able to roll that previous payment into the next one.

                  401k match is nice and I'd had been working for 5-6 years when I did this, so it was vested.

                  I was in a deep hole, but I had a big shovel. I wish I hadn't dug the hole though. I encourage others to not dig holes either now that I've learned my lesson the hard way.

                  • By bonoboTP 2020-12-1819:581 reply

                    How was this "the hard way"?

                    • By abfan1127 2020-12-1820:011 reply

                      going into debt in the first place is the hard way.

                      • By bonoboTP 2020-12-1820:492 reply

                        People say "I learned it the hard way" when in the end they lost something for eternity, went through suffering etc. Like a recovered drug addict with permanent health damage or someone who turned on the path of crime and spent his youth behind bars or something. To me it seems like you had a pretty good life, took on some debt to live even more carelessly and then matured and calmed down and channeled more of your disposable income into paying back said debt. I don't see the hardship based on your comments so far.

                        • By abfan1127 2020-12-1820:591 reply

                          you know there are gray scales in life, right? Things can be hard without somebody dying. Marriage is hard. Raising children is hard. Those things are hard without dying, drug addiction, or other exceptionally hard circumstances.

                          You mention some pretty heavy consequences to learn lessons.

                          I'd say committing to something for 3-4 years that means telling yourself NO is pretty hard. Its not "survive being a Vietnam Prisoner of War" hard, but I never claimed it was.

                        • By loco5niner 2020-12-2119:29

                          Actually, "learned it the hard way" refers to making the mistake yourself, rather than learning from someone else's mistake and avoiding making the mistake yourself at all.

                          It's better to learn from others mistakes, than to "learn it the hard way".

                          "The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it." - Proverbs 22:3

          • By abfan1127 2020-12-1816:542 reply

            You're right. But I also changed my mentality. We became intentional with our money. Its amazing how you can find money in a budget to put towards debt. Its also how you stay out of debt going forward. You learn to prioritize your spending.

            • By ljm 2020-12-1817:082 reply

              I think you're getting downvoted because you're missing the point somewhat. You had the opportunity and means to change your mentality and become 'intentional' with your money, and learn how to prioritise your spending, because you've had such a surfeit of wealth compared to the average that you won't have faced the same problems others would (and still) have. That's fantastic for you, don't get me wrong, but for many people it would sound quote tone-deaf.

              If you can afford to put aside almost 100k a year and still live comfortably you are decidedly not in the class of people for whom saving is, if not an impossibility, a luxury.

              We're not just talking about Pratchett's Boots Theorem[1], but also the fact that such people are quite literally only one or two paycheques away from total disaster. These are the people who can't afford to save because every penny is spent on merely surviving, and they can't amass the bare minimum amount of wealth it would take for them to be able to lift themselves out of that situation.

              [1] https://moneywise.com/a/boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfair...

              • By Bakary 2020-12-1817:132 reply

                Being poor is only something you can truly understand once you've tasted it yourself. The stress alone feels like it's shaving many IQ points from your baseline. Even then, I got only a limited understanding compared to people in the third world. (not going for the misery olympics here, just an observation)

                • By greyhair 2020-12-1819:08

                  Having been there, I second that. Juggling late utility bills in the middle of winter against having food to eat. If you come through that, it hangs with you forever in ways that others that have not will never understand. Even though that life is almost forty years behind me now, it clearly affects my life decisions every day. I am aware of that, and I manage it, but it is always there. Like you, I am not going for the misery olympics either. Just don't assume that, given my career and place in life now, I am not happy with my perfectly maintained fourteen year old car. I know I can afford a new one, thank you very much. But spending that kind of money, just because I can, does not bring me comfort. People that have never been poor will never understand that.

                • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:36

                  I completely agree here. I've never been poor. I can't imagine how some families feel that grew up in the south Chicago projects. The stress has the be very brutal.

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:321 reply

                The deepness of my debt and the steepness of my accent are just variables in the equation.

                Many people are 1-2 paychecks away from total disaster, but they never take the step to make a change. It can certainly feel impossible. But the reality is "merely surviving" has a broad usage. I know lots of people that are living paycheck to paycheck, but have the iPhone X.

                https://www.daveramsey.com/dave-ramsey-7-baby-steps

                • By ljm 2020-12-1818:57

                  I don't know if you're shilling this guy or drank too much of his kool aid but it's still blind to the reality of the situation seen across the entire world. You're talking about your 'equation', which is not the same equation other people are subjected to.

            • By Privacy846 2020-12-1817:072 reply

              It’s amazing what you can do when you earn way more than the median household.

              • By greyhair 2020-12-1819:141 reply

                This is one of the hardest things to explain to people.

                Here is a thought experiment. Lets assume that the minimum required to live in a given place is $20K.

                So now you have two people, one makes $30K, the other makes $40K. How much more does the second one make compared to the first? Twice as much. At $30K, you have $10K disposable. At $40K, you have $20K disposable. And someone making $60K is making four times the disposable compared to $30K.

                Once you get above cost of living, everything gets easier.

                • By dougmany 2020-12-1820:421 reply

                  When we were looking for an apartment between selling and buying houses, I was surprised by how there is a decided floor to rent prices. Like nothing exists below a certain point. Somehow I felt we could just get a super cheap place because I thought housing price would scale with income. I was surprised when I found out it didn't. So your cost of living example holds up in my experience.

                  • By imtringued 2020-12-1821:16

                    That's the result of housing shortages. Landlords can pick their tenants and since they don't run a charity they usually rent out to the highest bidder. The obvious solution would be to increase supply.

              • By war1025 2020-12-1817:301 reply

                Yea. You can get $240k in debt.

                Good luck getting anyone to lend you that kind of money if you're actually poor.

                Someone who is able to get deeply in debt basically by definition has access to money. They would not be granted loans otherwise.

                • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:40

                  the largest portion of my debt was student loans (over half), which anyone can get in the US (not sure about other countries).

        • By ChrisRR 2020-12-1817:082 reply

          What the hell? So you're literally earning $80k above your living expenses. Waaaaaay above average

          I'd be more surprised if you couldn't pay that sort of money off

          Re your edit: I'm even more sceptical now. Your figures were off by a third. I know exactly the value of my mortgage when I took it out. That figure is burned into my mind. I don't know how you could be out by $100,000

          • By war1025 2020-12-1817:241 reply

            I don't know what it will add to the conversation, but I thought it was worth adding in my two cents.

            My family of five is supported by my income (~$100k / year).

            I get paid weekly. Every Friday, I go into my bank account amd transfer anything in excess of $2000 into the stock market.

            Some weeks that's quite a bit of money, some weeks it's not so much money.

            As of a week ago when I did the math, we had $65k more to our names this year than we did one year ago.

            Probably half of that was money we saved directly, and half was stock market gains, so I guess from a debt payoff perspective maybe that's closer to $30k.

            But I guess my point is, I don't think it's unreasonable to think a two income household in a higher-income metro than where I live could have $80k/yr in excess income to pay down debt with.

            • By alistairSH 2020-12-1817:581 reply

              It's certainly not unreasonable or even uncommon. But, it's still way above the norm in the US. Median household income in the US is somewhere around $65k/year (before taxes and expenses).

              Side note - You're only holding $2k in cash for a family of 5? That seems low. Your efforts to invest for the future are commendable, but if you get caught on the bad end of a 2008-style recession, is it enough to keep paying bills?

              • By war1025 2020-12-1818:06

                > You're only holding $2k in cash for a family of 5?

                I am holding $2k in a checking account. My savings accounts are appropriately sized to get us by for probably six months to a year.

          • By kbenson 2020-12-1817:28

            The other side of this is that "average" living expense has little meaning when applied to a place as big and varied as the U.S., much less the world. In some areas, the cost of living is much higher. The commonly provided solution to living somewhere the cost of living is too high is move. Unfortunately, moving comes with all sorts of other constraints that are rarely considered.

            I this case, we're talking about a family, so what if one or both of the the spouses needs to work but can't find work or is paid much less in the new location? Is it still a net win if the family income is reduced to a large degree?

            What if there is family in the current location but not any target location? Beyond any help they may be able to provide (child care, if not regularly, in special circumstances), they may provide a real tangible mental health benefit compared to living in a new location where you know few if any people. Or what if you're providing help to that family member, and leaving would be problematic?

            The bottom line is that is that some people are stuck in or around places like SF making very little compared to the cost of living in the area, but also don't feel like they are in a position they can leave. If you made $80k in SF and lived in SF or close enough to commute, you might find that a large portion of that goes purely to housing. For a family, probably $24k a year minimum, even if you commute in from an hour away.

        • By kace91 2020-12-1816:431 reply

          I mean, that's still contingent on having a decent salary relative to the amount of debt - I'm assuming it didn't happen with a couple of ~30k/year salaries.

          • By abfan1127 2020-12-1816:522 reply

            I was a sole provider making under $100k.

            Edit: salary. We were receiving small bonuses ($10k) at the time. but we learned to keep our expenses down, and every bonus we did receive we rolled right into debt before spending it on stupid crap.

            • By wffurr 2020-12-1816:561 reply

              Something is off with the math here. I don't doubt your story, but perhaps your numbers are a bit off?

              240k over 3 years is $80k/yr in principal alone, substantially more with interest. If your post-tax take-home was $95k, that leaves only $15k/yr for living expenses for your household, which is extremely low.

              Maybe that's possible with a lot of beans and rice, paid off used cars, and second-hand clothes and such.

              Seems like part of the debt you are paying down is a mortgage, so that means your housing cost at least is part of the $80k/yr debt service. Still doesn't leave much for transportation (often second biggest expense for a household) and the rest.

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:001 reply

                no, you may be right (it was a few years ago). It may have been 3.5 or 4 years. I did receive small raises over the years, but we kept our budget fixed. I did receive a big windfall near the end from a company acquisition ($40k iirc). But at the rate were were paying stuff off, it brought it in ~6 months.

                The math still shocks me every time I do it.

                • By theplague42 2020-12-1817:151 reply

                  So it was really around 100k over four years with the last 40k covered by your acquisition earnings. So 25k a year on a 100k salary (pre/post-tax?). Which is a lot less than 80k a year. Still impressive, and kudos, but let's not pretend that it's anywhere the same. That's a difference of two whole median incomes per year.

                  • By astura 2020-12-1819:06

                    Jeez, I made $99k last year and saved more than $25k and I AM an idiot with my money (I consider my lifestyle to be lavish). So I suspect it's more the "making a lot of money" part instead of the "not being an idiot with my money" part. Absolutely nobody is going to "not be an idiot" themselves to a six figure loan payoff in a few years on a 30k/year salary.

            • By bavent 2020-12-1816:572 reply

              This math doesn't check out. $240k for three years is $80k/year. Assuming you are already factoring interest in. So you and your wife lived off less than $20k a year? Where?

              • By folkrav 2020-12-1817:14

                Must have had extremely cheap rent, be very frugal when it comes to eating and basically any expense, really. In rent alone I pay $10.5k/year (with what most people here extremely cheap rent). When I still was in school living off school loans, our frugal weekly groceries (almost no meat, very rare, mostly fresh produce in discount markets) came out around $80 a week, so about $4-5k/year. We're already at $15k. This leaves $5k for literally everything else. I'd wager no kids, no car payments, no cell phone outside maybe prepaid, basically nothing in utilities, buying used clothing, no appliances that broke, no internet above basic, next to nothing in terms of entertainment expenses, etc. Quick mental math keeping the strict minimum from what I pay right now and I'm already over $20k. This is weirdly cheap.

                And honestly, if the numbers are right, good on him for having the discipline to do it, but this sounds like a rather awful three years.

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:01

                Arizona

        • By astura 2020-12-1817:34

          I didn't mean to make this about finance or the ability to pay off debt, it just reminded me so much of the type of writing that is really, really common in "pop finance"-type publications.

          I wasn't at all saying that I believe that it's impossible to pay off a large debt quickly or that nobody ever does - just that, of course you are going to if you're in such an extraordinary situation. So the entire thing ends up being not very interesting or actionable, yet the title promises that it will be both.

          I guess there's an audience for it though, because they keep getting published.

        • By stevewodil 2020-12-1816:541 reply

          >by not being an idiot with my money

          It was also due to the fact that you were making $80k/year ABOVE your living expenses.

          • By abfan1127 2020-12-1816:553 reply

            Living expenses is a flexible item. You learn to keep your living expenses down.

            • By ChrisRR 2020-12-1817:13

              Living expenses are only flexible when you have the money to be flexible.

              If you're on a low wage, maybe with some kids. You're buying whatever inefficient car, low quality clothes that need replacing more often, a house near your child's school. Having that huge amount of disposable income offers you a lot more luxuries

            • By doytch 2020-12-1817:031 reply

              Yes but it's a touch difficult to keep living expenses below $0, which most people in the developed - let alone developing - world would need to do on their salaries to save the extra $80k/year.

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:07

                ha, yes. looking back, I don't know how we did it as fast as we did. we kept our expenses low (20-25k/year low) and poured every dollar into the debt. We didn't live in a fancy house or have new cars (beyond when we got in to it with the new car loans).

            • By pertymcpert 2020-12-1819:372 reply

              You're being completely tone deaf to the point that its frustrating to believe that people like you exist.

              • By stevewodil 2020-12-1920:11

                Just be thankful you don't work with them

              • By abfan1127 2020-12-1820:07

                tone deaf to what? That some people have big problems? That those big problems may be bigger than mine? That sometimes solutions to big problems are hard? That sacrifice for some isn't the same for sacrifice for others?

                Or that some people's problems are as big as they are because they fail to recognize the change needed to solve them, or are unwilling to make that change? That often times, people fail to recognize the change needed because it first requires them to acknowledge and take responsibility.

        • By jankeymeulen 2020-12-1816:46

          Congratulations for that!

          However, you also paid of that $240k by earning at least $80k / year.

        • By Bakary 2020-12-1816:581 reply

          How much did you tally as living expenses during that period? As a rough estimate

          • By abfan1127 2020-12-1817:04

            it was 10ish years ago, so this is a guess...

            Mortgage was $750ish water/electric $200 phones/internet $100 food $500-600 fuel $25 insurances ??? $100-200

            maybe $1500-2000 a month. $20-25k year in real expenses.

    • By brundolf 2020-12-1817:231 reply

      The thing is, 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential. I support broad and quality general education, I think it has value, but I don't suggest anyone put themselves deeply in debt for the rest of their lives over it. But to have any shot whatsoever at a decent job? Yeah, maybe.

      So if you have the opportunity to pay a fraction of the cost for the credential, even if it means teaching yourself everything, that seems like a strategy very much worth considering for many people. It's dystopian that that's where we are now, but it is what it is.

      • By dahart 2020-12-1819:341 reply

        > 90% of the value of a 4 year degree (at this point) is the credential.

        Why do you say that, and how do you measure value?

        I have quite a few lifelong friends from undergrad, people I wouldn't have met or bonded with if I'd done school online. And it's not necessary to know people to get great jobs, but I feel like it helps; 4 of the 6 jobs I've had came about through my undergrad network. One of them, as a founder, was partially funded by a prof. I met as an undergrad. My undergrad department helped my education and career in various ways including giving me a scholarship and RA and TA work, and publishing articles about me after graduating.

        I am not an average case, partly because I went to graduate school, but for me it's safe to say the value of the credential part of my undergrad degree is somewhere near zero. Definitely not zero, but I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job. The value I got from my time spent in the 4 year degree is almost entirely from the relationships I formed.

        • By brundolf 2020-12-1820:261 reply

          Do you work in academia now? If so, yes, the story is wildly different for your case.

          > I've never needed the credential for anything but passing the checklist of requirements for my first job

          That's a pretty crucial piece of value! For people who don't come from wealthy families, that entry into the college-educated workforce is often the difference between poverty and not-poverty.

          The networking angle is an interesting one I hadn't considered, though personally, while I made several great friends in college, they and the other people I met there have had little to no effect on my job prospects. The closest thing would be that I went to a job fair while in school which eventually led to my first job, though there are plenty of job fairs that are open to the public (potentially even the one I went to; I can't remember). Of course it's possible I'm not the average case myself and that many people get networking benefits from their college experience; I can't say for sure.

          > how do you measure value?

          I do want to clarify that I'm focusing on financial prospects because in today's America, those are quite dark for many (most?) people. I'm not someone who dismisses the value of a real education, or the value of those relationships and experiences and memories. But I've seen several friends who put themselves in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for those things, and will probably be paying the interest for the rest of their lives, and I just don't think that tradeoff is worth it.

          • By dahart 2020-12-1820:571 reply

            > Do you work in academia now?

            Nope.

            Yes, there is value of being able to get the first job. Though the value isn't really quantifiable, and it changes over time. Plus the first job typically has other requirements besides a degree, all of which are valuable for the purposes of not getting rejected before an interview. I was just curious where "90%" comes from. (I'm comfortable with it being symbolic, representing your feeling that it's a majority. I just wanted to tease that out and clarify.)

            To your original point, for better or worse, incomes and lifetime earnings are statistically higher for college grads. I didn't realize the difference was as high as it is, but the Fed recently published that in the U.S., incomes are roughly double for bachelor's degrees over non-graduates, and roughly triple for advanced degrees. That means that there is a large financial value wrapped up in getting the degree, one way or another. It might have a lot to do with networking, and it might have a lot to do with the credential and social signaling. I'm certain there's some of both. But this value is definitely a must to know about before deciding to forego a degree, and probably a very good thing to keep in mind before choosing an online program over an in-person one.

            • By brundolf 2020-12-1821:07

              Yes, the 90% was a stand-in for my subjective impression

              > incomes and lifetime earnings are statistically higher for college grads

              Yep. And my interpretation (possibly biased) was that, in a world where nearly all information can be found online for free, the value of college as an environment for gaining professional skills has diminished greatly, but it still gets used as a (perhaps lazy) gatekeeping signifier by hiring departments. I still think there's truth to that, but there's probably something to the networking aspect as well

    • By clavalle 2020-12-1817:471 reply

      So many are in this boat, though; having the chops they've built informally but not having the paper to get in the door.

      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.

    • By tmaly 2020-12-1816:314 reply

      Would it not be possible for a very focused, hardworking individual to take all the course on MIT for free then enroll in this school and finish fast?

      • By Cro_on 2020-12-1816:341 reply

        It's also possible for a amateur jogger to join an ultra marathon and run until they pass out.

      • By jacurtis 2020-12-1817:10

        I went to WGU. I spent 6 months and got my degree.

        I really don't think it is possible to go any faster than about 3 months max. Even that is a slog and you will need to be going full time.

        Most of the exams are 70-100 questions and you will need to do 2 exams per course. The final exam is proctored, which means you need to make an appointment and go through this whole process of verifying your identity, going through an anti-cheat process and so on that burns another 20-30 minutes between setup and take down. So I would say expect a minimum 2 hour block of time per exam. That is just taking the exams.

        So even a class that I finished in one day because I knew everything still takes a FULL day minimum because you are taking 2 exams totaling nearly 200 questions. It is mentally exhausting even if you know the material.

        But truthfully you are going to need to study at least somewhat for at least half of the classes. Plus you can only grind through full day exams for so long until you reach exhaustion.

        Burn out is also very real. I was averaging 3.5 courses a week for the first month or so. Then 2 classes a week. And by the end I was lucky to finish 1 course a week. It really is a TON of work, even if you come in with a lot of knowledge and experience like I did and don't need to study as hard as other people. The courses are still a lot of effort and take a toll on your energy and brain.

        But if you are VERY motivated, you can do it in one term. The way that WGU charges you, you pay per 6-month term. It is a flat fee that covers all proctoring, text books, exams, etc for as many courses as you can complete during the 6 month term. So you would pay the same amount of money to do it in 3 months as 6 months. But if you go into 8 months, then you have to pay for the full second term. So I would set your goal on getting it done in 6 months and if you come in prepared I think it is practical. But you need to have a lot of time to dedicate to it during those 6 months.

        Edit: Oh, I forgot to add that not all the courses are exams. About 1/3 of the courses are "performance based". These are courses like History, English Composition and stuff that require you to do several graded assignments. These often culminate into a final assignment to do a large research paper to pass the course. All of the assignments are required and must be graded. So you will need to submit them, get a plagiarism scan, and wait for an instructor to grade it (usually 36-48 hours after submitting it). So these will also slow you down. The good thing is that these courses have less time dedicated to studying, but more time dedicated to working on all the research papers and written assignments. These also can slow you down.

      • By ghaff 2020-12-1816:42

        20 weeks of 40 hour weeks is fast. Exams and assignments are going to consume some time and you probably won't know every nuance of a course even if you've taken a different and more rigorous variation.

        It also probably depends how big a deal the 4-year degree is to you. There are other options like edX MicroMasters that may make more sense (and it wouldn't shock me if they carried more cred in at least some circles).

      • By alisonkisk 2020-12-1816:391 reply

        Sure, but not in 3months.

        • By tmaly 2020-12-1816:411 reply

          Yes of course, but could someone pull it off in 1 year if they take all the free MIT courses ahead of time?

          College debt is a huge burden on kids these days.

          • By alisonkisk 2020-12-1816:51

            If you study in advance, you're limited by how fast your institution can give you credits.

            There what OP is about They studied ahead and did 3 years in school.

            You're usually paying per credit for these transactional degrees though, not per year.

            College debt is only a burden for scam private schools and people trying to buy their way into the upper class. If you go with community college Associates and public state college Bachelor, it's not a huge debt burden to get a degree. The time spent studying (not working for money), and paying to live in your own apartment (instead of supported in parents home) and get fed by the college restaurant (instead of home shared meals) is the main cost.

    • By graycat 2020-12-1817:201 reply

      > I just think it would be misleading to imply that this is a path that most people can take.

      Yes, but if focus just on computing, in that field, there is, long amazing to me, evidence that "most people can" and, in a significant sense, do: I've long been impressed the degree to which the learning crucial for computing in the US has been obtained via self study much as in the OP.

      Okay, say what you will about an ugrad computer science degree and then move on to graduate degrees, Masters and Ph.D. Uh, reality check: At the grad level, the material to be taught is often not all polished up and instead has rough edges, loose strings, things left unclear, etc. The fundamental reason is that the material, the work, the education, whatever, are supposed to be at the leading edge, or, if you will, the bleeding edge. More, the profs are paid mostly for their research (which for teaching is a path, with some efficacy, of quality) and not having all polished up, with good pedagogy, course teaching.

      And in Ph.D. programs, and sometimes in Master's programs, the student is expected to write something, original, hopefully publishable -- usual criteria, "new, correct, and significant".

      So for the work, it's, in a word, new. Right away can assume false starts, dead ends, encounters with brick walls, unpredictable rates of progress, unpredictable results, etc. So, we're back to independent work or, if you will, self study.

      Main point: In education, self-study is not only helpful but at times crucial. In particular, independent study has been especially important in the US computer industry. So, in a sense, the independent study in the OP is not very surprising.

      Oh, by the way, the OP mentioned a Georgia Tech Master's degree for ~$10,000. Secret: Commonly high end US research university graduate programs are very short on good students and long on tuition scholarships -- tuition should be about $0.00 for the whole graduate school effort.

      Evidence: I was a student and a prof in applied math and computing. From a world class research university, I got a Master's and a Ph.D. For the grad degrees, I paid nothing in tuition. Independent study was crucial.

      E.g., of the five Ph.D. qualifying exams, I did the best in the class on four of them, all four made heavy use of independent study, and three of them making heavy use of independent study before the grad program.

      E.g., the work that did me the most good in grad school was the independent study with results that were clearly publishable.

      • By barry-cotter 2020-12-196:221 reply

        > Oh, by the way, the OP mentioned a Georgia Tech Master's degree for ~$10,000. Secret: Commonly high end US research university graduate programs are very short on good students and long on tuition scholarships -- tuition should be about $0.00 for the whole graduate school effort.

        It’s vastly easier to get into a Master’s than into a grad school programme where everyone is supposed to be aiming at a doctorate. Most terminal Master’s programmes are cash cows. GA Tech isn’t. They just don’t want to make a loss, but the population of people who can get into a terminal Master’s is quite different from those who can get admitted to a Ph.D. And GA Tech’s OMSCS can be completed while working a full time job. Good luck doing that while in proper grad school.

        • By graycat 2020-12-294:21

          When I went to grad school, I just got admitted to the grad school and not specifically a Master's program, a terminal Master's program, or a Ph.D. program.

          After enough courses, and maybe a paper (I wrote a paper, later published as part of a reading course) can get a Master's. I did that, got a Master's.

          If want a Ph.D., then just pass the Ph.D. qualifying exams (QE), courses or not, Master's or not. After passing the QE, do some research. The standard was "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication", and the usual criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant". So, proposed a dissertation research project (I already had a 50 page manuscript I had done on my own on a problem I brought with me to grad school), got approval to work on that as my dissertation, I did some research, derived some math, wrote and ran some software, wrote up what I'd done, stood for an oral exam, passed, and got a Ph.D.

          I never paid tuition.

          If for some Master's program Georgia Tech is charging a lot of money, they they should have something different from what I outlined.

    • By jacurtis 2020-12-1816:562 reply

      I agree that this is a much better title. I actually also attended WGU during the pandemic and got a degree over the course of 6 months for about the same amount of money as the author. I came in with 42 transfer credits, so I completed 90 credits at WGU to complete my degree.

      The degree took me 6 months for about the same number of classes as the author. So I was going about half the speed of the author of this post, yet my speed was still astonishingly fast for my mentor. While you will read about people flying through the program, the norm is to take about 2.5 years.

      When I first started the program I always joked that I was simply buying a $3,500 paper (the rough cost for one 6-month term). I looked at it as a degree-mill. I had accepted it for what it was. But after going through everything and graduating, I was wrong about that initial assessment. I am actually far more proud of the work I did at WGU than what I did at my official 4-year university back in my mid-20s. I also walked away feeling like I learned more at WGU than at my previous university.

      Yes, some of the courses are very easy. I was able to coast through them in a day, relying entirely on my previous experience. But this is the same as any other college, there are always 10-20% of the courses that are easy, and you basically just need to show up. The difference is that a normal university would require you to go through the motions for 16 weeks before you can complete the class that you could have passed on day #1. WGU simply lets you take the final exam whenever you want, allowing you to control the timeframe.

      While I flew about 20% of the classes quickly in less than 48 hours after starting them, the rest took me an average of about a week of full-time work. I was usually juggling two classes at a time.

      A standard 3 credit college course is supposed to take around 20 hours of in-class time with about equal amounts of studying time at home. So a normal 3 credit class generally takes about 40 hours of work to pass. But it is spread across 16 weeks and you also juggle 4-6 other courses. At WGU you take 1-2 at a time and go full bore until you are done with the course. I find that I was still averaging about 40 hours per course on average, but since I could do it all at once I went through it faster. I also found that i retained the knowledge a lot better.

      Funny enough, my breakdown is very similar to the author. I would say I didn't even look at the material for about 1/5 of the courses. I skimmed through the material while watching cherry picked lectures for 3/5 of the courses. The final 1/5 of courses I read the text book cover to cover.

      Basically what I am getting at is that WGU isn't just a "buy an online degree" program. You really need to work for it. I was working full-time on school. Generally 8-10 hours a day during the week and 3-5 hours a day on the weekend. The tests were generally very difficult. Even courses where I had a lot of experience, I really had to slow down for the final assessments. Passing a course requires you to pass two tests. They call them a "pre-assessement" and an "objective assessment". This is essentially a mid-term and a final-exam from any other school. That is generally the only requirement. So as soon as you pass the "mid-term" they will let you take the "final exam", and once you pass that then you are done with the course. You can choose how to spend your time to prepare for these tests. You can spend zero hours or 100 hours on the course. There are lectures (they call them "cohorts"), text books, study guides, practice tests, homework problems, and flash cards provided for each course. You can choose what you want to use and what you don't want to use. You can also look at a course syllabus and recognize which parts you already know and which parts you need to study and then only spend your time on those parts. You go at your pace and you are in charge. Nothing else is required. For this reason you really need to have good time management and self control.

      Overall I am really proud of my WGU Degree. It wasn't easy. I struggled on several classes, but I also walked away learning far more than I expected.

      Its also worth noting that at the speed I went, it was exhausting. I really don't recommend it. It is clearly possible, but by the end I was burnt out. I hit full burn out when I had 4 courses left. I really struggled through the final few classes because I had simply gone so fast and so hard for too long. Unless you really need it, I don't recommend cramming this into a single term even if its technically possible.

      • By jbrogers63 2020-12-1817:36

        This was essentially my experience with WGU as well. I started in November and was done by the following August. Most of my classes from community college were transferred and I had ~90 CUs (EDIT: Just a guess on the number. It's been a while...) I to complete. I was able to complete several courses a week for the first few months, but started tapering off to about 1 course a week as time went on. I was exhausted by the end, but it was worth every penny and minute spent.

      • By debaserab2 2020-12-1817:091 reply

        Congratulations on finishing the degree and being proud of the effort you put into it.

        If you don't mind me asking: what motivated you to pursue it?

        • By jacurtis 2020-12-1817:342 reply

          I am in my mid-thirties right now. I dropped out of university in my early-twenties to pursue a career. I saw a lot of initial success in my career and was flying up the corporate ladder. But I always felt like I had this skeleton in my closet or dark secret of not having even a bachelors degree.

          Early on in my career I could compensate for not having a degree with my experience and work history. I was mostly competing against people with Bachelors Degrees who had little or moderate experience, and I simply had more experience and could compete well for jobs against them.

          I found that as I have started applying for much higher level positions now, the degree skeleton has come to haunt me much more. A lot of the positions I have been applying to lately actually ask for MBA's or Master's Degrees. I am competing against other applicants who have Master's Degrees, while I have a high school diploma and some nice experience. The disparity is getting much wider and I knew I needed to get rid of this unnecessary blemish on my resume/CV.

          For any other young people reading this. You might feel like you don't need a degree because your career is going great right now. But I will say that life is a lot harder without a degree as you get into higher positions. I am not saying it isn't possible to get a VP or Senior position without a college degree, it is possible, but it is MUCH harder than simply having that paper. There are definitely jobs that you are more than qualified for that you want and you will be turned away simply because of the lack of degree. It is a sad stumbling block that I was sick of dealing with.

          • By joshspankit 2020-12-1820:44

            In your experience, what‘s the max(0) position you can get to without the degree?

            (0) max in this case being a general term since as you mention it’s possible to get to the higher levels. Essentially where’s the point at which it becomes much harder.

          • By moneywoes 2020-12-200:10

            If you have an associates degree right now. Would you list both?

    • By bsanr2 2020-12-1817:44

      It's been well known for a while among those who are honest, with themselves and with the evidence, that degree requirements are mostly a cultural gatekeeping exercise for entry-level work. That isn't to say that training and expertise aren't critical, particularly the more responsibility a worker takes on; it's more that one rarely requires 4 years of preparation for a placement that involves work a supervisor that's known you for a month, at best, will trust you with. And the old axiom holds: "The best way to learn how to do something is to do it."

      A degree does show that you're committed and willing to jump through hoops (even if only because you don't know any better).

    • By 908B64B197 2020-12-1819:38

      That tittle would attract less eyeballs.

      The author sure didn't take any shortcuts to graduate.

    • By bserge 2020-12-1816:485 reply

      Some people on Reddit did say they completed 2-3 month bootcamps/courses with no prior experience and got junior dev jobs (in the UK), so I don't even know. Then again it's online and on Reddit, so they may be just lying.

      I believe it is possible to learn enough to be decent in 3 months full time, and then learn everything else as you go. However, I don't see anyone hiring with that kind of experience.

      But then why pay for a certificate? Four figures, no less. You could go through a bunch of free programming courses in 3 months and print your own certificate, same thing as long as you can actually do a job...

      • By cjameskeller 2020-12-1817:31

        Personally did a bootcamp about 4 years ago. Also taught myself a couple more tech skills in the 2 months post-certificate before I got hired, but nothing special. Applied to several dozen jobs a week (easy to do when most don't follow up in any way...)

        Went from about spot-on median salary for the US prior to switching into tech, to 50% more in my first role. In my first 3 years I increased my income over 400%, though I also switched from salaried to contract, so it end up about 300% increase for net pay.

        Wouldn't have been able to afford a CS degree, in terms of either money or time, so it was a huge opportunity for me to go the bootcamp route. Have moved up into a senior/lead position, as well, so all the late nights of working on my skills post-bootcamp (and still while working, even now!) seem to have paid off.

        But I don't know what the market in Europe is like. MCOL area, US, here.

      • By gabereiser 2020-12-1816:562 reply

        Here in the US we also take a good hard look at bootcamp graduates. Code school/bootcamp graduates I’ve found to be good enough to do most of the mundane web work broiler-plate we have to write. It gives them experience, it give us that broiler-plate code no one wants to write.

        Bootcamp’s here like Turing or Galvanize cost $20k and take 4-6mos but you’ll get an entry level Dev job at $75k or more when you’re done. It’s been a really good experience. Some have been really good programmers, others not so much. Same could be said of any demographic. There’s performers and under performers.

        • By w0mbat 2020-12-1820:091 reply

          It's "boilerplate".

          It's because a reusable letterpress metal plate of text is called a "boilerplate" because it looks like the manufacturer's nameplate on a steam-train's boiler. That led to any reusable block of text being called "boilerplate". No BBQ equipment was involved.

          • By gabereiser 2020-12-1822:341 reply

            Indeed, I wrote it on my phone, brisket wins on iOS apparently. I usually write it boiler-plate.

        • By bserge 2020-12-1817:511 reply

          This is really interesting! What about applicants who didn't go through a bootcamp, but have decent projects on their website/Github/whatever? Is it the fact that you can't verify if they actually built that themselves or just copied/stole it?

          • By gabereiser 2020-12-1822:37

            I’ll be more keen on a candidate that has interesting GH projects and is self-taught than someone without GH and came from bootcamp. But if both have interesting projects, they both are equal as far as candidacy goes. I can only speak for myself. YMMV.

      • By ChrisRR 2020-12-1817:171 reply

        I always worry about the kind of companies that hire bootcamp devs like that.

        Sure, I agree that quite a lot of university is not necessary for everyone, but not 2.5 years of unnecessary

        If someone has just started from scratch 3 months ago and only knows how to program a bit in javascript, interface with a server and populate a database. I don't want them anywhere near a project.

        I want them to at least know the basic data types and algorithms, security and integrity and design patterns. I don't want to have to deal with software crashes because they don't understand what O(N^2) is.

        • By 908B64B197 2020-12-1823:55

          > I always worry about the kind of companies that hire bootcamp devs like that.

          Typically it's a red flag for companies that are cheap and treat software as an expense and not a part of their core product.

      • By the_only_law 2020-12-1817:28

        > But then why pay for a certificate? Four figures, no less. You could go through a bunch of free programming courses in 3 months and print your own certificate, same thing as long as you can actually do a job...

        My understanding is a lot of these boot camps have parterships with companies and help place the people who complete them.

      • By bencollier49 2020-12-1816:49

        That's definitely a thing. Very popular over here. The format is normally that you do a crash course over 2-3 months, and then do a year's on-the-job training as an apprentice.

  • By ajkjk 2020-12-1816:007 reply

    > 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.

    • By JamisonM 2020-12-1816:092 reply

      I am going to go out on a limb and say that most of getting a Comp. Sci. degree at Concordia University isn't actually "listen[ing] to someone slowly recite a PowerPoint". Having attended a public University in Canada myself it certainly wasn't my experience (and also not very expensive, <10K a year). Of course, as with most things in life a lot of the benefit of an activity is what you make of it, not just what is on offer to the passive consumer.

      Upon completing the article my main takeaway was that the author would have been a lot better off just toughing it out at Concordia in the first place. If you are the sort of person that tries something once for a few hours and then just backs away from it entirely they way this person did.. it's really something!

      • By ceridwyn 2020-12-1816:25

        As a fellow 2012 Concordia dropout, it's possible there's more to that particular story going untold, and this is the clean version of it for employers. You can look up "printemps érable 2012" for some context and Montreal Police brutality related to that. My personal experience being a student involved running from police on horseback launching teargas grenades. Finding excuses not to talk about it is easier than trying to explain it.

      • By alisonkisk 2020-12-1816:44

        Thing is, 20+ years ago you had to go to college to find a dozen like minded students to collaborate with. Today, reddit stufy groups are free

    • By jayd16 2020-12-1816:434 reply

      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.

      • By x86ARMsRace 2020-12-1817:091 reply

        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 instructors have to participate as well. Many do not, and have no interest in doing so. As a consequence, the end result is often that you're just buying powerpoint slides and an optional seat in an auditorium.

        • By jayd16 2020-12-1817:45

          Oh well that's certainly possible. Like anything else, you can still have a poor program or bad luck with a professor.

          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?

      • By thewebcount 2020-12-1821:291 reply

        Yeah, not only that. I went to a state school and we had access to a lot of computing resources I likely wouldn't have had otherwise. I attended in the 90s and unless you already had a job in the industry, you were unlikely to find a network with hundreds or thousands of computers with different OSes on them. I not only got to use macOS and Windows, but VAX, and just about every flavor of Unix at the time (AIX, HPUX, Apollo, Solaris, A/UX, etc.), and even got time on an IBM mainframe to see what that was like.

        I remember, during my senior year, interviewing with a well-known company that had a grand idea for putting together a new documentation system that would allow cross-linking of documents so you could just click on a word and it would take you the definition of that word or the manual page for it. I asked, "Oh, like HTML?" to which they responded, "What's HTML?" This was around 1992-93-ish. Needless to say, I had a leg up on those already in the industry thanks to having had access to those resources at school.

        It also has a lot of job opportunities. I got to be a Unix sys admin on the school network which both helped pay my expenses and gave me real-world experience. It wasn't glamorous, but it looked better on a resume than having worked flipping burgers.

        • By 908B64B197 2020-12-190:32

          The whole point of college is to figure out what you want to do, explore, network and learn how to learn.

          The amount of learning that happens outside of classes, during labs with peers, is on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus.

          That's where the real value lies. That and an environment where there's cutting edge research.

      • By 908B64B197 2020-12-1819:49

        Never really heard about Concordia CS.

        Some public universities seems to just be concert-hall sized lectures. Is it one of them?

      • By johncessna 2020-12-1817:03

        You're paying for the brand.

    • By lostcolony 2020-12-1816:271 reply

      To be fair, this is the problem with Powerpoint. It's a well studied phenomenon.

      I use it as a rule of thumb, the best thing I can do with Powerpoint is have graphics. If I start writing words, I'm misusing it. That's not entirely true, outlines and things can be helpful, but it's a reasonable ideal to shoot for to avoid just reading from the slide.

      • By Slaren 2020-12-1823:53

        Thank you for the really interesting details, but I decided not to take risks but to contact professionals immediately who can help me solve the problem of slides for presentations https://slidepeak.com . You need to be as imaginative as possible because it would be very important for a student to have a term paper that the company impresses the investor, and it would be reasonable to order ppt slides to get the assistance you need. I did this and thanked the competent team that supported me with it. I hope that the importance of the presentation for you is just as useful to you and above all, important cases should be ordered for sure.

    • By JamesBarney 2020-12-1816:251 reply

      Everything in higher education makes a lot more sense when you realize they aren't selling an education they're selling credentials.

    • By paxys 2020-12-1816:25

      At least in US universities along with the powerpoint slide lectures there are also smaller discussion sessions, group assignments, take home programming tests, semester-long papers and projects, optional research and teaching opportunities and more. The lecture is really the least important part.

    • By albertgoeswoof 2020-12-1816:20

      A 2 hour commute is also a massive problem. Students should be onsite wherever possible.

    • By Technically 2020-12-1816:50

      > 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.

      This is literally the justification for tuition, though. The university system certainly benefits from acting like they exist in a competitive market.

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